Walk #176, 17th November 2025

This old pa site at Aotea Harbour was right at the doorstep of the place where we stayed for two nights. The harbour in front of the pa was named after the Aotea canoe which is said to have arrived around 1300.

The Tainui canoe arrived about 50 years later and the people from that canoe settled at nearby Kawhia, just down the coast. The Tainui and Aotea tribes lived in harmony until the 1600s when battles started because the Kawhia people were expanding.

The two tribes united when their rohe (area) came under attack around 1800 from inland Tainui. The defeated people fled south to take refuge in pa still controlled by Te Rauparaha, trekking to Taranaki and then on to Horowhenua.

For a long time after their defeat this pa site was left empty, until the defeat of Waikato by Ngapuhi at Matakitahi in 1826 when survivors from that conflict settled here.

The book said it was an easy climb to the top – no it wasn’t. The long grass came half way up my body and it was impossible walking through it. Plus there was some dead gorse in the midst of the vegetation. I did not want to disappear into an old kumera pit so I called it a day and came back down.

The pa site is not a “wahi tapu,” a sacred locality like part of the foreshore – but when I gained the ridge I felt I shouldn’t be up there.

Walk: 26 Waikato and King Country