Walk #83, 3rd March 2022

We stopped here to eat breakfast on our way home from Wellington after witnessing the end of the protest at Parliament Grounds. We felt shattered.

Eating our food, we watched a couple of divers enter the sparkling water. A man and his dog played fetch with a driftwood stick and two yachts sailed slowly by. In the calm and tranquil peace of the morning we realised life would go on.

This is a stunning part of the lower North Island west coast. Mana Island could be seen in the distance and beyond that, misty and barely disernable, the mountains of the South Island.

History

The place name means the Pa of Kapo. The tribe was Ngati Ira. Te Pa o Kapo may have been occupied for as long as 400 years, but when Te Rauparaha invaded the area in 1819-20 the pa had already been abandoned.

Ethnographer Elsdon Best (who was born at Tawa) visited the pa and was impressed by the superb defences. He noted that at the time the stumps of the totara pallisading were still visible.

I suspect the rock at the site may have been a tuahu. Each canoe and tribe had one, a sacred place marked by a stone.

A plaque in front of the stone reads, “This is the site of a fortified pa occupied by Ngati Ira prior to 1820. The defensive bank and artificially narrowed causeway were once clearly visible. Archaeological evidence suggests there was an extensive settlement in this area.”

Walk: Wellinton 13

Kupe’s anchor

It is said that Kupe’s anchor used to lie on the Porirua foreshore. This is the narrative or korero from Te Ara about Kupe’s anchor: “The Polynesian explorer, Kupe, visited this area and named Porirua Harbour, Mana Island and his landing place, Komanga Point, situated south of Titahi Bay. The anchor stone from Kupe’s canoe, Mātāwhaorua, rested for many years on what is now Ngati Toa Domain. It is now at Te Papa.”

Be aware, this is a classic example of revisionist history about canoes and dates of discovery. Te Ara are wrong on two counts; they haven’t mentioned there were two explorers named Kupe and they failed to point out the stone is actually local greywacke.

Links

Titahi Bay

Porirua City

Ngati Ira: Intermarried with Ngati Tara. In 1819 a war party comprising Taranaki, Atiawa, Ngati Toa, Ngapuhi and Ngati Whatua attacked the Wellington area, destroying the main Ngati Ira fortifications. Most Ngati Ira fled to the Wairarapa where they still live today.

WELLINGTON’S TE ARA O NGA TUPUNA HERITAGE TRAIL

KUPE’S VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND: Kupe and his people discovered people at various places. These people were the Mamoe, the Turehu, the Tahurangi, the Poke-pokewai, the Patupaiarehe, the Turepe and the Hamoamoa. “Such is the story as told me by my elder Tati Wharekawa.”

The Land of Tara and they who settled it, by Elsdon Best : The story of the occupation of Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara (the great harbour of Tara) or Port Nicholson by the Maori.