Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari is an ancient volcano in the central Waikato. It’s the largest predator-fenced eco-sanctuary in the world.
The mountain has been recognised as a reserve since 1912. In 2001, the community came together to form the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust (MEIT) with the goal to restore and protect Maungatautari’s ecosystem. In 2002, the fence build got under way and by 2004 all mammals were eradicated from the initial two enclosures. The mountain is now completely enclosed by a pest-proof fence.
The Northern Enclosure
Our walk was through the Northern enclosure. We didn’t hear any birds, they are spread out over 3400 hectares and the forest is very old and tall. The only native bird we did see was a Kingfisher (Kotare) sitting on a fence post on our way in.
Kingfisher or Kotare
You have to park your car at the Maungatautiri Marae and walk for about 45 minutes to get to the actual walk, and the last part is steep. There’s a rope to help you up if needed. The walk inside the enclosure is about 35 minutes. So budget about two hours of time for the walk including the ‘there and back.’
History
The area has a long history of settlement. The first inhabitants, the indigenous Ngāti Kahupungapunga people, were annihilated by the Maori Raukawa tribe before the 16th century. The Tainui tribes Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Wairere, Ngāti Hauā and Ngāti Korokī still own lands on the slopes.
“We are the largest predator-fenced eco-sanctuary in the world. A little fun fact: We are as big as Uluru in Australia and 10 times the size of Central Park [in New York],” SMM general manager Helen Hughes said.
Over the years, Maungatautari has become a sanctuary for endangered birds, native wildlife and plants.
Ngati Kahupungapunga | Some 400 years ago, they occupied all of the valley of the Waikato from Huntly to Taupo and Rotorua. They had many settlements along the Waikato River, including Karapiro.
Travelling home from our holiday at the Chateau in the early spring of 2018, we pulled off SH1 at Atiamuri, the site of a dam and a prominent hill called Pohaturoa Rock. I’d zoomed past it for years without realising its significance.
The hill brooded over the flowing dark green water of the Waikato river. Eventually we found a trail along the river bank but the history from the sign board didn’t say a lot. Reading it I understood some people got killed;
“Ngāti Kahupungapunga (possibly a surviving Moa hunter tribe) occupied this site as their final stronghold but lack of food finally forced them to abandon their refuge and only five escaped with their lives. The tribe were killed by invading Ngati Raukawa of the Tainui tribe, and by 1840 the site was left empty.”
I had to dig to find out more about the tribes of this area.
The information board on the South Waikato trails seemed more interesting. There were five Waikato trails and we could have followed this path to the Whakamaru Dam if we’d had time.
As well it informed us of “talking poles,” a series of carved poles at Tokoroa, the next town north on State Highway 1, where a fierce looking pou or pole represented Raukawa, the main Tainui tribe of south Waikato.
Even though the town of Tokoroa is named after a chief of the Ngāti Kahupungapunga, there is nothing to learn of them. It goes to show history is written by the victors.
A newspaper article from 2001 proclaimed the Kahupungapunga to be a people of mystery who were cut down like pines;
NZ Herald, Pohaturoa: a historical site of rare significance
“In 1995 it was decided to harvest the pines from the hill. Before work started, however, CHH staff consulted the local iwi and sent Perry Fletcher, a local historian who had first climbed the hill in 1972, to investigate the site:
“Fletcher, well, he stumbled on a historical site of rare significance. What he found were 31 whare sites, plus gardens and numerous storage pits estimated to match the number of families that once lived in the pa – a well-preserved insight into New Zealand’s pre-colonial past. Fretting that trees could fall at any time due to old age, he warned that “if these trees are not removed they will cause significant damage to the historic features.”
At last, someone was paying attention to Pohaturoa’s story.”
The pine trees date from 1927. A photo from 1923 shows it looking quite bare. It would be nice to see the land set aside as a reserve, with a sign board about the Ngāti Kahupungapunga people and the slopes of the mountain replanted with native trees.
Walk: Central North Island 33
Who were the Ngati Kahupungapunga?
“The first people believed to have arrived in the region, says local historian Perry Fletcher, are known as the Tini o Toi. “That was just a loose name for these ancient people. They were spread throughout the country from one of the original peoples – you had Kupe and you had Toi,” he says.
Some say that Arawa explorer Tia came there and his children lived in the area, but the first people known to occupy Pohaturoa were a people of mystery, the Kahupungapunga. None can say where they came from, and in a final stand at Pohaturoa 400 years ago they were cut down like today’s pines, suffering what the Waitangi Tribunal called “their final extinction as a tribal identity.” Source: NZ Herald, Pohaturoa – the story of a New Zealand hill.
It appeared the Ngati Kahupungapunga were just a small, transient bunch of hunter gatherers. But were they? The following year one of our walks took us to the Lake Okataina. The information board at the start of the track stated the first people to settle in the area were the myriads of Maruiwi followed by myriads of Ruatamore, who were later to adopt the name Kahupungapunga. Myriads meant an innumerable number of these people.
So the Kahupungapunga tribe weren’t just a small group at Atiamuri. Where did they go? In the quiet of the lockdowns of 2020 I decided to do some research.
The name Pungapunga only exists now as the names of localities and a river. The Pungapunga once lived around Lake Okataina in the Rotorua Lakes area. There’s a track from the Outdoor Education Centre which we explored called the Waipungapunga track.
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