The Ruakuri walkway is a short 45 minute walk following the Waitomo river.
I returned with my husband to do the walk a second time, just before New Zealand went into lockdown.
Walk: South Waikato 28
Walk 22, First walk here, 14 Dec 2019
My son, daughter, son-in-law, sister and brother-in-law came with me on this walk. The Ruakuri walkway is a short 45 minute walk following the Waitomo river.
The walk goes through outcrops, caves and a large natural tunnel that looks down at the Ruakuri stream as it does a U-turn through the tunnel.
This walk is an old Maori trail that they used to travel inland from the coast. Ruakuri means den of dogs.
Walk: South Waikato 28
Links
The history: TALES OF THE CAVE COUNTRY
From the boards: Okataina means the lake of laughter. It was an important link in pre-European times where canoes were carried from Tarawera to Okataina, and from Okataina to Rotoiti. Okataina road follows one of these ancient portage routes.
In 1823 Te Koutu Pa was attacked by Hongi Hika using a portage route.
The lake has no surface outlet – it drains by seepage through fissured lava towards Lake Tarawera which is about 20 metres lower in elevation. Because of this, the lake levels fluctuate dramatically with the rainfall.
In 1883 the area was covered in volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Tarawera.
There are small caves at the pa site. Tarawera ash has made it appear that caves were dug below ground level when in reality you had to step up to enter them. Some caves are characterised by a slightly domed ceiling. Some are L shaped with straight walls and a perfect gable ceiling, the outside is characterised by an extra recess for the door.
Ngati Tarawhai, a sub-tribe of Te Arawa are the principal iwi associated with the Okataina district. In 1921 they gifted the foreshores of Lake Okataina to the crown to be set aside as reserves.
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Toitu te whenua – leave the land undisturbed.
Walk: Rotorua 29
★★★★★
History
In previous times this area was settled by different iwi (tribes) who either pre-dated or derived from Te Arawa Waka. According to Ngati Tarawhai history, the first people to settle in the area was an iwi called Te Tini o Maruiwi (the myriads of Maruiwi.) They were followed by Te Tini o Ruatomore (the myriads of Ruatomore) who were to later adopt the name Ngati Kahupungapunga. Source: Lake Okataina Scenic Reserve history
The last stand of Ngāti Kahupungapunga was at Pohaturoa Rock.
THE MARUIWI FOLK OF THE BAY OF PLENTY DISTRICT: Volume 37 1928 > Volume 37, No. 146 > The Maruiwi folk of the Bay of Plenty District, by Elsdon Best, p 194-225
Related walks
Twin Craters / Ngahopua Track, Lake Okataina
Links
Entrance to storage Rua – Te Koutu pa
Carved gateway Lake Okataina Koutu Pa taken about 1904
Click to access lake-okataina-scenic-reserve-cultural-history-p10-19.pdf
Walk 5: Mount Pohaturoa, 8th Sept 2018
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.”
Source: The NZ Herald, Pohaturoa – the story of a New Zealand hill, 12 Jan 2001
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
“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.
Here’s what I found: Ngati Kahupungapunga
Related walks:
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.
Links
Gilbert Mair’s account of the Atiamuri Stones
NZShortWalks 