Tag: Rock

Mahia Peninsula Scenic Reserve

Walk #96, 5th January 2023

Most of the Mahia peninsula is bare of trees but this reserve protects 374 hectares of native bush. It’s a loop walk along a ridge and then down to the valley bottom where you cross the same stream several times. There’s been rain so the track was muddy in places.

The walk is supposed to take 2 hours but it was more than that, perhaps because of the mud.

Walk: Hawkes Bay 11

History

According to Māori legend, Mahia Peninsula is Te matau a Maui – the fish-hook of Maui.

The Takitimu waka landed here in the 14th century.

Ngāti Rongomaiwahine is the Maori iwi (tribe) traditionally centred in the Māhia Peninsula. It is closely connected to the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi. Kahungungu visited Mahia after hearing stories about Rongomaiwahine, a beautiful woman. He married her and many local people are descended from them.

Rongomaiwahine was descended from Ruawharo, the tohunga (navigator) of the Tākitimu waka (Māori migration canoe), and Popoto, the commander of the Kurahaupō waka.

From 2007 to 2010 Mahia became known for the presence of Moko, a dolphin.

In Coronation Reserve (Piko te Rangi) on the eastern side of the peninsula is a natural rock basin that was used by Bishop William Williams to baptise local Maori. A small cleft in the rocks was said to have been used to store Bibles.

It reminds me of a megalithic Bullaun bowl. We didn’t see a heap of rocks like this anywhere else on the peninsula.

Links

A bullaun (Irish: bullán; from a word cognate with “bowl” and French bol) is the term used for the depression in a stone which is often water filled. Natural rounded boulders or pebbles may sit in the bullaun. Source: Wikipedia

The bullaun bowls displayed in the above pictures are from New Zealand, except the one at the bottom right, which is in Samoa. Bullauns, like these, are found throughout New Zealand in both the North and South Islands. Source: http://www.celticnz.co.nz/SolarObservatoriesNZ/SolarObservatoriesPart13.html

The Takitimu Canoe

The History of the Ngati Kahungunu of Wairoa

The birth of Kahungunu
Tamatea Ure Haea had three wives, who were sisters: Te Onoono-i-waho, Iwipūpū and Te Moana-i-kauia, the daughters of Ira and Tokerauwahine. With Iwipūpū he had a son, whom they named Kahungunu.
Kahungunu the man:
Kahungunu (also known as Kahu-hunuhunu) was born at the Tinotino pā in Ōrongotea (later named Kaitāia). His father subsequently moved to the Tauranga area, where Kahungunu grew to adulthood.

Kahungunu History

Takitimu

Wikipedia states Tākitimu was a waka (canoe) with whakapapa throughout the Pacific particularly with Samoa, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand in ancient times. The Tākitumu was an important waka in the Cook Islands with one of the districts on the main island of Rarotonga consequently named after it.

Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab built on the Eastern end of Mahi Peninsular not far from impoverished Wairoa and Fraser town ( Te Kopu) where the great non weapon bearing Waitaha waka Takatimu landed.

Source:

The Yellow Brick Road – How Rocket Lab Success Was Built At The Expense of the Locals

Significant places

Mount Pohaturoa

Walk 5: Mount Pohaturoa, 8th Sept 2018

IMG_1801

Click here for video

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 informed us of “Talking poles,” a series of carved poles located throughout the shopping centre at Tokoroa (the next town north along SH1) 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

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.

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

Sidestep: Atiamuri Stones

Gilbert Mair’s account of the Atiamuri Stones

Atiamuri

Roadside Stories: Hatupatu’s Rock

Roadside Stories: Tokoroa, timber town