Walk 70, 1st August 2021
This is a beautiful walk but you have to time it either side of low-tide. It’s a black sand beach at Tongaporutu, just off SH 3. There are three rocks called “the Three Sisters” and another rock called “Elephant Rock,” which lost it’s trunk in 2016.
There was also a cave with ancient rock petroglyphs, but sadly the cave has been lost to the surf. Note the big foot with six toes.
“They are the last signs of what we know as Te Kahui Potama, which are the ancient people and they were known as the Maeroa,” says Ngati Wai spokesperson Haumoana White. Source: Transparency NZ
After the beach walk, we went to the Three Sisters Lookout on Pilot Road near the Tongaporutu Cemetery to get another view of the beach. While there we read a sign about a Grey-Face Petrel colony at Rapanui, inside a predator fenced area near Tongapōrutu. I was glad to see the reserve was also protecting some dotterills, one of my favourite birds.
Conservation efforts boost numbers of rare coastal birds in Taranaki
Walk: Taranaki 1
Tongaporutu Coastline – the petroglyphs at Gibbs’ Beach, 21 August 2005
Tongaporutu coastline : At the boundary of impermanence
The lark, still bravely singing
Petroglyphs:
CAVE DRAWINGS NEAR TONGAPORUTU, TARANAKI
History pre-Maori
Author James Cowan speaks of the Maruiwi, a blanket name for the original people. They inhabited the district before the Tainui and other Hawajkian canoes landed. Toi on his arrival found them living at Tongaporutu, south of Mokau; “They were a rough and primitive people say Maoris; they did not build permanent houses, nor did preserve food for winter use, but lived like wild men, from hand to mouth. The later-comers attacked them, and at last the Maruiwi took shelter on the hill-top. Soon afterwards they disappeared. Their chief, say the Mokau people, called upon his gods to assist them as they were fleeing up the river-bank, and at a place on the hillside the ground opened, revealing an underground passage. Into this subterranean way the chief led his people and they vanished.”
(Cowan J. , UP THE MOKAU, 1911)
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TS19110828.2.53
Bibliographic details
Star (Christchurch), Issue 10243, 28 August 1911, Page 4
Te Kahui Tipua were the ancient people known as the Maeroa.They were described as “wild men of the woods,” who probably were the remains of some of the original people driven to the forests and mountains by the incoming crews of the heke. Even so late as the fifties of last century, they were supposed to inhabit the great forests in inland Taranaki.
History Maori
Tongaporutu is also where the Tokomaru canoe landed.
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