Walk #157, 30th January 2025

Paku Peak offers fine views over Tairua, Pauanui, the Slipper and Shoe Islands and beyond to the Alderman Islands.

There’s a short rocky scramble near the top of the peak but nothing too hard. Shell middens lining the path show the site was heavily occupied in its time.

Walk: Coromandel 16

History of the area

The known history is it was a Ngati Hei stronghold, then it succumbed to Ngati Maru invaders in the 17th century, who occupied it until heavily armed Ngapuhi with muskets swept down the coast in the 1820s.

In European times Tairua began as a timber milling town where vast amounts of kauri and other native timber was shipped out from the small port on the Tairua River.

in 1964 the only known artifact linking these shores to Eastern Polynesia, a fish lure, was found in the sand dune behind Tairua Beach. It’s identical to examples from the Marquesas.

Here’s the picture I took at Auckland Museum.

Here’s information from a report commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal from 1996 for the claim Wai 406:

Wai 686, THE ISLANDS LYING BETWEEN SLIPPER ISLAND IN THE SOUTH-EAST, GREAT BARRIER ISLAND IN THE NORTH AND TIRITIRI-MATANGI·IN THE NORTH-WEST
Paul Monin

1.4 The pearl shell lure

“Archeology is a source of infomation on these first migrants. The pearl shell lure found at Tairua, which is identical to examples ..from the Marquesas, is impressive evidence of migration from Eastern Polynesia.”

1.3 The strategic location of the Gulf Coromandel Islands

The Gulf islands lay alongside surely the busiest waterways of pre-European Aotearoa, those connecting Northland with the Waitemata, the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty (and beyond to the East Cape). All canoe traffic between the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Plenty passed close by Great Barrier,Little Barrierand the Mercury and Aldermen’ Islands.

Meanwhile, all canoe traffic .. utilising the porgtges of the Tamaki River, which granted straightforward passage across the isthmus between the Waitemata and·Manukau Harbours and between northern Aotearoa and theWaikato River system, passed close by the inner Gulf islands: Waiheke, Ponui etc. Of this canoe ‘traffic, inevitably all was not friendly. Hence these islands were not places. where inhabitants could expect to be left undisturbed to enjoy long and unchallenged tenure. At times, they would have felt as vulnerable as.the occupants of a motor vehicle, caught stalled on the shoulder of a modem motorway. It was a location that was in no way conducive to a sense of security.

1.4 The pre – ‘waka’ Peoples

Another source of information on these first migrants are the very early traditional stories associated with the Hauraki Gulf, comprehensively compiled recently by Graeme Murdoch, the current Auckland Regional Council historian,.

Perhaps the first people to inhabit the inner Gulf islands were the Tutumaio, so named by Wiripo Potene of the Kawerau hapu of Ngati Kahu. They were displaced by later arrivals, the Turehu, who occupied Motutapu, Motuihe and the adjourning mainland where they were known as Maewao.

“The Maewao people travelled around the islands of the inner Hauraki Gulf between sunset and sunrise in their canoe ‘Te Rehu O te Tai’, gathering kai moana and such foods as seaweed of which they were particularly fond”, Murdoch elaborates. (perhaps these peoples were the Maruiwi, much referred to in local traditions.)

At about this time the Polynesian explorer Toi Te Huatahi visited the islands of the Hauraki Gulf naming them collectively, ‘Nga poito 0 te Kupenga 0 Toi Te Huatahl,’ or ‘the floats of the fishing net of Toi Te Huatahi’. He named Little Barrier, ‘Hauturu 0 Toi’; and the entrance to the Waitemata Harbour, ‘Te Whanganuio Toi’, or ‘the Great Harbour of Toi’.