WHAKATAKATAKA

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 185, 8 August 1927, Page 6

WHAKATAKATAKA

It is a nice littlo tongue-limbering lesson in Maori linguistics to say it quickly six times. Aueklanders will have to become accustomed to it, since it will figure rather prominently in our place-nomenclature when that Orakei model subburb becomes an accomplished fact. Whakatakataka Bay was mentioned the other clay in negotiations about that waterfront road that is to be and tho connecting roadway to link up with the Government's internal loading svsteni in the Orakei block. Whakatakataka is the historical and descriptive name of the bold western point of the Orakei cliffs facing Hobson Bay and Parnell. The name is not quite so formidable when one takes it to pieces and discovers that the root word is "taka," which means to fall, and that thu "whaka" is tho causative, and the second "taka" indicates frequency or repetition of action. It carries two references, one to the friable, crumbling nature of the clay cliff, the other to tho hurling down of scaling parties attempting to assault the Maori fortification that once stood there. It is a. long time since I last stood on that point, where a very beautiful grove of ancient pchutukawa trees grew, and the "whakatakataka" process may now have destroyed all signs of the entrenchment. But in the days when Oriikoi was a neat and pretty little settlement, with its thatched whares, its peach groves ami its gardens of kuinara and maize and melons and tobacco, the main trench that cut off the point of the headland was deep and well defined. The little fort on tho brink of the cliff was gradually crumbling away, but enough remained to showits form and denote its usefulness in the. davs of tho long past. Paul Tuhaere, the good old chief of Xgatiwhatua, who kept his little clan together and played tho part of a real raugatira, was in those days tho great authority on local history and tradition. Ho told me that Whakatakataka was anciently a kind of sentinel fort for the occupiers of tho Orakei district, and that warders there kept watch for approaching enemies from sen and shore. It was a commanding place, a bastion of watchfulness, and refuge for the dwellers in Okahn Bay village and other settlements. Wo may still perhaps regard it as a sentinel, keeping its watch and ward over Hobson Bav, with its venerable sister fort on Point Resolution, against the modern grimy invaders under the guise and name of Industrial Progress. —J.C.