WAIHEKE'S BAYS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 10, 12 January 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

WAIHEKE'S BAYS.

MAORI PLACE-NAMES AND STORIES.

OLD CRUISING DATS.

(By J.C.)

One's memory these midsummer days roves back with mingled pleasure and regret to the cruises of the past, when the bays and covea of Waiheke Island and its neighbours of the Hauraki were a perpetual delight, with all the charm of exploration for the youthful amateur sailor. Our sea rambles had not so wide a range as that which the yachtsman, especially the power boat man, enjoys to-day; at any rate those of us who knocked around in the smaller craft found that Man-of-war .Bay was a convenient limit for a week-end run. We might set out for a longer holiday cruise, but as often as not the beautiful indents and wooded hills of Waiheke exerted a magnetic pull.

I have turned up an old map of Waiheke Island, scale forty chains to the inch, prepared at the Survey Office in Auckland, which, with its place-names and names of original land grantees, and my Maori annotations made many a year ago. is quite an historical treasure, ft gives data which is quite unknown to the pleasure cruiser and the holiday camper of to-day; it recalls to one halfforgotten incidents of days and nights long—too long—ago, when all one's geese were swans, and when every new anchorage was a haven of romance.

. Matiatia Cove. What a wonderful little harbourage was Matiatia the very first evening one sailed into its land-locked indent and rounded up to the quietest anchorage imaginable after the blustering nor'-easter and rolling sea outside. The pale smoke of cooking fires on shore rose through the twilight air. There was a Maori village there, the homes of a hapu of t. j NgatiPaoa tribe. Yacht after yacht came' in and dropped the hook, until b ynext morning there were thirty or forty in the bay. Next day I made the acquaintance of a grand old tattooed patriarch, Wiremu Kepa, whose face was a perfect museum of ancient carving designs. He had been a warrior in the cannibal times; now he was a lay reader of the Church. The ancient must have been about ninety then (1889). Hie son, Neho Kepa, was a tall, grey, partly tattooed man. It was from Neho that I heard something of the Hauraki history and the Waiheke place-names. There was a family there whose blood was ai blending of Portuguese, Maori and South jSea Island. The girls were big-eyed Juanitas; very dark and very comely; i little beauties of Waiheke!

The Star Fort. The craggy hills of Matiatia that (enclosed us like welcoming arms, terminated in headlands that were fortified by the olden Maori. I explored one Sunday the point on the southern side, starboard hand going into the bay. Pohutukawa trees grew in and about the ancient trench and parapet. Neho Kepa gave the name of this fort as Te Wetu-mata-rau ("The Many-Pointed Star"); evidently descriptive of its irregular shape, with numerous angles. The pa that crowned the opposite (northern) headland was Mokemoke ("Lonely" or "Solitary").

As for the name Matiatia, it means a native grass, probably Festuca littoralis, which grew on the level ground on which the village stood; parts of this flat were rather swampy, and .this grass was thick on the marsh-edge; it was sweet and much to the taste of some of the native birds. There was a growth of raupo there, and from this the thatched whares of the Ngati-Paoa hamlet were built. There were but one or two timber cottages in that old-time Matiatia.

The Sounding Sands. We feasted on oysters from the rocks below the Star fort's tree-hung cliff; we discovered a peach-grove on the hills beyond, toward Te Huruhi, of which the Maoris made us free —for a small consideration. We walked over to Owhanake Bay, and down to the curving sands of Oneroa ("Long Beach"), where in after days sundry yacht crews gathered for football matches. Beyond again, was the splendid beach of farstretching Onetangi ("The Sounding Shore"), with its lines of breakers thundering in before the north-easter. The Matiatia Maoris had a little song, the opening of a haka chant, descriptive of the rumble and crash of the surf on Onetangi, borne loudly to their ears at night: Wnakarongo a*e an Kite tal o Haurakl, E wawa mai nel; Wa-wa, wale ha! I listen to Hanrakl'B tide Crashing yonder on the shore; Soar, oh ye waters, roar! In Squadron Bay. Hound the rocky corner to the south as one sails out of Matiatia is the little island-guarded bay known to our yachtsmen as Squadron Bay. Its native name is Hangaura. The island, straight-sided, flat-topped, grassy, is Motukaha ("strong island"). We found its summit trenched, and pitted with old food etores. It was a fort and isle of refuge aforetime. Neho Kepa said that it was originally owned by the Ngati-Maru tribe, of the Waihou and thereabouts; it was taken by assault by Ngati-Paoa, and there was a lively battle on the islet and this level grassy shore where the title Hangaura stream flows down past its flax bushes. There were contests of another kind on that inviting shore in my time, the Sunday morning cricket match, wherein many an Auckland yachtsman of the past generation shared —old hands who have sailed their last cruise.

Ngati-Paoa's Headquarters Bay. Te Huruhi Bay, like Matiatia, was in those years all Maori. The Ngati-Paoa owned some 2000 acres of the west vend of the island; the boundary was a line drawn across from Matenga-Rahi ("big head") at the north of the bay, across to Oneroa Beach on the other side. There was an old native church up on the hill toward Matiatia, half hidden in a thicket of trees. In the early days of Auckland town Te Huruhi was a populous place, the chief gathering place of the island hapus. Here the Hauraki tribesmen joined forces in 1861 for their descent on Auckland in the war canoe flotilla, the historic demonstration at Mechanics' Bay. Here Bishop Selwyns little mission schooner Undine now and again looked in- on her cruises. There were always small native schooners and cutters and open boats sailing in and out of the bay in more recent times, after the canoe had gone 6nt of fashion, carrying fruit and potatoes and kumara land firewood to the fwkeha town. 7'

Hill-Top Castle. In and out along these delectable shores there are all sorts of picnic bays and picture-like headlands from which the pohutukawa dipped to the water. Cruising along the southern coast we found the most pleasant anchorage, of all close to a perfect little beach, all glittering white shells, on the eastern side of Awaawaroa Bay ("Long-stretching Valley"), now usually abbreviated to Awaroa. A row of gorgeously-flowering pohutukawa lined the beach, as regularly as if planted there. We climbed the wooded hills above, and in the bush on the summit of the range found a very ancient fortification, a pa centuries old. Very large pohutukawa trees grew in the deep trenches and on the broad parapet. Nearby, on the hill-top, was wet ground; there evidently the olden fort-holders had a water spring that doubled the value of the pa. There were ancient cultivation grounds, too, all covered with a secondary forest growth. When I inquired from Ngati-Paoa afterwards they gave me the name of this long-lost fortreee height as Puke-o-Eai, meaning a hill where food was abundant. (To be continued.)