HAURAKI COAST ROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 237, 7 October 1930, Page 6

HAURAKI COAST ROAD.

There are historical associations as well as considerable landscape 'beauty along tho route of the Thames Firth west -coast highway mentioned in a recent "Star" paragraph. Tho account given of the road which is now being opened up ■was,of much interest because, as the writer said, the greater part of the coast is known to few, although it is so close to Auckland. Attractive features of much of this -sector of the gulf shoreline between the mouth of the Wairoa and the head of the firth near the Miranda are the fine shelly beaches, and there are many pleasant bays enticing sites for homes facing eastward and enjoying the sweetest climate in New Zealand. As one goes further south towards the Piako the view is less beautiful; there arc forests of mangroves along the muddy shore. Miranda, itself is approached from the sea through half a mile or so of these mangroves by a crooked creek navigable by small craft. All this coast from tho Wairoa to the Piako swamps—now the Uauraki Plains —once held a large Maori population. . Sea and shore supplied the Ngati-Paoa and other dwellers in those parts with abundance of food. There were scores of villages and fleets of war canoes. One day of long ago, travelling along the beach from Wakatiwai towards the head of the gulf, I took particular note of the great heaps of *pipi shells that indicated the near-by site of old-time villages. There were huge quantities of shells about the mouth of such creeks as the Pukorokoro, which flows past the Miranda settlement into the mangrove flat just mentioned. A few small settlements still exist along those shores of plenteous "kai-mataitai." At Pukorokoro the chief man in other days was the grim old warrior Aperahama Pokai; he w r as tattooed so thickly and deeply that his face was quite black; a thorough-going Hauhau, and a most hospitable old lad withal. We had fish and kumara with him one day, and he escorted us to see his hot springs, the healing waters of the Ngati-Paoa. These boiling springs are out 011 the fringe of the mangroves, approached by. a muddy track. It was a blistering hot midsummer day, and the "wai-ariki" looked hot and uncomfortable enough to cure anything. We did not sample them, but took Pokai's praise of their powerful qualities for granted. There were lively doings along these shores in November of ISO 3, when a British expedition of nine hundred men, Imperial and Colonial, was taken down to the Wakatiwai coast from Auckland in a fleet of transports, headed by the warships Miranda and Esk. All these coast Maoris were Kingites and rebels, and the tyoops proceeded to occupy Pokai's country and built the Miranda, the Esk and the Surrey redoubts, a chain of posts linking up the Hauraki side with the Queen's redoubt at Pokeno. There had been a little preliminary bombardment of Wakatiwai and other coast villages by H.M.s. Miranda and the New Zealand gunboat Sandfly, which went in as close as it could and threw a few shells into the Ngati-Paoa camps and lines of B rit!e pits. The remains of the old redoubt at Miranda are to be seen on a hill above the Pukorokoro Beach, a little way in from the landing place among the mangroves.