The Hills and Legends of Akaroa

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 106, 7 May 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Hills and Legends of Akaroa

by James cowan

THE young New Zeniander who is fortunate enough to live in such a romantic-seeming land as Akaroa, Banks Peninsula, or near the Port Hill« tl.at make a wall of crags above Lyttrllon Harbour, should bo a sturlpiit. of geology on the spot. Indeed, boys and girU, if possessed of any power of observation, must lip.'orne amateur geologists there, roaming about those high places, a perfect wild park, and noting the extraordinary character of the rock scenery. There are volcanic heights there innre wonderful to my mind (linn any place in the great snowy range n f tI)P Southern Alps. Everyone who has travelled to Lyttelton by Ihe liners from Wellington nmet have been impressed by the boldlyrtit bills, or rather mountains, that semu to lean over the town where the tunnel to Christohureh pierces the range. The volcanic forces of the I'.i-t were the greatest benefactors to the land. Canterbury people with nny glimmering of imagination should say a prayer of gratitude to Ru-yaimoko, the Maori god of the underworld. He lias long since shifted the scene of his activity to the North Island, but he has left hia mark for all time on the southern coast. But for his fiery and furious labours in the past, upheaving in a thousand bursts of molten lava, a huge nest of roaring furnaces, Canterbury's coast to-day would be a dreary harbotirlees shore. This many-peaked peninsula, this broken ring of crags upheaved from the quaking underworld, gave us Lyttel-

ton harbour and Akaroa harbour and many another bay for ships. Following upon tfhat age of build-ing-up, the weathering-down of the crags and walls over untold centuries and tens of centuries, gave Banke Peninsula ite good soil, made it the garden country it is to-day. The scenery ie full of contrasts — Nature's strangest architecture of igneous rock, black and grey fingers and thumbs and savage pinnacles; and beyond the long sleek levels of the Canterbury Plains. Traditions of the Hills. Then there is the interest of history, tradition and legend. Such landscapes as these seem in all countries to have produced wild and poetic beliefs and etories among the people who lived there. The Port Hills and their rocks and gullies and forests, and the high slants and tors

around Akaroa Harbour liave a folk lore as rich as anything in the North Island. The old Maoris whose minds were stored with such etories and songs have all gone and much of their knowledge has passed with them. But some has been saved. I made it my business many years ago to gather what I could from the wise men of Kapaki and other villages. The old chief Hone Taare Tikao, of Rapaki, was the berit-informed man I knew on the place-names of the hills, with which were bound up in his memory all manner of fairy legends, war history, foresters' lore. The old man lived in his youth on the shoree of Akaroa Harbour. There he was born at the pretty epot now called Tikao Bay. From Otokitoki, the Place of Stone Axes, the original name of Godley Head—where the lighthouse stands—right round the

circling rangee to Akaroa Heads, Tikao knew the names, the etories, the song's. History and Poetry in Names. First, some Maori place-names. You will not find them on any map. The second highest peak on the Peninsula is Tnrawera, which is near the centre of the ring of crags, beyond Hilltop, on the motor road to Akaroa. The surveyor who named the height Mount Sinclair evidently had no Maori helper or did not know the language, otherwise lie should have perceived how interesting the name was and how appropriate to that dark crag , . Tarawera means ■Burnt Peak," like our northern Tarawera, whose volcanic origin was obvious long before the eruption in ISB6. The curving range top, all its peak* over 2000 feet high, and some 3000 feet, that trends toward Akaroa

Banks Peninsula, Ancient Volcano Land.

Harbour mouth, hae its significant names. Yonder near Tarawera is Te U-Kura, which means the Restingplace of the Red Cloud; the fitness of its name is scon when a strong nor'-wester is blowing on the Plains. Another, that tall pointed era;; of rhyolite rook, is Te Umu-Raki, or '•The Oven of the Sky," otherwise, say, "Heaven's Furnace." What better name could there be for a volcano. Yet another is Puke-Ariki, or "The Chief's Hill." There, too, is Te Piki-o-te-Akc, or "The Climb of Te Ake," who was a chief of old with a story of a strange revonge upon hie ciioniies (told in one of my books). That part of the range is called by (ho Akaroa people Purple Peak. Enchanted Places. Then away to tin; right is the boldest contour of the nmge. It is called Otoki by the Maori* and Mont Kernr<l. or Brazeiione by the pakehas. '"Tomahawk Face" would fit it well us a translation. Half-shrouded in mists Otoki looks down on strep green slopes to (>t<'hore and tho harbour. In tradition these rocks <n<' a sacred phici , , an olden rave burial sanctuary. The spirit* of tho dead ar• supposed to haunt it an<l to float in the drifting wisps of vapour. Below it. on the hill road from Akaroa to the Heads, is a lovely old place, si farmhouse locally called "ParadUo, ,, with its green Held*, its orchards and its shingle roof* glinting through the trees; lapped in the. hills like that vale of Ida in "Aenonc," which "the swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen." Descending to the waterside we find a slumbrous tiny village, the Maori kaike (kainga lu the North Island), named Onukil, a place that made some tribal history in its time, but now sleeping the easy hoiire away amidst its fruit trees and its rosee. There was an air of utter stillness over all. The single family living there seemed to doze away under the haunting presence of the ancient gods hovering from the foggy crags above. Fairy Haunts. It i<» eaey to imagine all those peaks tomahawk faces and their thousands of rliffn and caves, the abode of the i'atupaiarehe, tho fairy people. Maori folk-lore as given me makes almost every high craft and nippled peak a place of the fairy tribes. This, belief probably had a foundation of fact, to tho extent that fugitive femilies driven off in its inter-tribal wars, took shelter in the hills arid lived a furtive, existence, only venturing out in cloudy and misty wcat'ier. (Continued on page 286.!