THE LOST LAND OF PAORAE

Otago Witness, Issue 3150, 29 July 1914, Page 88

THE LOST LAND OF PAORAE

A WEST COAST MEMORY. Written for the Otago Witness By Jas. Cowax. The recent alarming encroachments of th.i ocean upon the to wmroi.t of Hokitika, eating away the eandy foreshore with its buildings, and destroying even the protective works, "are by no means unprecedented on the West Coast, where the rollers of the Tasman Sea, sweeping in with the tremendous “send” of a thousand miles, have in the course of time eaten away great slices of the solid land. On some parts of the New Zealand coast the land undoubtedly is making, but the western coast has been liberally shaven off by the ocean even in comparatively modern times. The story of the Hok.t.ka erosion recalled to me a story which I once hoard from two old Maori friends of mine, w'ho have now passed to the Reinga Land, taking, with them wonderful mind-stores of priestly and historical knowledge. Looking up my notes written at the time, some 15 years ago, I find the circumstantial narrative of the Lost. Land of Paorae, as to'd mo by Patara to Tuhi and his brother, Honana Maioha, of the Ngati-Mahuta tribe, two fine dignified tatooed old chiefs of the past generation, first cousins of King Tawhiao. and men of mark in Waikato Kingite history and council. Patara it was.' who, in the early sixties, edited and printed the celebrated paper, Te Hokioi, at Ngaru-awama; his journalistic a.nd political antagonist being Sir . John Gorst. They two old men lived in my time on their ancestral lands at Ararata, dose to the storied Mount of Mangero, on the shores of Manukau Harbour, a.nd it was to clear up some vague accounts of a Maori Lost Atlantis, a supposed island, which once stood outside Manukau Heads, that I sought them out. Thej r were acknowledged by the Maoris as learned men- in the mythology and traditions of the W-a kato and Manlrkau-side people, and their interesting story may, therefore, be accepted as an authentic account of the remarkable erosion of the western coast of Auckland province by the resistless ocean. Sitting in the sun on tne lee side of a clump of cultivated flax of the “ngaro” variety, on their Ararata farm, the venerable descendants of the Polynesian navigator IToturoa told their story of the vanished land to their pakeha questioner. There w-as no island, they said, but there was a great tract of solid land, part of the mainland, which the ocean had won for its own again, and the waves of the Tasman Sea now roll over tne longgone kumara cultivations of the teeming Ngaiwi tribe. , “A long,- long time ago,” .Patara s story went, “a large expanse of low-lying land, dotted with dwellings and cultivations, stretched out seawards from the present South Head of Manukau Harbour. This tract of country extended southwards in the, direction of Waikato Heads. Anciently the face of the land round Manukau Harbour and the Heads presented a very different appearance to what it .docs now. Then, the greater part of what is now Manukau (oi originally, Manuka) Harbour was solid land, covered with kauri and other heavy timber. The proof of th.s is found in the presence of kauri gum on tho shallow tidal nais, which form so great an area of this inland sea, and are dry at low water. Imis land was low-lying, flat, and sandy, and through it ran throe long saltwater creeks, or arms of the sea. Gradually, in the course of long years, the sea, to use Patara s words, ate up the soft soil, until tne sea slowly but surely took - the land tor itself. Thus', the Manukau was into a saltwater sea, and sea-birds screamed and fishes played where once thick forests cf mighty trees nourished in the earth. “But great as the ravages of the sea were inside the Heads, the all-devouring ocean licked up the lands even more hungrily out there bevond where the -Mounts of Mahamhani and Paratutae mark the south anc north entrances to the Manukau. ..aid Patara: “Now, pakeha, if I were on the height of Mahanihani, I could show you where there lay, stretching southward to Waikato, the long flat land which was called'Paorae. That is the only name which I know as applied to it; it was the name of the northern end of the land; and the part which lay nearest to where toe signal. station of the Europeans now stanos. How many miles it stretched to seawards I know not; our ancestors did not reckon in miles. It might have beem three miles, it might have been 10, out to sea. It was a flat land, and mostly sand, and on it were the houses and cultivations of our forefathers in the very remote days before vou pakehas came to this country. When the canoe Tainui, which brought my ancestors here from Hawatki across the great ocean of Kiwa, passed down the W cst Coast this Paorae was a large, extent of land; and -it became a famous place for the cultivation of the kumcra and also the taro. The ground was warm and' very sandv, and the kumcra grew abundantly. There wore kaingas (villages) of the ancient people on that land, and it became a favourite spot for the tribes to go for ‘ kai mataitai,’ tlio K food of- tho sea fish Mid pipis and mussels.” , The northern end of the Paorae Flat, it seemed from the old chief s nanatire, was covered with kumara gardens and wliares in those ancient times. Along the shores, where the waves of the western sea broke in foam on the glistening beaches, there were fishng stations. Long canoes were drawn up on the hard sand, ■ and in the w'arm summer months were launched day after day for the capture of the shark and other fish, which were hung up to dry in the sun and preserved for future use. A little way hack from the beaches were the cultivations of tho sweets potato and the taro, the former carefully planted in separate little hillocks and diligently kept free from weeds and caterpillars, and protected from the cold, sharp winds’ by bmikwir.ds of brushwood. _ The planting of the kutnera was an occasion of o-roat importance in those ancient time?, and was surrounded by much religious ceremony. There were not, as far as I could learn, any Maori fortifications or permanent settlements of imnortrance -on Paorae. The b’g pas were at Waitnra (a little stream which runs into the sea some distance south of Manukau Heads), on tho South Head itself, and inside the heads at Awitu and Tipitai. Paorae was a great kumcra plantation 01 tho Ngaiwi or Ngaohio, the very ancient aboriginal people who occupied the land about the Manukau Heads and southwards to Waikato. The Tamaki Isthmus, including the site of tho present City of Auckland, was then owned by tho long since extinct Waiohua nat ; on, who swarmed over its fertile plains, and entrenched themselveson its volcanic hill cones. But in time the

Ngaiwi were d sposscsscd by the Waikato, who cam;,! down and slaughtered the owners of the land from the Waikato Heads to Manukau, capturing the pas at Waitara and elsewhere. So passud the land "to the brave” —“ Kua riro kite toa ” —and the Waikato warriors became possessed of the coast lands cf Paorac. One of the conquering chiefs was Kauahi, who became the lord of the kumara flats of Pacrao. In those days there was no South Channel, such as the steamers now take when crossing the Mannkau bar, bound for Taranaki. The three creeks of the Manukau then, according to the ancestral traditions, discharged to the north of the present bar, out beyond where the sharp volcamc heights of Paatutae and Marotiri stand. The old man Patara also said that in the ancient times there was a noted eel lake (“ roto-tuna ”) of fresh out in the land of Paorac, a good distance beyond where the sea coast now is. The people used to make large hauls of eels there, and also caught the ducks which frequented the lake. Paorae, in fact, was a desirable bit of territory for the olden Maori. It was rich in the food delicacies of the times. “ And how did that land vanish?” Patara was asked. “ E-e! Kpa kai ite tail” (“It was oaten up by the sea!”) was the old historian’s reply." “ Ever s’nce it was first inhabited and cultivated, that land was gradually being bitten into by the ocean. Each year, each year, the sea would cat a piece of the Paorae; the waves would roar right up to the plantations, and the growers of the kumera would be edged back and back. The groat waves of the Tai-Hauauru dashed against that land of sand and washed portions of it away, and so in time the ocean rolled over it all. But there, was no great or sudden catastrophe. It did not perish by any great earthquake, or by a sudden and awful hurricane from the sea. It was worn away gradually until now, as you may see, there is not a sign of that ancient Paorae, and the Tide of the West Wind breaks on the black sands at the foot of the high white cliffs which run from Mahanihani right down to the sand-hills at the mouth of the Waikato.” Patara said that his father, the warrior chief Maioha, nemembered seeing in his boyhood the fast-vanishing land of Paorac. Maioha died about the year TB6O, and it would therefore be about 1880, or some years before that, that the sand lands outside the Heads were still visible. Rongomate, Maioha’s father, was one of the chiefs who owned the kumera lands of Paorae, and tho great Kaihau, grandfather of the present Henare Kaihau, exM.P., was also one of the overlords of the Lower Waikato and the country around Manukau Heads, and in his time the Paorae flats still resisted the encroachments of tho sea, and were fishing places and kumara plantations. In Maioha’s time the old fort, Te Pa-o-Kokako, stood on the South Head. It has now been worn away by the action of water, wind, and weather. It is probable, judging from the. traditions of the Maoris, that the present Manukau bar is a formation of comparatively recent date. Patara and Ilona na both agreed that the bar was a “mea hqu,” quite a ne w thing, and they were fully aware of the- changes which have taken place in the channels over the bar in recent years. Their elders informed thorn that the bar did not exist when Paorac was inhabitated and cultivated. Tho fact is that the southern shoals and -sandbanks of the bar are part of the ancient Paorae, with thy surface washed away. The Maori name for the Manukau bar is “Te Kupcnga-o-Taramainnku” (“the fishing net of Taramainuku”). Students of Norse mythology will remember the legend of the whitc-veilc-d sea goddess Ran, who spread her nets on the dangerous coast for sailor men, and who, with her nine pale daughters, entertained the drowned in her coral caves. This curiously poetic name for tho bar is a very ancient one dating bade more than 400 years. The Taramainuku whose memory is thus preserved was the grandson of Tama-te-Kapua, tho chief of the Arawa canoe, and he settled at Kaipara Heads, where, in very remote times, before his day, there was a land occupying the parts inside the entrance now covered by the tide waters The steep, conical, rooky island in the Hauraki Gulf, of Cape Colville, variously called The Watchman, or Channel Island, or Frenchman’s Cap, is also named after this Maori chief and tohunga of old. It is known to the Maoris as To Poitoo-tc-R uponga-o-Tararnainuku, which means ‘the Float of Tara’s Fishing Net..’ Ther is an old proverbial saying applied to tho roaring bar of the Manukau, w-here in westerly winds the rollers for miles outside the Heads break in drowning surf over the dangerous banks of sand; “Kei te tua o Manuka, te kite ki muri kite Kupenga-o-Taramainuku.” (“When yon pass out beyond the Manuka waters, do not look back until you reach or pass the ‘Fisliing Net of Tara’ ”) —a kind of Maori equivalent for tho cautiomry “Don’t halloo till you are out of the wood.” It was upon these shoals that are the last remnants of tho ancient land of Paorae that H.M.S. Orpheus was lost in 1863. when Commodore Burnett and 200 seamen and marines were swept down into Taramainuku’s foam-hidden Fishing Net, which the pakeha sailor would call Davy Jones’s Locker.