MAORI FORTIFICATIONS

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17997, 16 April 1930, Page 14

MAORI FORTIFICATIONS

QUESTION OF RESTORATION. A TARANAKI PA. Fearing that unless some action is taken to clear the overgrowth of vegetation and make properly defined tracks the historic defences of Koru pa will gradually fall away, the Taranaki Automobile Association and the New Plymouth Tourist and Expansion Leauge are considering making grants to the Scenery Preservation Board for the work of restoration.

The Koru pa is about nine miles from New Plymouth on the Koru road. Its immediate approach is a rough clay public road making a precipitous descent to the Oakura River through private property. A swing bridge spans the water. Winding around three sides of the pa like a hairpin the river forms the first line of defence. Above it rises a series of eight wide terraces and trenches, their circumferences ever growing smaller as they approach the summit of the hill. Along one side a deep, roomy trench, sirniuar in construction to the modern military type, is protected on the outer side by a wide breastwork, along the top of which one may walk and look down on the river. Further on, on the other side of the pa. several fiat areas are walled in by breastworks some feet thick and about four feet high.

IVlortarleas Walls. The faces of most of the walls and terraces have been reinforced by large boulders carried from the stream below. The work thus accomplished resembles the boulder walls to be seen in front of many modern town residences, but the Maoris did not use cement —they relied merely on their skill In fixing the stones securely one upon the other—and so, unfortunately, some of their painstaking work has bee undone in later years in the places up which visitors have scrambled. It is obiYOUs that the terraces themselves are the result of extensive excavation. Some of them are from 16 to 20 feet wide and almost as high. The sides of the hill have been cut away and thrown outwards to obtain level surfaces and almost vertical drops from one terrace to another. Terraces Honeycombed. The pa is literally honeycombed by large holes for' the storage of food. They occur at frequent intervals along practically all the terraces and trenches from the foot of the hill to the top. Narrow at the openings, Lhey spread fanwise under the earth, often to a considerable depth, so far as can be

judged at this distant day, when their floors are littered with a large quan--1 tity of debris. Full-grown punga 1 trunks sometimes emerge from the outlets. Nevertheless the excavated 1 sides have in most cases retained their 1 shapes after over 100 years of disuse and neglect. Many of these pits arc ; connected by tunnels, and it is even suggested that there is an underground passageway from the top of the pa to the river. Large rewa rewas and pungas and ■ other fine specimens of native trees and ferns now cloak this ancient defence from top to bottom. Supplejacks block many of the old-time passage-ways, and at the foot, near the swing bridge, wattles planted by the forestry company on a strip of land fringing the river mingle with tall bracken fern. A notice erected by the Scenery Preservation Board has thus become completely hidden. It is feared that a match carelessly thrown may. cause serious damage. Once the stronghold of the Taranaki tribe, and considered impregnable until it was stormed and taken by 800 Atiawas at the beginning of the last century, this famous pa is in danger of losing its identity through its features being entirely overgrown or worn down by clambering visitors.