explanatory title. Te Taou came to know the sandhills very well, and every prominence which rose unchanging above the sea of sand gained a Maori name. The long beach was known in the south as Muriwai, and in its northern stretches as Rangatira; and the lakes, small and large, each had a name given in memory of some event in the past. Legends to add significance to the sandhills came into being. Remembering the great Kawharu of whom Ngatiwhatua said, ‘His face was as long as from my fingertips to my elbow’, the lakes stretching from Muriwai settlement to South Head became ‘the footsteps of Kawharu’, and Te Taou believed that it was to Paeroa, an area on the dunes near Wharepapa, that Rona had fled after bringing down the wrath of the moon upon his family. Braving the risk of an encounter with taniwha in the very deep and blue lakes, they dug cause-ways between these stretches of fresh water. Through this inland waterway, which in many places can still be seen, the people of Te Taou, and probably residents of an earlier age, hauled their canoes. No eels were found in the lakes, but there were fresh water mussels, crayfish and waterfowl. On the coast, which was also an important highway, there were toheroa and excellent fish, with sometimes the gift of whales from Tangaroa. Te Taou did not always cross the changing contours of sand on peaceful missions. There are many stories of people running to the sandhills to escape or ambush war parties. The battles of Haumoewharangi and Kawharu had scarcely passed into history when Waiohua under Kiwi of Maungakiekie pa, Tamaki isthmus, began another series of battles on the sandhills and country round about.

The Desart Coast Soon after this, Captain Cook sailed by, describing the land as ‘The Desart Coast’. Soon after that again, Ngapuhi began attacking the Kaipara, seeking Te Taou with varying success among these hills. By the time the first pakeha came, Te Taou knew every aspect of living in the sandhills, and generations of their forbears were in their last long sleep in hidden burial places among the dunes. Te Kawau, not yet christened Apihai, was their paramount chief and Ngapuhi under Tareha were laying waste to their homes. In July 1820 Te Kawau brought the first white men to the district. They were Samuel Marsden, the pioneer missionary, and Mr Ewels, a companion from the ship, Coromandel. Their visit was short but Marsden and Ewels had time to walk on the great sandhills. The pa to which they came and in which they spent the night was Ongarahu, on a ridge at Reweti; and Marsden's names lives on in Te Tou o te Matenga, the title given to a hill which stands in the sand behind Ruarangihaerere. Marsden was back in Te Taou country that November. One of his missionary companions, the Rev. Butler, wrote eloquently in his diary of the feeling of awe and desolation and the protecting love of the Almighty which he experienced when he surveyed the ‘immense tracts of sand which much resembled a deep snow in Winter, with here and there a stunted bush growing through it … and the tremendous roaring surf

Pakehas Come to Stay that is seen and heard for many miles.” Six years after this, Te Taou, through fear of Ngapuhi, joined the exodus from Kaipara to Waikato. Te Taou did not see their sandhills for a decade and when they returned there, the whole pattern of Maori life had changed. Tribal warfare had been ended by the missionaries with a series of peace-making meetings and more and more Pakehas were coming to New Zealand to stay. Te Taou lived on in their villages near the sand until about 1870. The principal settlements were those of old, Oneonenui, Ongarahu, Kopironui and Pahunuhunu, near Ohirangi. At Ongarahu in 1865, Te Kawau gave shelter to the crew of the cutter ‘Petrel’ which had been wrecked on the Muriwai coast, and a mission base at Pahunuhunu, the home of Aoihai te Wharepouri. Here Bishop Selwyn planted two Norfolk pines which are still standing today, and visiting ministers held services in the chapel near the sand. As the Pakeha cry for land became greater the old chiefs of Te Taou, Apihai Te Kawau, Hikiera. Paora Tuhaere, Uruamo, Otene, Wharepouri and their sons sold much of their ancestral territory, keeping small reserves for themselves and their people. They sold the sandy acres as well as the arable, and gave white men the possession of the land right to the Tasman Coast. And it happened that after almost a century and a half, the sandhills of Te Taou became significant to them only for the wahi tapu among them, and as a pathway to the coast of the toheroa and sea fish. The nature of the sand, like life itself, had changed for Te Taou. It was their enemy now, spreading over many of the old pa sites and threatening, in its march from the sea, to engulf those people who stayed in its path. By 1870 the sand, like some greedy taniwha, had swallowed much of that portion of the Ongarahu pa in which Te Taou lived, so that a new pa had to be found. This second Ongarahu, a mile to the east, is above the west side of the Reweti railway station and is the present marae of Te Taou, complete with church, cemetery and ‘Whiti te Ra’ meeting house. The sandhills kept rolling forward as the years went on. The Pakeha settlers who lived in their shadow were worried about the relentless drift of the dunes, but they seemed as powerless to stop