KUPE The Polynesian Navigator and Explorer by T. V. Saunders Down through the oceans of time and space contained in Maori mythology, we learn that Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga the demi-god, fished up out of the blue water of the Southern Pacific Ocean, Aotearoa (The Land of the Long White Cloud), New Zealand, with the enchanted jaw-bone Muri-rangi-whenua, which he had fashioned into a beautiful fish hook. Legend records that Palliser Bay is the mouth of the huge fish and that Wairarapa Moana (lake) is the fresh-water eye of Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga's fish, Te Ika-a-Maui (Maui's fish). Early ancestors, by word-of-mouth transmission, tell that Te Ika-a-Maui had lain dormant for many, many moons throughout the space of time until the tall and handsome Kupe of Rangiatea, with his wife Kura-maro-tini, and their people, aboard the large and handsome canoe Mata-hou-rua (double canoe capable of carrying up to 300 people) set sail from their homeland, Hawaiki, to discover the promised land that the demi-god Maui had created for his Maori people. The magician Peka-hourangi, and a companion, Ngake, in the canoe Tawiri-rangi, accompanied Kupe and his people. After a long and hazardous journey across the unknown ocean of Kiwa (Eastern Pacific), navigating by the sun by day and the stars by night, and after incredible hardship, the sea voyagers sighted Aotearoa. Tradition records that the Polynesian explorers coasting down the eastern shores of the North Island, actually landed at Rangi-Whakaoma (Castlepoint) to replenish their food and water supply. While at Castlepoint, the sea voyagers were reputed to have startled a huge wheke (octopus) out of the cave under the headland. A great battle with the octopus (whose name was Muturangi) ensued, as the monster tried to wrap his many long arms or feelers around the canoes. Kupe and his people were kept very busy chopping the long arms off with their axes. After a long and desperate battle the octopus gave in, and, bleeding with its wounds, made off in a southerly direction into Cook Strait where Kupe and his people caught up with it in Tory Channel and killed it. The place where the kill occurred was Wheke-nui (big octopus), as it is known to this day. After their battle with the octopus, Kupe and Ngake and their followers sailed into Palliser Bay to rest and recuperate at Matakitaki, to finally decide to make it their headquarters, where Kupe made history by being the first ever to circumnavigate the South Island and the North Island. Tradition records that he and his people were the first ever residents and pioneers of the South Wairarapa and were in occupation for more than two decades. The residence of the district by Kupe and his people began in the year *Wairarapa genealogies invariably show Kupe as having lived only two generations prior to the last migration to New Zealand. 952 A.D. Matakitaki can be located at Cape Palliser which Kupe had himself named. When he and his wife ascended a nearby hill, he saw across the blue waters of Cook Strait the snow-capped Tapuaenuku in the Kaikouras. From this beautiful view he named his headquarters Matakitaki (to look upon with admiration). Down through the ages of space and time the Maori inhabitants of this district have had handed down to them by their elders the whakapapa (genealogy) of Kupe and legends of landmarks.