THE SWIMMERS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 February 1928, Page 2

THE SWIMMERS

The tall story told lately of a Maori woman’s swim across Cook Strait from D’Urville Island to Kapiti Island, and thence to the mainland, is really a blending of two distinct and separate traditions of •swimmers. The first part of the alls red swim was a legendary performance accredited to a woman named Kuia-poupou, or Hine-poitpou. whose husband, a heartless ruffian, one Alan-ini-jionniinin. took her from Arnpawa Island to Ivapiti. and there marooned her. leaiing her without a canoe. Aided supernaturally, says the legend. she swam across the waters Raukawa— Cook Strait—some say -To Arapawa. on the south, others to Bangitoto, or D’Urville Island, her original home, on the west. The distance from Kajiiti to Arapawa is about 30 miles, to D’TTrville about 45 miles. In my private opinion H.inepoupou found a small canoe somewhere on Ivapiti and paddled across the Strait, then set the “waka" adrift, and declared she had swum all the way. Women have l>een known to make somewhat similar claims since her day—at the other end of the world ; The other performance, the swim from Ivapiti Island to the mainland, was a more recent feat, hy another woman, and so tar as she is concerned it is (piite authentic. This heroine of the salt waters was Te Rnu-o-te-Bangi, a stalwart young eliieltailless, who. with her infant daughter fastened on her shoulders, swam in the night from AVaiorua Bay, at the north end of the island, to the mainland south of the AVaikanae River mouth, a distance of six or seven miles. She didn’t do it for a bet, or because she was marooned, but to escape her enemies, who would have seen her had she taken to a canoe. A daughter of the brave Te Rail, a venerable half-caste lady, is living in Auckland at the present day; she is about 90. The period of her mother’s midnight swim was a century ago. The little girl who was carried to safety on her mother’s back died many years ago. Te Ran, some years after her escape by water, married a pakeha trader, ; and their child is the present surviving daughter. —J.C., in an Auckland paper.