THE SYLVAN SPA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 307, 22 August 1932, Page 2

THE SYLVAN SPA

EARLY MEMORIES OF MOKOIA LAKELAND' S HOLY ISLE THE "WHAKA MAORI" ' CRUISING AND CAMPING ' ON ROTOITI After the visitor to the Rotorua Wonderland has seen the Geysers and the hot springs, there remain the lakes and their heautiful shores and forests and the Maori life, and these features of the Wai- Ariki eountry are as attraetive to many people as the thermal sig'hts, says Mr. James Cowan in the Railways Magazine. In this article Mr. Cowan deseribes the pleasure of eruising and camping on Rotorua and Rotoiti, in the early days, and the unusual interest of Mokoia Island, the Lakelasd Holy Isle.

Campers-out and fishermen are early risers. They need no daylightsaving legislation to rouse them out' of their blankets at peep of dawn. Whether we sleep in a tent or in the good open air — and a tent is overstuffy for my liking, and unneeessary in fine summer weather — there are many things that lull one to sound slumber. The *soothing wawarawai,murmur of gently-lapping water on the beach, or the music of a eascade rising and falling 011 the night wind; little wandering breaths of air; scent of tree-bark and ferns and moss; the call of a night bird, sometimes the trill of the criclcet; to my faney, lying ear to ground, the vast inarticulate lullaby of Mother Earth herself as she spins on her eternal course all blend into the healthy opiate of dreamless sleep. But the camper's sub-con-scious mind is alert to the first signs and sounds of awukening day; a louder note in the ripple-wash on the sands; a breezy stir in the trees ahove grey waters; the raw freshness of the the bivouae; a shivery breath from the world when nature yawns and stretches herself against the dawn. It still wantad an hour or more to sunrise when Tamarahi and I stirred out of our blankets on Matariki beach, our snug camping place on the northwest corner of Mokoia Island, and made ready for the second leg of our boating cruise around the lakes, a long projected sail in company from Ohinemutu to Mokoia and then down through the Ohau Channel and around the many bays of Rotoiti. The morning star was dimmed by a little haze that floated above us; the water of Rotorua stretched grey and cold to the dim further shore. "Night's candles are hurnt out and jocund day "Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." Weather-wise Tamarahi had a look around at sky and lake, and when I suggested breakfast before we startI ed he shook his head. "Better wait till we get to the Ohau," he said; "the wind is getting up; let's start now before there's much sea on the bar yonder." A Morning Sail. So, rolling up our flax sleeping j mats and blankets — we didn't trouble about a tent on those simple-life camping cruises — we stowed our camp-gear under the thwarts, launched our boat, stepped the mast and set sail for the Ohau rivermouth three miles away. Our boat was a sixteen-footer with a i spritsail; small canvas, but, as it turned out, quite enough for our needs that cruise. Once well clear of the mountainisland, the westerly bresze caught us, and away we ran before it, sliding along at an exhilarating rate over the grey "waters. We boomed out the foot of the sail with an oar, and our spritsail tugged at mast and tackle like a team of bullocks. Less than half an hour took us across and through the choppy little seas on the Ohau sandy shallows. We beached the boat on the white sand just where the overflow waters of Rotorua swirl into the Ohau River round a projecting clump of low willows. The billy was soon on the fire, with the frying-pan to follow, and we were busy with' tea and bacon and fried bread when the sun came up over the far dark ridge of Matawhaura Mountain. And then the transformation: the mists swept , away from the face of the waters; ' they grey lake became blue, the white ' beaches and the pumice banks glisbened; the bird life of the creek and its sedgy shores woke to life. Presently we saw, too, coils of smoke go up h'ere and there along the lake and we knew by that token that the "little ; villages that cuddle in the sun" were waking to thoughts of kai, and maybe another day's fishing with those long funnel-shaped hao-koura, the nets stretehedon potes to dry on the creamy sand. The Bays of Rotoiti. That was the beginning of a longago cruise with a capital Maori mate,

sailing or paddling from bay to bay, 1 making the acquaintance of the small communities of the Ngati-Pikiao tribe who lived in the lovely indents of Rotoiti's in-and-out coast, camping where we listed, exploring little silent islands, and the grand old Maori forests. What glimpses of charm we had of wild life around the lakes! We. came silently upon wild duclc and the weweiia, the little dabchicks, and the ; teal in the quiet waters; we even surprised a melancholy bittern fishing on the Ohau banks. Our sail easily wafted us along, and when the wind dropped and we had to take to the oars we moved almost as silently, so that we seemad to enter naturally into an intimacy with the things of Nature. 'In a noisy-power-launch we would have missed all those curiously confidential touches of the wilds. There are some almost faery places about Rotoiti. There are some tiny lovely dots of vegetation seemingly floating on the lake; there are two islets, as pretty as a picture, with their flax bushes and shrubs and dangling ereepers and flowers all mirrored in the smooth waters on days of haleyon cairn. There is a rocky isle, Pateko, half-way dawn the lake, a place of legend and elegiac poem. Long ago it was a fort and a refuge; nowadays it is the burial place of the small hapus who live on the nearby southern shore of Rotoiti. Every little bay has it shining crescent of sand; and on the grassy terraces near the east end of the lake there are settlements with here and there a earved house. The trail of modern progress is over most of those villages, but the communal house of meeting retains the old style, artistic in fonn, hlending well with the landscape. The Glory of the Cliffs. The northern shores are very hold , in parts, with their cliffs, pohutukawahung, rising from deep water, and the steep hillsides densely wooded to the skyline. Matawhaura mountain makes a grand finale tr Ihe procession of cliff and forest and glinting bays and beach. We can bring up closel under this giant palisade or rock and look up through the hranches to the j heights eigh't hundred feet above. ; Fern trees droop their lovely frondage high up the rocky sides; mosses and licbens and all kinds of fragrant climbing things tenderly tapestry the precipiee, and little springs and dewlike drips water the many coloured vegetation that so closely mats the cliffs. And far ahove, reached by a secret trail — it must he a perilous trail too — is the immemorial cavern of the dead, where generations of Tamarahi's ancestors rest. A Sylvan Spa. Hauparu, Wai-iti, Ruato, Tapuwaekura Tapuwaeharuru, Otaramarae, and here and there smaller hamlets still we call in at, one time and another. There is a place of unusual scenery even in this place of uncommon attractions, the hot spring of healing waters called Manupirua. The hot mineral fountain issues from under the roots of a great old pohutukawa tree, at the foot of a hillside on the south side of the lake, and fills three successive bathing pools on its way to the lake. The lowermost of these was formerly used by people temporarily under the mystic quarantine of tapu. Manupirua is still in Maori hands; it is the little arcadian spa of the Ngati-Pikiao tribe. The Rimu Avenue. There is a most lovely forest road, lovelier even than fam'ous Hongi's Track — where by the way, the widening and straightening operations of the road-makers in the interest of hurry-on motorists have robbed the route of much of its olden charm. This is a three-mile road from Ruato, on the south side of Rotoiti, to the northern end of Lake Okataina. . It passes trdough a noble forest of rimu pines and other great trees, the bush called Waione. For most of the distance from lake to lake the ground is i level, once you climb up from Ruato to the Waione plateau, and the road is a cool fragrant avenue quite overshadowed by the foliage of the most beautiful trees in the Maori forest. It is a glorious bit of the real unspoiled bush and long may it remain so. And it is the gateway to a wonder- ; place ^ of quiet waters and luxuriant tree-life; that vast mountainside of pohutukawa trees on the western side of Okataina is something that no other lakeshore can show, not even Rotoiti, fine as it is. On Mokoia Island. ' A few days spent in exploring the historie places and the slopes and hilltops of Mokoia Island was a perfect finjsh to a Lakeland cruise on whieh' not a lakeside village was left unvisited. That leisurely voyage was rich in memories of beauty; it produced, too, sundry notebooks filled with Maori legendary and poetic data, gathered from the last of the old tattooed warriors and sages of the lakes, But weeks instead of days could he spent on Mokoia, or rather could in the days of the past, for the old wellsehooled people who were such mines of folk lore and song have gone and the young generation will not live on the ancient isle of ghosts, remote from the cinema and the jazz hall. Thirty to forty years ago many families lived

1 on that wonderfully produetive Paepaerau Flat, on the north-east side o£ 'the island. What a garden of food it was! And it could he a garden of food again, for the voleanic soil is amazingly rich, and frosts and blights never afflict Mokoia. A Fruitful Isle. When food was scaroe on the mainland, the tribes always had Mokoia to fall 'back on for potatoes, kumara and maize. What a fruitful place it was when first I set foot on the Paepaerau beach! There were cultivations all over the levels and up along the lower slopes; and up yonder were the cherrygroves richly laden. One summer I was at Rotorua, old Te Raiha brought over-' canoe-load after canoe-load of kits of cherries, for the townshipfruit shops and the hotels -and boarding h'ouses. The "Waka Maori." There were many canoes in use #then; every village around the lake : had its little flotilla of dug-outs; it "was a pretty sight to see three or four of the largest wakas from Mokoia bound for Ohinemutu on some fine summer day, with sail set, making a race of It across the sparkling lake before a heautiful north-east breeze. Long ago they user raupo-reed sails, closely interwoven, very light mate- : rial; but in my day at Rotorua the popular saileloth was flourbags, which' were deftly cut to shape and- sewn with a sackneedle. Here on this happy little island with its contented industrious community I heard several haka songs extolling the fertility and fruitfulness of the soil and the abundance of food from land and lake. These were often chanted by a merry company of girls and women as they came carrying baskets of food to visitors at a feast. One I have translated thus: — "Bring, oh' bring Your calabashes to Mokoia, To the isle of food and life! In the fruitful summer time. In the good harvest month, Gather here, 0 ye people, Come to the isle of the full calabashes." The Fishermen. Here there is a reference to the abundance of whitebait or inanga, which was caught in great quantities in the old days, in fine-meshed nets, before the voracious trout became plentiful. The inanga was dried and preserved in taha, or calabashes — the hue and vegetable gourd — and in bark containers. Koura or crayfish too were in plenty, and there were scores, i nfact hundreds, of |posts sunk in the shallow lake bed as mooring places for the nets. They catch koura there still, in many places, each of which has its special name and its owners. From tlie Island Top. One day I elimbed to the top of Mokoia with my friend Tutanekai the tohunga, a lineal descendant of Hinemoa and Tutanekai of romantic memory. We pushed up by overgrown tracks, where the ancient homes of man are eovered with shrubs and flax bushes; past the earthworks of imme- | morial forts, along little gullies and through witchy thiclcets. My companion pointed out this tapu place and that, and told how in the long ago this fruitful isle was "eovered with people.' 'On the open breezy summit we came to a little square re-doubt-like enclosure, nearly six hundred feet above the lake. It was once a fort, now a bruial place. Tutanekai gave its name, which translated is "The Pinnacle of the Place of Abundant Food." The name-giver of ancient days likened the whole island to a great pile of food. What a picture from that green and lofty lookout! The lake lay all round us, as smooth as if polished. Ferny and woded spurs radiated from our citadel down to the bright waters. Blue ranges rimmed the skyline; we saw the glimmer of little lakes; the woolly, curly steam columns of far away, and four miles south across the lake the white buildings and th'e green groves and parks of Rotorua town. We watched a trail of smoke emerging from the bush on the Mamaku Range • — the incoming train from Auckland. It was hot on this hilltop; Tutanekai and I presently sought the shade on the small woods on the south side, and loafed there awhile in great content, and the learned man told some of the tales of old. How sweet a retreat this day, so near and yet so far from the busy pa town: — "A soft air lifting like a sigh Some tree-fern's fan, as if in sleep It stirred in the noon stillness deep, Then sank in drowsy trance profound." The Holy Isle. | Beauty of landscape all around. But the feature of Mokoia's life and scenery and atmosphere that has always impressed me most is a certain mystic quality, its air .of tapu over all. The stories and histories I heard from this old man, and that — men who were horn on the Island and would die and be buried there — show that Mokoia is in very truth a place saturat-ed with the mystery that comes of centuries of human life on one small spot, and with the genius loci of primitive man. Long ago it was named Te Motutapu-a-Tinirau, after a South Sea sacred island famed in tradition. It is still the very home and citadel of tapu. So lovely a place should not be so deserted, but I hope it will never pass out of Maori hands. Paepaerau village could he made a home of the ancient raee typically and distinctively Maori, prenrving all the ancient forms of architecture and art-craftmanship and cultivation, with canoes on the beach as when I first saw it. So preserved, it would be the most attraetive thing in Lakeland, a retreat to which all the pakeha's sordid and hlatant modernity would not be admitted. It is a natural sanctuary. The stone images of the old gods are preserved there still — one is on view to the pakeha, the others are buried. That ancient atua Matua-tonga, the mauri or talisman of the kumara gardens, symbolises the aura of sanctity which permeates the island. The Motu-tapu-a-Tinirau with its Maori twilight story should he as classie a place to us as ever Mount Olympus was in the golden age of Gree. f