The Hunted Whare of Tongariro

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 74, 18 June 1927, Page 17

The Hunted Whare of Tongariro

(Written for THE SUN by R. W. THOMAS.)

■ OTORISTS who visit the Tongariro National Park for the first time, and who turn off from the main Tokaanu Road leads to the mountain huts nestling comfortably among the trees around the foot of Ruapehu, usually are compelled mysteriously to make their first stop at or near the Haunted Whare. The driver climbs out of his seat with perplexed brow, lifts the bonnet of his car and anxiously scans those parts of the engine which are likely to cause the troubles most common to all motor-cars. He unscrews and examines his plugs, taps his carburettor, tests his compression and at last hauls up in front of the radiator, blaspheming, sotto voce. “There's nothing wrong with the cursed thing,” he says. “Why won’t she pull?” Meanwhile his womenfolk have climbed out of the car too, and have gone to inspect the Whare. “Poppa,” yells one of his daughters. There is no response from Poppa. “Poppa,” she commands again. “What?” says Poppa, and there is thunder in his voice. “Come up quickly, here’s the Haunted Whare.”

“Haunted, is it” he growls. “So’s this darned car.” The Haunted Whare, perched commandingly on a grass-grown knoll, and surrounded by gnarled beeches which shelter it from the snowy blasts that hurl down the slopes of Ruapehu, blinks down from a solitary witchlike eye. Father is new to these parts and as yet he does not know. Only the very high-powered cars suceeed in getting past the Haunted Whare without changing into second gear. The road is apparently flat and the surface is good. To the eye there is just a very slight upward grade which any car should fly over on top gear. Actually, the run from the turn-off from the main road to the Whakapapa Huts is one of the stiffest pulls in the North Island. That is why most of the motorists who come, new, to these parts, stop, willy nilly, at the Whare —and leave it firmly convinced that there is something injthis ghost story after all. At Whakapapa, of course, enlightment awaits them. The legend which has been woven The story, as I heard it, however, round this isolated shack of the great plain may be read briefly on a poster attached to the door of the building.

came from tile lips of one who knows these regions as the pages of a wellloved book and he told it to me early one summer’s morning as we trudged along the track that led to the mountain in the days before the modern Bruce Road was even contemplated. The ghost that is reputed to haunt this decrepit looking whare is that of a dusky belle with handsome tresses, the beautiful daughter of one of the long-departed patriarchs of the Maori race. In the natural order of things, a youth of the tribe wooed tile girl, and, when the adamant parent gave an emphatic “no” to his request to rub the lady's nose for the term of his natural life, the couple took the question into their own hands and eloped. They made their home among the bush in an isolated hut, since said to have been destroyed by Are, but which stood on the site of the now famous Haunted Whare. The old chief lost no time in tracking them down and carried the lady back to his pa, but not before he had attended to her lover in the business-like manner which was customary with the Maoris of those times. The parental will, however, could not slay the love that surged in the young wife’s breast and one night she packed up her “nightdress and boudoir cap” and fled, to the hut which had seen the first dawn of her love. Mournfully she called her lover’s name aloud,' her cries echoing through the forest that surrounded the one-roomed dwelling that had been their happy but tragic home. At last the truth, starkly cruel, thrust itself on the disconsolate girl and she knew, as Isobel knew, that “There was Lorenzo slain and buried in. There in that forest did his great love cease. The lady did not weep, alone, “for pleasures not to be,” but took the shortest route to the new abode of ner lover and drowned herself nearby in the Whakapapanui stream that to-day still speeds onwards to join its mighty brother Wanganui. That is the story of the Maori bride who is said to grace the Haunted Whare with her sweet presence on moonlit nights. There were those who claimed that they had beheld the flimsy form of the lady, and heard he-love-lorn cries. It is asserted that a Maori brave in the good old days was posted in the hut to keep watch over some tribal rights and that he died mysteriously with no marks of violence on his body. Later a half-caste shepherd took up his residence in the hut and died in a similar fashion. The story is told, also, of an English shepherd who lived in the Whare. He, too, is dead, but in his lifetime he claimed that the Maori girl used to visit his dwelling often at night time. She sat by the fire, but never spoke, and when she entered his dogs cringed into the corner. To-day parties of mountaineers use the Whare as an accommodation but and, as they sit on the edge of their bunks and gaze into the glowing logs, they wonder if the ghostly girl will come and sit by their fireside. But she does not come. Perhaps she lias found her Lorenzo at last and they have set up house in a land where there is no irate papa to disturb the matrimonial dovecot.