Sanctuary Paradise

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 8

Sanctuary Paradise

HISTORY IN LITTLE BARRIER THE deportation of two dozen Maoris from Little Barrier Island about 30 years ago to allow the New Zealand Government to preserve primeval land as a bird sanctuary lias been recalled by the death at her village at Leigh of the Maori ehieftainess, Te Rahui te Kiri. She was one of the principal figures in the affair.

There was no doubting the wisdom of the Government in its determination to have Hauturu —Little Barrier’s better name—as a sanctuary. The scruples of the compulsory purchase, in which Te Rahui, daughter of the influential chief, Te Kiri, and her husband, Tenetahi, with their followers were forced to abandon an estimable island home, can be forgotten in the excellence of the motive. Little Barrier stands in massive aloofness today in its Hauraki Gulf home, 50 miles from Auckland and midway between Great Barrier and the mainland. Its primeval nature was remarked upon hy Mr. R. A. Falla, the Aucklander with Sir Douglas Mawson’s scientific expedition in the Antarctic. “Hauturu is a piece of old New Zealand, to be preserved as such, one hopes, for all time,” said Mr. Falla. “Primeval vegetation clothes every ridge and gully.” To the imaginative Maori, Hauturu meant “the resting place of the winds.” Coromandel, across the Gulf, was Moehau —"where the wind sleeps.” EARLY MAORI STOCK Te Rahui’s people were of the Ngati-Whatua, the Maori tribe which reigned supremely in Auckland from 1760 to 1840, with an element of the blood of the Kawerau, a people descended from that other race of old New Zealand, the Mouriuri, who are thought to have come from New Caledonia. The Government’s caretaker, as the resident in these years, lives near the only practicable landing, a meagre beach huddled in a break in the tremendous precipices encircling the island. Back of the residence are

10,000 acres of stupendously rugged land, leaping to a summit of 2,400 feet. This mountain is Little Barrier in actuality. Its name. Mount Many Peaks, fittingly describes the island. From Okupu and Whangaparapara, on Great Barrier, the island presents a curious sight; it presents an outline of Queen Victoria lying in state. ALMOSiT UNTOUCHED Man’s hand, apart from the presence of the caretaker’s residence, is shown in this mass of primeval land only in the solitary grave of a former caretaker and in the signs of a. few kauris cut by the people of Te Rahui for shipment to the once-famous kauri mills at Whangaparapara. With Kapiti Island, at the southwestern corner of the North Island, Little Barrier presents wonderful advantages as a sanctuary. The Three Kings, 40 miles north-west of Cape Maria Van Diemen, are the newest addition to the islands New Zealand has set aside to preserve a reminder of a once glorious natural life. On Great King, New Zealand quail, regarded officially as extinct, have been detected. On 14 or so Islands from North Gape to the Bay of Plenty, tuatara lizards remain. Pert saddlebacks (tieke) thrive on Taranga Island, the “hen” of the Hen and Chickens. Near Auckland there are excellent domains of natural life, pot necessarily on uninhabited islets, In the Cavalli Islands, the Poor Knights, Great Barrier, the Mercuries, the Aldermen, Cuvier Island, Mayor and Motiti Islands. On Little Barrier, tui and korimako, long-tailed cuckoos, stitch birds and petrels live in the state in which the ancient Maoris observed them. D.C.S.T.