TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 22, 11 June 1952, Page 1

TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

TALES OF THE TAUPO COUNTRY

(By

R.H.W.)

Navigation on Taupo-moana must have begun several centuries ago, when the >-escendants of the Polynesians who had crossed the Great Ocean of Kiwa settled on its shores and found in the totara tree a suitable materiai for canoe building. A completed canoe hull found by a pakeha pig-hunter a couple of years ago at Opepe Bush, alongside the rotted stump from which it had been felled and fashioned, was perhaps oue of the last to be made. The first pakeha visitors foun/d canoes much used for journeys about the Lake. Dr Ernest Dieffenbach relates how in May 1841 he was taken round the western shpres to Te Heuheu's village of Te Rapa hn a canoe, which was very large, but was quite ful! of men, women, children, dogs and pigs." In September 1869 a fleet of canoes went from Nukuhau, Taupo, to Te Rangi-ita with Maori wafriors under Captains Preece and St. George, to join a force from Hawkes Bay sent up to attack Te Kooti. To-day it is doubtful if a single canoe is in use in Taupo waters. The first pakeha boats on the Lake were probably the "whaleboats" of the Armed Constabulary, of which there were two at Taupo, which, under oar and sail, made journeys between Taupo and Tokaanu. The bottom portion of one of these was still visible under water in the river below jbhe Taupo Redoubt some thirty years ago. The first commercial navigation on the Lake appears to have begun about 1880, as a result of the stocking of the tussock country round Tongariro Mountain with t'housands of sheep, an enterprise in which Messrs L. M. and J. E. Grace took a prominent part, A small schooner was built at Taupo for a man named Axford, and for a time brought the wool

clip from Tokaanu to Taupo, whence it was carted to Napier and later to Rotorua and Tauranga. Named the Dauntless, this pioneer cargo ship was dependent on sail alone, could not beat to windward, and had perforce to wait on fair winds. The first power boat on the Lake appears to have been the small steamship Tauhara, built at Taupo in the eighties for Mr Dan Ferney, a salt-water sailor who had come from Hawkes Bay. Captain Ferney was a man of marked individuality. It is related that at times when baulked by adverse winds, against which his engine was often powerless, he was known to t'hrow his hat on the deck and jump on it to relieve his feelings. And there still lives in Taupo, in the person of Mr Harry Rickit, one who staged what was probably the first Mutiny Lake Taupo. The Tauhara had just left the River at Taupo, outward bound for Tokaanu when a dispute arose between the skipper and the crew, young Rickit, which waxed so hot that the latter jumped overboard, about where the entrance buoy is to-day, and swam home.

Captain Ferney carried cargoes between Taupo and Tokaanu until 1901, & on one occasion the return voyage, owing to adverse strong winds, occupied nearly three we^ks and took him as far as Waihaha in the Western Bay. In addition to the Tauhara, Captain Ferney had several smaller boats and took visitors on the Lake, under sail, sometimes as far ; s J

Karangahape Cliffs. One of these boats, part of whose hull lies buried near the big poplar tree at the Wharf, was named the "Roaring Gimlet." In 1901 the "Tauhara" was superseded by the steamer "Tongariro," built at Taupo for Messrs Thomas Ryan and. Alex Marshall, who as captain and engineer respectively ran her between Taupo and Tokaanui, carrying cargo, passengers and mails on a regular schedule winter and summer and in all weathers. There was no road service between Taupo and Tokaanu at that time, and the Tongariro provided the link across the Lake for the tourist traffic between Hawkes Bay and the Bay of Plenty on the one hand and the Wanganui River on the other. A pigeon post was maintained between Tokaanu and Taupo for the purpose of advising the eoaches of the number of passengers on the steamer. About 1924, when the TaurangaTaupo River was bridged, alternative tenders were called by the Post Office for the carrying of mails by road, and the "Tongariro" lost the mail contract and incidentally the touibst traffic to the motor-car service. She was laid up at the close of that season, and her hull may be seen today, as the houseboat drawn up ashore between the Wharf and Parikawau Cliff .