Into the Urewera

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 16

Into the Urewera

HE Urewera, the high forested country between Lake Waikaremoana and the Kaingaroa plain, is almost a legendary place, one of the less accessible areas of New Zealand history. In the later Maori wars it was Te Kooti’s stronghold and a Hau Hau centre, and in the early 1900’s Rua Kenana led a new reliigous sect there. Today roads cross the Urewera, and it has recently been declared a National Park. Early this year Marjorie Green, of 1YZ Rotorua, went into the Urewera to find out what it was like. She will describe the journey and what she found in three talks on the National Women’s Pro- | gramme, beginning on June 12.

The journey was made with the help of. John Rangihau, the Maori Welfare Officer for the dietrict,.+To -ivist Maungapohatu, Rua’s stronghold, the travellers

had to take to horses to cover the nine miles from the Waikaremoana road to the settlement on the flanks of the sacred mountain. The horses went single file over the narrow and deeply-worn track, twisting and turning among giant trees, while the riders avoided as best they could the vines hanging low across the track. Within the encircling ranges the travellers found a farming community very similar to the others that exist in the few flat places in the Urewera. The largest area of farmland is at Ruatahuna, where there is \a very old Maori settlement, which Marjorie visited. Two miles away she found Mataatua, whose carved meeting-house wags built for Te Kooti in 1890.