Kapiti Coast

Tu Tangata, Issue 31, 1 August 1986, Page 59

Kapiti Coast

Today the rocky headland of the Te-Ana-o-Hau excites no particular interest to travellers as it is simply yet another bold headland around our coastline.

Situated near the southern end of the great coastal walkway which extended from Kawhia in the north and to all intents and purposes ended at Porirua Harbour in the south, Te-Ana-o-Hau which marks the western headland of Pukerua Bay was in old Aotearoa an important landmark.

Legend has it, that Hau an early explorer in this part ofTe Ika-A-Maui on finding his path blocked by the prominitory and a mass of jagged and jumbled rocks, cleared the way by creating the archway which was from then on to perpetuate his name. This feat he achieved by resorting to and performing a number of incantations and spells.

W.C. Carkeek in his informative handbook on the placenames of the “Kapiti Coast” records how on reaching Te Ana-o-Hau parties of Ngati Toa would make camp for the night.

This practice would have been good bushcraft for south of Te Ana-o-Hau the terrain altered. Sand which had been so much part of the scenery now changed to a rocky coastline or as an alternative route, parties could scale the cliff and then procede along the rest of the coastal range of hills for a few miles.

Then the scenery changed again with some miles of wearying travelling along the mudflats of Porirua Harbour.

This custom of calling a halt was no doubt a time honoured practice that had long been in vogue before the Ngati Toa wrested the land from the Ngati Ira in 1826. Te Ana-o-Hau no doubt served as a camp site in early times for parties of Rangitane from Rangitikei who were in the course of making a visit to their kinsfolk at Totaranui - Queen Charlotte Sound and further to the south in the Wairau. The same practice of calling a halt at Te Ana-o-Hau no doubt applied to the Ngati Apa of Turakina in olden times, when parties were enroute to visit their kinsfolk of Durville Island - Rangi-

toto. E.J. Wakefield in his journal “Adventure in New Zealand” records that when proceding to Wanganui by way of the route, a southerly swell was causing the sea to surge breast high through the archway and that through becoming somewhat mesmerised by the moving water he was unable to synchronise his movements and had to be carried on the shoulders of his companion Te Puke. The land mass on the horizon across the waters of Raukawa - Cook Strait, is Durville Island where hard and durable argillite, a rock much in demand for adzes was quarried.