Rotorua Books

The Tainui Coast with the Mökau and Awakino Rivers on the northern marches of Taranaki has, for generations, formed the lynchpin in access to the richness of the western peninsula of Te Ika a Maui/North Island. The area is also renowned for its close associations with two of the traditional waka of the iwi of Waikato and Taranaki. The anchor stones of both Tokomaru and Tainui, reposed for many years within the area. That of Tainui is, today, to be found on the marae of Maniaroa at Awakino. The Tokomaru anchor was placed under iwi trusteeship in Puke Ariki, New Plymouth in 1927. The Mokau River, itself, forms the boundary of the old provincial district of Taranaki whose northernmost reaches come, surprisingly, within eight kilometres or so of Te Kuiti. Between Pukearuhe and Tongaporutu, the bush clad razor-bacced ridges of the inland hill-country reach the sea in the form of the towering grey mudstone cliffs of ParininihilWhitecliffs. For many hundreds of years the beach here, although subject to the vagaries of both tide and storm, formed the main northern access to and from Taranaki. On the southern side of this barrier is the fortress of Pukearuhe. The local iwi, Ngati Tama, garrisoned this pa for centuries in order to control movement from the north. Much later, in 1863, British regiments and colonial bushrangers arrived from the sea and occupied the earthworks with a similar aim. For more than 20 years Pukearuhe served to secure this frontier from incursions, either real or imaginary, along the Poutama coast.