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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 5 (November 2, 1931)

Fortress-Hills and Battlefields

Fortress-Hills and Battlefields.

All these boldly-shaped volcanic cones that emboss the Kaikohe-Taiāmai country, and indeed all the open land from coast to coast, are carved and terraced, trenched and pitted, the work of the olden tribes, whose descendants live a more placid life on the levels below the ancient fortress-heights. These eye-catching pas of old are numberless. Every hill, no matter how small, was a fortified hold.

There are the more recent battlefields. Ohaeawai, on the roadside between Kaikohe and the township called Ohaeawai (the true Taiāmai) is particularly worth a visit. A Maori church, of the old-fashioned architecture, stands within a strong wall of lava stone, on exactly the site of Hone Heke's stockaded pa which Colonel Despard vainly assaulted in 1845. Graves of British and Maori are side by side within that wall, a churchyard of many a thrilling and touching memory.

A few miles away, on the shore of Lake Omapere, the main road traverses the exact site of another battlefield of 1845, the Puketutu levels, where Colonel Hulme gave the warrior Ngapuhi their first taste of British steel. There was some sharp bayonet fighting on that quiet pasture over the fence, where dairy cows graze contentedly on Omapere's green banks.

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Pukenui, or Ahuahu, that graceful hill that overpeers lake and battlefield, was itself a fighting tower and a sentry place in those days. In its crater the Maoris grew food crops to perfection, nourished by sunshine and the good warm decomposed volcanic soil. A garden of food in the very mouth of what was once a furious fiery furnace. And there are many such places in this wonderful heart of the North.

“A little while I stood, Breathing with such suppression of the heart as joy delights in.” An idyllic setting. The upper reaches of Whangaroa Harbour, North Auckland, N.Z.

“A little while I stood, Breathing with such suppression of the heart as joy delights in.”
An idyllic setting. The upper reaches of Whangaroa Harbour, North Auckland, N.Z.