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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 4 (August 1, 1928)

A Frontier of Volcanic Cones — Story Mountains of the Border

A Frontier of Volcanic Cones
Story Mountains of the Border.

Ancient volcanic cones that seem to form a line of sentries along this Aukati line, the old frontier, are a conspicuous landscape feature of the King Country border. Between the Maungatautari Range on the east and Pirongia's forested peak, 3,444 feet high, on the west, there is a series of cones and ranges of obvious volcanic origin, now clothed in fern and bush. The railway line runs between two of these heights a few miles south of the Puniu. On the left hand (east) is the gracefully moulded Kawa Hill; on the right rises Kakepuku Mountain, 1,400 ft. high, a long extinct volcano. Just after passing between these romantically shaped mountains the rails cross the reclaimed farm lands that once were great marshes, the Kawa Swamp, a famous place among the older Maori for tuna, or eels, and wild duck.

Kakepuku is a typical volcanic cone, of bold simplicity of outline, sweeping steeply down in classic lines of rest from a saucer-like crater summit. Its isolation from other heights gives it a character and dignity of its own, and it is not strange that the ancient Maori endowed it with godlike attributes and built poetic legends about it. Its sides are deeply scored with ravines, and remnants of the forests fill its higher gullies. Its neighbour, Kawa, is a wonderful little mountain, presenting on the side facing our railway and the rich pasture levels of the reclaimed swamp, a deep, ferny hollow, the ancient crater, and on the other flank, the eastern, a symmetrical-rounded breast carved by the ancient fort-builders in scarp after scarp of defensive works.

page 29

Love Myths of the Mountains.

In the folk-lore of the Maori these mountains are husband and wife. The Maori personified such boldly cut hills, and so Kakepuku, with its steep upthrust of shape is the male and rounded Kawa is the gently reclining female. To the south again is a minor mountain, the Puketarata Range on our left. This, say the old storytellers, is the rejected lover of Kawa. Here is the eternal triangle; and there was another lover, too, a volcano called Karewa, which once stood where the Kawa swampy lagoons shone like silver plates among the raupo reeds and flax. It is the legend of the Tongariro volcanic heights over again. Karewa fought Kakepuku for the love of Kawa, but was defeated with furious volleys of lava and hugh fiery rocks, and was compelled to flee. He retreated westward to Kawhia and into its ocean, and there he stands to this day, lone Karewa, called also Gannet Island, in the Tasman Sea, off Kawhia Heads. So Kakepuku won fair Kawa, and remains the overlord of this Waipa Valley.

A stirring tradition, too long to give here in full, tells of the siege of the fortified pa that once stood on Kawa's tattooed nipple of a hill. Tarao, the chief of the pa, realising that the fort must be captured, had a tunnel dug by which he and his people escaped one night under the very feet of their besiegers into the safety of the near forest, and so over the hills and far away. The ancient Maori was as skilful a digger as any modern warrior.

In Winter's Grip. Ohakune Junction, Main Trunk Line.

In Winter's Grip.
Ohakune Junction, Main Trunk Line.

Fairy folklore is associated with some of these mountains of the border. High up on Kakepuku there is a deep dingle of a valley, thickly wooded, which was in local belief a haunt of the fairy tribe, patu-paiarche. This part of the mountain, towards the summit, where there are the remains of two ancient trenched forts on the rim of the crater, is a State scenic reserve.

Pirongia Mountain yonder is the chief home of the fairies. Their favoured abode is Hihikiwi, the forested crest of the range. The people say that albinos—we used to see an albino woman at the Puniu—are the offspring of fairy men and Maori women.

Otorohanga (114 miles), a pakeha-Maori township on the Waipa River, at about the old-time head of canoe-nagivation, has a rather curious scrap of history and folk-belief embodied in its name. It means a small portion of food caused by supernatural means to last for a long journey. The story is that a warrior chief setting out from here for Taupo in ancient days had only a little provision (o) for the long route march, but by his prayer-charms he stretched it out (torohanga) so that it sufficed him until he reached his destination—a kind of Maori version of the widow's cruse of oil.

(To be continued.)