The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 1 (May 1, 1929)
The Battle-Beach of 'Sixty-four
The Battle-Beach of 'Sixty-four.
Yonder, at the mouth of the Waitahanui, there was the thunderous sound of battle between Government Maoris and rebels one day in April, 1864. A great war-party of East Coast men, attempting to fight their way through to the Waikato to join the tribes under the Maori King against the British army under General Cameron, had left a fleet of large canoes lying on the beach where the river goes out below the Otamarakau bluff. The Arawa warriors, who were fighting in the cause of the white Queen, drove them back along the beach from Maketu and seized the war canoes, while the owners were trying to launch them through the surf.
Next day (April 28, 1864) the battle was continued along the beach to Matata. Our rail line now follows exactly the route taken by the retreating Kingites, five or six hundred of them, fighting a hard rearguard action with the pursuing Arawa. This broad belt of smooth beach and low sandhills, extending to the mouth of the Awa-a-te-Atua at Matata (it is a locked lagoon now, and the Rangitaiki River goes to sea by a new cut some miles further on) is called the Kaokaoroa, which means the “Long Rib.” It curves slightly like a glistening hoeroa, the long broadsword-like bone weapon made from a rib of the whale. There were cultivations of kumara and taro and maize here and there along this sun-warmed rib between cliffs and sea.
The straight cliffs of sandstone, glistening white in the play of sunshine, were fringed for miles with pohutukawa trees, twisty of trunk and branch, leaning out seaward, a crown of dark foliage for this glittering wall. Little streams of clear water issued from cliff chines and flowed into the sea or lost themselves in the sand. The picture is just the same to-day, except that the cultivations on the sand-belt have disappeared.