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Nelson Historical Society Journal, Volume 06, Issue 01, 1996

9. March – September 1846: Brunner Heaphy and Kehu to the West Coast:

page 10

9. March – September 1846: Brunner Heaphy and Kehu to the West Coast:

Almost immediately after their return from the February/March expedition Brunner, Heaphy and Kehu were off again. This time their task was to see if a route existed to Westland via the coast from Mohua. On 17th March 1846 they sailed from Nelson to Aorere and set off tramping from there on the 23rd, carrying horrendously heavy loads. By the time they reached Pakawau, about 15 km from Aorere, they realised that another porter was going to be needed. They stopped overnight at Pakawau Pa where they hired from Hemi Kuku, son of the Te Atiawa chief Wiremu Kingi Te Koihua, the services of a slave who turned out to be none other than Tau, the killer of Kehu's father at 'Kotukuwhakaoho' over 36 years earlier. Brunner recorded the irony of this situation.

"Kehu had every reason to suppose him to be the man who had killed his father: a friendship consequently commenced and they became merry at the idea of journeying to Kawatiri together."

The next hurdle the party had to face was the angry old Rarua chief, Niho Te Hamu, who was still living at Te Tai Tapu. He had to be placated with gifts of tobacco before they were allowed to pass south into his domains. Their journals and reports in the 'Nelson Examiner' in September 1846 record the hardships, privations, endurance and excitements of their journey which lasted over five months. They discovered the wreckage of at least two European vessels; they almost drowned more than once and they identified the old Ngati Hapa (Apa) route from the mouth of the Kohaihai River to Aorere – parts of it probably following the route of the present-day Heaphy Track. At the mouth of Kawatiri Kehu and Tau stated that this river was the boundary between Poutini Ngai Tahu and Niho's territory through which they had just passed.

Just south of Kawatiri they met a party of Maori en route to Kawatiri where they were intending to clear land to plant potatoes; the leader of that party was

"…. Mawika, the half-brother of Ekehu."

The journals do not state whether this was Henare or Hoani Mahuika. 16 A few miles further south they had to brave the old Maori ladder made of vines running up the precipitous Te Miko Bluff, just north of Punakaiki.

Brunner and Heaphy were reputed to have been the first Europeans seen at many of the West Coast kainga visited en route. At Kararoa, north of Greymouth, where Tau was well known, they were accorded a grand welcome. They continued to Taramakau which, incidentally, Heaphy later described as a Ngati Rarua village with approximately 70 people engaged in working greenstone for their Rarua rangatira.

The party proceeded as far south as Arahura before turning for home. Brunner and Heaphy wanted to cross the Alps to Port Cooper (Akaroa) from Mawhera but Kehu wouldn't here of it – he said that the alpine routes were too dangerous and they they would be killed in such an attempt. Therefore they returned to Nelson via the same coastal route to Te Tai Tapu and Aorere.

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"On the 7th we reached Pakawau in Massacre Bay, where, the natives, being aware of the privations which we had undergone, treated us with the greatest kindness and attention; furnishing us with fresh pork, four, tea, and sugar; and finally bringing us in their canoes to Nelson, where we arrived on the 18th of August, after an absence of exactly five months."17