Hopukiore

Ocean Beach and Hopukiore (Mt Drury) from Mauao, Mount Maunganui, c. early 1950s
Postcard, unidentified publisher, collection of Justine Neal

Hopukiore, at 40 metres high is much smaller than its famous counterpart, Mauao but it’s history is just as fascinating. From the late 1500’s the Ngati Tauaiti had a marae there, along with another marae on Moturiki. The name Hopukiore means to catch kiore (rats), the bones and the teeth of which were used for carving chisels and tattooing instruments. The area was used as a carving school and a wahi tapu (sacred site) for ta moko (traditional tattooing).

Ocean Beach, Mt. Maunganui, c. 1970s-1980s
Postcard published by Pictorial Publications Ltd, Hastings
Collection of Justine Neal

On the eastern side of Hopukiore there are at least five caves, some of which are known to have been used for burials. The 1820 battle fought between Ngapuhi and Ngaiterangi resulted in a large number of deaths for the Ngaiterangi. Te Waru’s (Ngaiterangi) chivalrous treatment of Te Morenga (Ngapuhi) after the battle led to peace between the two tribes and the Ngaiterangi dead were honoured with burial in the caves of Hopukiore.

East Cave, Hopukiore, 2025
Photograph by Justine Neal

The caves were also used by the men of the 80^th Regiment under Major Bunbury when they were sent from Auckland to deter hostilities between Arawa and Ngaiterangi, occupying the hill from December 1842 to March 1843. One cave was enlarged and shelves installed for munitions storage and a door was fitted. Another two caves were used for general storage and a bakehouse.

Hopukiore (Mt Drury) and Mauao, from Marine Parade, Mt Maunganui, c. 1950s
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 99-028

In the 1980’s two young local boys were amusing themselves using old boxes to slide down the slopes of Hopukiore,  After a while, as they happened to have a small torch with them, their attention turned to the caves and they decided to do a little exploring. On entering the cave it felt cold and damp, the floor was hard packed dirt and there was enough headroom to walk. The cave narrowed, then came a shoulder height drop but they were still able to walk down to the next level. The cave narrowed again, it appeared to be solid rock in front of them but the torch showed that in one place the rock overlapped leaving a narrow gap to squeeze through. There was no way an adult could manage it but the boys thought they would be able to. At that moment they had a couple of choices and sensibly decided the way back was the safest one.

In 1853 Hopukiore was given the extra name of Mount Drury, named after Commander Byron Drury who arrived in Tauranga in 1852 on board the H.M.S Pandora to complete a coastal survey of the Bay of Plenty started in 1848.

Hopukiore (Mt Drury) from the quarry on Moturiki, Mount Maunganui, 1921
Postcard by unidentified publisher
Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0197/08

In 1913 a railway line that had been built to the railway workshops (situated between Salisbury Avenue and Rata Street) was continued up the main street, curving round the northern end of Hopukiore to service the quarry on Moturiki. A crushing plant had been built on the foreshore of Hopukiore to deal with the stone coming from the quarry.

The big swing at Mount Drury (Hopukiore) playground, Mt Maunganui, January 1967
120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 13 Jan 1967
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-14286

Mrs. Gilchrist in the book ‘A History of Mount  Maunganui’ by Don Cunningham remembers the Public Works picnics:

“When they got the rail through a bit they would have open carriages with seats across and you’d come down to the Mount from Te Puke. The railway line went right along where the Main Road is now. We would all get off at the foot of Mount Drury on a platform and then take our picnic baskets into the big pine trees.”

Tunnel of the Mt Drury (Hopukiore) Railway Line, Mt Maunganui, December 1966
Crop of 120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 28 Dec 1966
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-14079

From 1960 to 1975 there was a miniature railway as part of a children’s playground. There was a man-made tunnel that it went through at the base of Hopukiore and that’s where it lived. There were doors at each end that were kept locked when it wasn’t in use. It only used to run in the summer. Since 2008 there has been a playground on the western side of the reserve.

Mount Drury Tower (Hopukiore), Mt Maunganui, February 1963
120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 26 Feb 1963
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-4488

In 1958 the Harbour Board Signal Station was erected on the summit of Hopukiore, the ideal place with its sweeping views out to sea. It served as a communication tool for navigation and relaying important information to the ships. It has been inoperative for many years now and at the present time only the signal station mast and a shed remain on the site.

Hopukiore (Mount Drury) with Soundshell, taken from Moturiki (Leisure Island), c. 1970s
Silver gelatin snapshot print by unidentified photographer
Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0040/25

In 1967 a Soundshell was built on the flat surface at the base of Hopukiore on the Moturiki side. The seating was provided by man-made terraces or by spreading a towel or a blanket on the grassy slopes. It proved very popular with locals and visitors alike, and was regularly used for concerts and events, such as the Miss Mount Maunganui contest on New Year’s Day. The Soundshell was demolished in 1999 and the area reverted back to grass.

Mount Maunganui 5,000 Club junior pageant at the Soundshell,January 1967
120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 4 Jan 1967
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-14153

In 1978 the Council decided to extend the Grace Avenue frontage of Hopukiore by buying the small cottages that had been built there. These worker’s cottages were relics of the days when Moturiki had been quarried by the Railways Department and coincidentally several of them came on the market at this time and others were obviously reaching the end of their useful life.

Radio mast and shed, Hopukiore, 2025
Photograph by Justine Neal

The Council employed a land agent whose job was to enquire from the landowners if they were interested in selling. Unfortunately, he rather overstepped his job description by threatening them that if they did not sell the Council would take the land under the Public Works Act. Eventually the cottages were acquired by the Council and the land incorporated into the reserve. It just took a little bit longer and without the help of that particular land agent.

References

2019 Tauranga Reserves Management Plan
Tauranga City Library
Tauranga Heritage Collection
Explore Tauranga
The Weekend Sun, 22 February 2013
Sunlive, 10 May 2021
A History of Mount Maunganui, compiled by Bruce Cunningham & Ken Musgrave, 1989

History of Karewa Island - Part 2

The Tuatara Collectors
(contd from Part 1)

Karewa Island is a pest free wildlife sanctuary, administered by the Department of Conservation. Inhabited by fur seals, tītī (mutton birds) and other seafaring birds. It is also the home of tuatara (Hatteria punctata).  For Tauranga’s iwi, the island was an important, traditional harvesting place for tītī, paua and koura (crayfish). Karewa’s tuatara were, and remain, creatures of great cultural significance for Tauranga Māori. Viewed variously as mythological ancestors and kaitiaki or guardians of knowledge, misfortune, calamities and death might also be attributed to tuatara, which during the 1800s, often horrified the Māori who saw them.¹

Departing Tauranga for the Bay of Islands on the little schooner Glatton in March 1838, the missionary William Wade said of tuatara:

The island Karewa, off Tauranga, is said to swarm with them. Although perfectly harmless, the lizard is held in great abhorrence by the New Zealanders, who say it is the form or resemblance of Wiro, the evil Spirit.²

Karewa, as seen by voyagers approaching the Island and Tauranga from the north-east

Karewa’s tuatara were frequently collected by visiting overseas scientists as specimens for study, and for exhibition in public and private museums, and zoos. As noted in Part One, German naturalist Ernest Dieffenbach failed to personally obtain a tuatara from the island due to bad weather in June 1841. He eventually acquired a specimen in Auckland, originally obtained from Karewa by Rev James Stack who was based at the Te Papa mission station.³ Dieffenbach later gifted the ‘Tuatera’ to the British Museum, though whether alive or dead is not clear.

Twenty tuatara were taken to Europe by the German geologist Julius Von Haast, who, along with fellow geologist Ferdinand Von Hochstetter, visited Tauranga in May 1859. All are believed to have been taken from Karewa Island, and all survived the homeward voyage. Six were presented to the King of Belgium and fourteen placed in the Berlin and Vienna Zoological Gardens.⁴

Ferdinand Von Hochstetter

In 1873, Tauranga resident and colonial soldier Gilbert Mair sent two tuatara from Karewa to the British Museum, though sending them by post was not without its risks.⁵ In 1868, Major St John of the 1^st Waikato Regiment reported from a sunny hillside overlooking Tauranga harbour.

Lying lazily on the clover covered ground, and well shaded by a big "rimu," we had a perfect panorama before us. Tauranga harbour and the coast line, northward and southward for many miles could be all taken in at almost one glance; and out at sea rose several islands: the Great Barrier, a mountainous mass; Motiti, or Flat Island; and, nearest of all, Karewa, a rocky islet abounding in obsidian, and the home of a peculiar lizard, something like a small iguana. They are not handsome beasts these lizards, but they are pretty tenacious of life. One was sent a long distance by post, and arrived safe at his journey's end; another, I was assured, had eaten nothing for three weeks, and I was invited to go and look at it; in this case however, the fast had proved too protracted, and, when the box was opened, the brute was as dead as Julius Caesar.⁶

Major John Henry Herbert St John of the 1st Waikato Regiment

Andreas Reischek, an Austrian taxidermist, naturalist, ornithologist and collector, undertook extensive collecting expeditions throughout New Zealand. He was also notorious for robbing Māori graves and the treasures of their occupants during his expeditions. Living in New Zealand from 1877 to 1889, the specimens of fauna and flora that he collected for New Zealand and overseas museums and private collections included tuatara, on which he reported:

On all the larger islands they live principally on insectivorous foods, such as beetles, grubs, wetas, grasshoppers, flies, etc., which I found on dissecting. I think where such food — which they prefer even in confinement — is plentiful, they will not prey on birds.

But on my visit to Karewa Island, at the beginning of 1885, I saw many young birds with their heads off, and I followed one of these lizards with a bird of considerable size in its mouth, which tried to escape in a burrow, but got stuck at the entrance. They catch the bird by its head, and then chew until it is devoured. My opinion is that, as this island is small, and these lizards so numerous, this is the reason they prey upon birds.

On December 10, the boatman informed me that we should have to leave these islands, as bad weather was expected. I left unwillingly, for time had been all too short.⁷

Andreas Reischek

Māori were not alone in finding tuatara strange and sinister creatures. In May 1876, the Evening Post recorded considerable public interest in thirteen recently acquired living tuatara at Wellington’s Colonial Museum:

Some were almost two feet in length, described as ‘having an exceedingly sinister aspect, strongly resembling crocodiles with spiky backs and extensive smiles. However, they are quite harmless and very gentle, the thirteen living peacefully together; quite a happy family amongst their artificial rockwork, grazing pastorally on the worms, with which they are liberally supplied.’ People were startled by their sudden movement after seeing them completely motionless.⁸

While safe from the introduced pigs and ships’ rats that killed off their mainland relatives, Karewa’s tuatara were regularly captured by well-meaning locals and amateur naturalists.

Two specimens taken from the Island were donated to the Auckland Institute by H. T. Clarke, almost certainly Henry Tacey Clarke (1825-1902), the son of missionary George Clarke. Henry ‘served in the military, spoke fluent Maori, was a registered interpreter, a Native Land Court Judge, and Commissioner of Tauranga’.⁹ The anonymous writer, who contributed an article titled ‘A North Island Trip’ in the Cromwell Argus in 1880, mentioned that in 1873 he had visited Karewa Island, ‘home of the giant lizard,’ to obtain specimens.¹⁰

Tuatara were also taken from Karewa by some of Tauranga’s early European settlers, who kept them as novel garden pets and conversation pieces - sometime held  in place with a light chain around their necks.¹¹ As late as 1908, the New Zealand Herald reported how a Mr G. Norris, who had kept ‘a large collection of these strange pets’ at Tauranga had moved to Dunedin taking some of his tuatara with him.  Mr Norris ‘stated that he had kept tuataras ever since he could remember and had so many in his possession at one time, that he was in a position to speak with some authority about their habits’.¹²

Sketched by J. Ernest Tinne, an English tourist at an unidentified location in 1873, these tuatara have been chained in place in a garden

In January 1914, the Herald reported on another ‘gentleman at Tauranga [who] has had a number of tuatara in his garden for many years, brought from Karewa’.¹³ An Auckland naturalist once took 12 tuatara from Karewa Island, for study and as pets for his Ponsonby garden. They caused a short lived, local sensation one morning in March 1887, when they were seen and reported by a panic-stricken milkman who mistook them for snakes.¹⁴

 

In 1895, tuatara were protected by law, one of New Zealand’s first native species to be so safeguarded, but they were still poached and continue to be poached for private collections.¹⁵ Today, Karewa’s predator free 3.5 hectares are administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC) in close co-operation with Tauranga tangata whenua, who own the island. In recognition of its important cultural values and status as a pest free wildlife sanctuary, landing on the island is prohibited without a DOC permit. Additionally, access is by boat and visitors must be accompanied by DOC staff after going through biosecurity checks.¹⁶

A Karewa Island tuatara from Andreas Reischeck’s book Yesterdays in Maoriland

References

 

¹ Thomson, Arthur, The Story of New Zealand, Vol 1, John Murray, London, 1859: 29. Best Elsdon, Maori Religion and Mythology, Part 1, Wellington, Government Printer, 1982: 460.

² Wade, William, Journey in the North Island of New Zealand, George Rolwegan, Hobart, 1842: 178.

³ Von Hochstetter, Ferdinand, New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History, J.G. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1867: 442.

⁴ Bay of Plenty Times, 4 May 1936: 2.

⁵ Tinne, J; The Wonderland of the Antipodes, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, London, 1873: 84.

⁶ St John, J.H.H. Pakeha Rambles in Maori Lands, Robert Burrett, Wellington, 1873: 123.

⁷ Andreas Reischek, Yesterdays In Maoriland: New Zealand in the Eighties, Wilson and Horton, Auckland, 1930: 100.

⁸ Evening Post, 12 May 1876: 2.

⁹ Edwards, Vivien, A Dinosaur From Karewa, Friday, 18 October 2021, Tauranga Historical Society

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Tinne, 1873: 84.

¹² New Zealand Herald, 11 November 1908: 5.

¹³ Ibid: 31 January 1914: 1.

¹⁴ Auckland Star, 1 March 1887: 3.

^{15 Tuatara: New Zealand reptiles DOC. https://www.doc.govt.nz › nature › reptiles-and-frogs}

¹⁶  Site 68. Karewa Island Risk Ranking, https ://www.boprc.govt.nz › media › karewa

Images

Sladden Bernard, 1879-1961, Karewa Island, Ms 33/5/84, photographic collection, Pae Koroki, Tauranga City Libraries.

Photographer unknown, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, circa. 1865, Website Naturhistorisches, Museum, Wien, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Hochstetter

Photographer unknown. Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Herbert St John. Ref: 1/2-028459-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Photographer unknown, Andreas Reischeck, 1902, Wikipedia, http://wikipedia.org/wiji/andreasreischek

Tinne, J; The Wonderland of the Antipodes, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, London, 1873: 84.

Reischek, Andreas, Yesterdays In Maoriland: New Zealand in the Eighties, Wilson and Horton, Auckland, 1930: 100.

A Brief Three-Part History of Karewa Island

Part 1 - Early Human Visitors and its Inhabitants 

Karewa Island
Whites Aviation, Karewa Island, February 1954, with Mount Maunganui and the Tauranga Harbour entrance in the background
Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref. WA-35082-F

Karewa Island is located some 4 miles or 6.5 km north-east of the Tauranga harbour entrance. When viewed from the higher parts of Tauranga township, it appears as a solitary, conical rock, jutting abruptly from the waters of the Bay of the Plenty. When viewed during a north-easterly blow from atop Mt Maunganui, the island seems to be on the move. It appears as an orca or great white shark swimming on the surface and steadily battling its way out to sea. The island’s foreshore environment comprises bedrock slopes, rocky reefs, and rock pools with several small, sandy beaches. Parts of the island are forested in taupata, a resilient, low growing shrub or small tree bearing very shiny dark green leaves. Widely used as a hedge plant for seaside gardens, taupata forms the low, dense forests that we often see on coastal islands and along the exposed coasts of the North Island and upper South Island.¹

 

For Maori, Karewa island was a traditional harvest site for titi (mutton birds) and kai moana (sea food), with paua, crayfish and kina (sea urchins) abundant on almost all the rocky reefs. The island remains a very popular dive site and is well known among locals, for the variety of fish caught in the surrounding waters.²  Karewa is a home to kekeno or fur seals, but is best known for its high densities of tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus). These ancient reptiles are dependent on the continued productivity of the surrounding marine environment, especially the well-being of the mutton birds or sooty shearwaters which coexist with them and share their burrows.³

When Captain Cook sailed the Endeavour between Mount Maunganui and Mayor Island on 3^rd November 1769, he did not name Karewa, describing it instead as ‘a small high island’.⁴ The late 19^th century ethnologist Elsdon Best wrote that Karewa was the named by the first Polynesian deep-sea navigators who arrived in the Bay of Plenty on the Takitimu waka around 12^th century A.D. He states that they named Karewa after the star, upon which they relied, to make their voyage to New Zealand.⁵ Gilbert Mair, the colonial soldier and New Zealand Cross winner who, from the 1860s, lived out his life in the Bay of Plenty, said however that the first arrivals on the Te Arawa waka named the island Karewa because: ‘In fine weather, owing to mirage, it appears to be like Mahomet's coffin, floating in the air, the silver streak of sea showing plainly underneath; hence the name Ka-rewa, to float’.⁶ 

Gilbert Mair later sailed tuatara collectors from Taurangato to Karewa Island on board his 35-foot whaleboat
Gilbert Mair in military uniform, glass copy negative of half-tone print, unidentified photographer
Alexander Turnbull Collection, Ref. 1/1-017971-G

Mair added, that to his annoyance, the Maori name Karewa and other Tauranga place names were too often mispronounced by Pakeha. 

Some friends in Tauranga, where I am now resident, pronounce the simplest Maori names quite incorrectly… Here are a few illustrations of this ear-annoying mispronunciation:
Katikati is popularly Katty-kat.

Maungatapu is mutilated into Manggertap.
Waimapu is called Waimap.
Paapaa moa becomes Papper-moa.
And Karewa is Karewha.⁷

Sir Maui Pomare recorded that traditional uhi Mataora or the face carving chisels used by tohunga ta moko (tattooing experts) were often made from the wing-bone of the albatross, adding that: ‘The Bay of Plenty tribes made expeditions to Karewa Island, which was a breeding place for the albatross and many other sea-birds.⁸ Among the other sea-birds nesting on Karewa were gannets, whose feathers were highly prized by the rangatira class as adornments for their hair. One of the myths recorded from Rotorua’s Te Arawa people concerning Hatupatu, describes the appearance of this famous ancestral hero figure, when he stood to address and inspire his warriors before battle.

He had been sitting down, and as he gracefully arose, it was beautiful to see his plumes and ornaments of feathers fluttering in the breeze; the long hair of the young man was tied up in four knots, or clubs, in each of which was stuck a bunch of feathers; you would have thought he had just come from the gannet island of Karewa where birds' feathers abound^.9

Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus)
Bernard Sladden. Close-up view of a tuatara on a branch. Date: Within Sladden's adult life (1900-1961) Tauranga City Libraries. Pae Koroki Ref. Photo bs-205

Karewa Island is often mentioned in the journals of Tauranga’s pre-Treaty missionaries. After arriving in the Bay of Islands in 1834, the missionary printer William Wade went on to the Bay of Plenty to help establish the new mission station at on Tauranga’s Te Papa Peninsula. When intertribal warfare broke out in the district in 1836, he was evacuated back to Paihia. After a dispute with the Anglican Church Missionary Society over his employment, in April 1840, Wade left Tauranga to serve as a baptist minister in Tasmania. One of his journal entries read:

In every part of New Zealand that I have visited lizards are numerous. There are several varieties of small green lizard; and, by native account, many of the insular rocks abound with guanas. The island Karewa, off Tauranga, is said to swarm with them. Although perfectly harmless, the lizard is held in great abhorrence by the New Zealanders, who say it is the form or resemblance of Wiro, the evil Spirit.¹⁰ 

A portrait of Taurikura, the mythical ancestress of Karewa Island’s tuatara can be seen today in the poupou (carved wall pillars) of  the meeting house Tamateapokaiwhenua in Tauranga’s Judea
Photographer unknown, Tamateapokaiwhenua Wharenui, 1962. Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Koroki Ref. Photo 16-139

In Maori mythology, Whiro, the god inhabiting the underworld was a personified form of evil, misfortune, darkness and death. The first tuatara to resemble Whiro on Karewa was, according to Ngati Ranginui legend, their female ancestress Taurikura. A spoilt young woman of noble birth, she one day refused to fetch water for her thirsty koro [grandfather], With great difficulty, the old man who was disabled, descended a steep track to the river, before returning with a gourd of water which Tauri-kura demanded.  The old man became angry and told her that she was selfish and a disappointment.

Embarrassed and ashamed of her behaviour, Taurikura left the village with a kit of charms and went down to the river. There she turned herself into a ngarara or reptile and swam down the Waikaraeo Estuary and out to Karewa where she became the ancestor of the tuatara that live on the island today. Taurikura is remembered at Judea today, where her carved portrait can be seen on the poupou (carved wall pillars) in the meeting house Tamateapokaiwhenua.¹¹

During the 1830s, the island became a regular provisioning port of call for the Bay of Islands’ missionaries during voyages on their small sailing vessels to and from Tauranga, Maketu, Whakatane and Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty. In February 1832, the Rev. Henry Williams and his Maori crew, sailed the mission schooner Karere (Messenger) to Maketu in the hope of making peace between warring tribes. After camping overnight at Mercury Bay on the 26^th he recorded:

 

Fine morning. I intended to move at break of day, but the boys were apprehensive of a Southerly wind; delayed till 9 o'clock when we pulled out in quest of a wind. A breeze sprung up at East, which shifted in the course of the day to North. Passed on at an agreeable rate to Karewa. Mr. Chapman out of sight. The boys landed and caught a number of young birds and found some potatoes, which afforded them a good supper. Entered Tauranga by 9 o'clock, landed under the Great Hill, "Maunga nui." Kindled fires and cooked our supper which we all stood much in need of having taken nothing. Rolled ourselves up in blankets, and laid down on the ground…Our distance run today about 40 miles.¹²

A stylised painting of Henry William’s Karere (Messenger) accompanying a Ngapuhi predatory expedition to Tauranga in 1832, in the hope of negotiating peace.
Joseph Josenhans, “War Canoes’ in Illustrations of Missionary Scenes, An Offering to Youth, Mainz, Joseph Scholz, 1855. XII

Departing Maketu on the Karere with a full complement of Maori passengers six weeks later, Williams again described landing on Karewa, and an additional Maori reason for fearing the tuatara:

Tuesday, 26. A quiet night. At daylight calm but cloudy, afraid to move out. No stir amongst the natives, all quiet. At 5 p.m. light airs from the N. E.; left the harbour on our way home, in all seventeen including Hamu our old lady who accompanied us from the BOI, besides a dog and two kittens, our boat was very full. We pulled to Karewa, a small island 8 miles from Tauranga. Some of the boys landed here to look for birds and potatoes. Upon the island are Ruatara, a species of the lizard about a foot in length, which are regarded by the natives as Atua. Strict orders given [by Hamu or an accompanying rangatira] not to disturb them in their holes lest we should be upset. About 8 o'clock a light air from Southd; got underweigh and stood on our course.¹³

Dr Ernest Dieffenbach
Dieffenbach, Ernest, Travels in New Zealand, Vol. II, John Murray, London, 1843: Frontispiece
Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref. A-259-010

Karewa’s tuatara drew several famous men of science to Tauranga during the 1840s and 50s. The touring German naturalist and geologist Dr. Ernest Dieffenbach visited Tauranga’s Te Papa mission station for several days during June 1841. Wishing to obtain a tuatara specimen, he attempted to visit Karewa as a passenger on one of the mission station’s whaleboats, but was forced back to port by bad weather. He was not however, entirely disappointed in his quest:

I had been apprized of the existence of a large lizard, which the natives called Tuatera, or Narara, with a general name, and of which they were much afraid. But although looking for it at the places where it was said to be found, and offering great rewards for a specimen, it was only a few days before my departure from New Zealand that I obtained one, which had been caught at a small rocky islet called Karewa, which is about two miles from the coast, in the Bay of Plenty, and which had been given by the Rev. W. Stack, in Tauranga, to Dr. Johnson, the colonial surgeon.

 

From all that I could gather about this Tuatera, it appears that it was formerly common in the islands; lived in holes, often in sandhills near the sea-shore; and the natives killed it for food. Owing to this latter cause, and no doubt also to the introduction of pigs, it is now very scarce; and many even of the older residents of the islands have never seen it. The specimen from which the description is taken I had alive, and kept for some time in captivity: it was extremely sluggish, and could be handled without any attempt at resistance or biting.¹⁴   

HMS Pandora
Thomas Hornbrook, HMS Pandora (1833), Wikipedia

During his survey of Tauranga Harbour in November 1852, Captain Byron Drury of HMS Pandora described Karewa as: ‘a rugged island about half a mile in circumference) 6 miles N. E. by N. of Monganui, is two miles off this sandy beach, having a channel on either side, of 12 to 15 fathoms’.¹⁵ According to Lieutenant Theodore Jones of the Pandora who toured the Tauranga district with some of the ship’s officers:

          During our absence Capt. Drury accompanied by the doctor [surgeon John Joliffe, R.N.], had visited the little Island of Karewa, about three miles from the entrance of the harbour, where they succeeded in capturing some very large lizards, the longest measuring 20 inches. It had been supposed that this was the only Island on which they were to be found, having been quite exterminated on the mainland. On a subsequent visit to Mongonui one had just been found in that neighbourhood, and I believe on Moto horo [Moutohora-Whale Island], they have also been seen. They have a rather repulsive appearance – of a darkish brown colour with serrated back – and of them either living or dead the Natives have a most lively horror.¹⁶

Not all Maori appear to have held the tuatara ‘in great abhorrence’. On Motiti Island where they were once common, Gilbert Mair saw one that Maori had kept safely from predators in an old kumara pit ‘for over three generations’. ¹⁷  

Endnotes

¹ Karewa Island – Dive Zone Tauranga, https://www.divezonetauranga.co.nz › karewa-island

² Site 68 Karewa Island Risk Ranking, https://www.boprc.govt.nz › media › karewa

3 https://www.divezonetauranga.co.nz › karewa-island

⁴  Reed, A.H. and A.W; (eds.), Captain Cook in New Zealand: Extracts From the Journals of Captain James Cook, A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1969: 55.

⁵ Elsdon Best, The Astronomical Knowledge of the Maori, Genuine and Empirical, W.A.G. Skinner, Government Printer, Wellington, 1922: 40.

⁶ Mair, Gilbert, Reminiscences and Maori Stories, Brett Publishers, Auckland 1923: 52-53. 1923:

⁷ Ibid.

 

⁸ Pomare, Maui, Legends of the Maori, Vol. II, James Cowan (ed.), Southern Reprints, Papakura, 1987: 315

 

⁹ Grey, Sir George, Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race, H. Brett, Auckland, 1885: 122.

¹⁰ Wade, William, A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand, George Rolwegan, Hobart, 1842: 178.

¹¹ Bay of Plenty Times, 23 December, 1948: 4. Rotorua Daily Post, 22 June, 2013: 7. Taurikura – Te Rununga O Ngati Ranginu, http://www.ranginui.co.nz › taurikura

¹² Williams, Henry, The Early Journal of Henry Williams, L.M. Rogers (ed.), Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1961: 286-287.

¹³ Ibid: 301.

 

¹⁴ Dieffenbach, Ernest, Travels in New Zealand, Vol. 1, John Murray, London, 1843: 206.

 

¹⁵ Byron Drury, Sailing Directions… For the Northern Part of the Colony of New Zealand, Williamson and Wilson, 1854: 28.

 

¹⁶ Jones, T. M; ‘HMS Pandora in the Bay of Plenty, 1852’, Extracts from the Journal of Lieutenant T.M. Jones, RN, Part II: 72, in Historical Review: Journal of the Whakatane and District Historical Society Inc. Vol. XVIII, No.2: 72.

 

¹⁷ Waipa Post, 1 March 1923: 3.