The Rock
Like a frozen giant, Maungaraho rises abruptly from out of a landscape stripped of its Kauri forest cloak once covering its flanks. Iwi cultural traditions say that the mountains Manaia, Maunga Raho and Tokatoka once stood together in Hawaiki. Urged by Manaia, they raced across the ocean to New Zealand, and as the sun rose they became frozen in their present positions. Manaia stands at Whāngārei; Maunga Raho and Tokatoka are on the Northern Wairoa River.
Each day as I travel the 70km trip from my rural home to the service town of Dargaville and my place of work, it stands out on the stripped landscape strong in its solitude every crag and fissure shaped by the forces of nature after a fiery volcanic birth 18 million years ago. Over those millions of years, after it finished erupting, nature wore away its outer mantle to expose the inner core rising 100-metres out of a long-since eroded old volcanic field. Once the moa walked at its base between towering kauri giants serenaded by the call of the huia. It saw the first people arrive from Hawaiiki and became part of their cultural heritage. Eventually, the moa and the huia disappeared leaving the forest to the song of tui, kokako, kaka and the night calls of ruru, kiwi and tiny bats and the memories of tangata whenua living on the land.
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Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 589-19 |
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Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-917 (1884)
Showing Te Kopuru and the Wairoa River with the sailing ships Killarney, Clestia, Marmion, Seagull, Sarah Pile and Gleaner
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Then the Europeans came with their want for land and their axes that were taken to the towering kauri trunks to turn the fallen giants into spars for ships and houses while Maungaraho looked on silent and frozen. Across the river, at Te Kopuru in 1870, a mill was started to carve the kauri into usable planks for sending away to Auckland or to Sydney or as far away as England. With the mills at Te Kopuru and Aratapu came settlement and rapid deforestation all in the name of commerce. A few became very wealthy from the timber trade and others from breaking the back of the land to turn it into productive farmland. In 1894 prominent Sydney-based artist Louis Franks took up a brief residence at Te Kopuru complete with a studio and sat down to paint the great rock of Maungaraho onto canvas and capture a moment in time. Eventually along with many other works created during the artist's long travels around New Zealand in that year the painted image was transported back to Sydney to Frank's art dealer Sydney Herdern and sold on to someone wanting a beautiful painting. A journalist from the New Zealand Herald wrote:
A very pretty picture is made of the water holes on the track near the Kopuru graves. Several fine views are taken of Tokatoka, one from near the little mill, with a part of the creek and logs in the foreground. A fine picture is that of Maungarahu, looking across the river from near Mr Wordsworth's house, with a piece of the Kopuru cliff in the foreground. Most of the pictures are destined for Sydney, where Mr Sydney Herdern has been an extensive purchaser of Mr Frank's works. Some of Mr Frank's best-known works are scenes in the Himalayas, where his camp was pitched in the eternal snow, 15,000 feet high, in a solitude that was almost frightful, but where stupendous mountains reared their heads 15,000 feet higher still, including the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. (NZH, January 23, 1894, p6)

More recently was the announcement of a mega-farm for broiler chickens planned for two dairy farms fronting State Highway 12. The outcry was instant and the repercussions for iwi, the environment and local communities too many for the resource consents to be allowed. Consultants in both the Northland Regional Council and Kaipara District Council recommended the application was turned down. Finally, Tegel withdrew its consents after the poultry processor was taken over by Phillipines-based Bounty Holdings. Within a year if the consents had gone through, my view of farmland as I pass would be of massive white sheds full of birds living a mere seven weeks before being turned into drumsticks, nuggets and roasts for our dinner tables. Instead, I'll continue to see the view of that great solitary silent rock called Maungaraho and sometimes go visit and still be awed.
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