Day 12 – Journey Home
Waitangi Revisited, Then the Long Road Home
The final day of the journey began early, shaped by practicalities rather than haste. Bags were packed, the car loaded, and the knowledge that this was our last morning in the Bay of Islands gave everything a slightly different weight. Before turning south towards Auckland and the flight back to Brisbane, we returned to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds — this time with the intention of doing justice to the museum we had only partially seen the day before.
Arriving just after nine, the grounds felt calmer than the previous day. The crowds from the cruise ship had thinned, and the museum allowed itself to be encountered at a slower, more deliberate pace.
We began again with the opening galleries, but this time lingered. The contrast between Māori and British concepts of land — already striking on first viewing — felt even sharper when revisited. For Māori, whenua was not property but relationship: land as placenta, as life source, as ancestor. For the British, land was something measurable, divisible, ownable. Two worldviews moving towards each other with no shared language for what truly mattered. Conflict, in hindsight, felt unavoidable.
From there, the exhibition moved into the religious encounter that preceded formal colonisation. New Zealand’s earliest sustained European presence grew not from conquest but from personal relationships between rangatira and missionaries in Sydney. The missionaries sought conversion; Māori were more interested in education, trade, literacy, and access to new knowledge. Each side believed they were guiding the relationship.
The figure of Samuel Marsden loomed large in this section — Anglican clergyman, magistrate, farmer, and relentless organiser. Marsden saw Māori as fertile ground for European culture and Christianity. His confidence in this belief shaped decades of engagement, for better and for worse.
Equally prominent was Hongi Hika, whose complexity resisted any simple narrative. By the 1820s, Hongi Hika was both a formidable warrior and a sophisticated political operator. He adopted European technology strategically, protected missionaries and traders when it suited his people, and understood power with rare clarity. His portrait carries that intelligence — alert, watchful, calculating.
Trade followed belief. Figures like William Gilbert Mayer embodied the transition from mission to commerce. Originally arriving to work with Christian missions, Mayer quickly built a thriving trading operation exporting timber and flax to Sydney. With trade came lawlessness, opportunism, and growing anxiety among Māori leaders about who truly governed this space.
In 1831, rangatira gathered at Kerikeri to write to the British king, requesting protection for both Māori and British interests. The king acknowledged their appeal and promised support — a gesture that set the stage for everything that followed.
The exhibition then deepened into the heart of the matter: Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
A carefully crafted film reenacted the debates of February 1840. Māori chiefs openly challenged the proposal. Many spoke against signing. Concerns about sovereignty, authority, and loss were voiced with clarity. What remains unsettling is how quickly positions shifted overnight. Chiefs who had strongly opposed the treaty signed the next day.
The museum does not offer a neat explanation. Instead, it allows questions to remain. Was it diplomacy? Pressure? Strategic compromise? Inter-tribal politics? Fear that refusal would advantage rival iwi? Or inducements — blankets, tobacco, assurances of protection? The speed of the reversal invites reflection rather than certainty.
From there, the story widened across the country — copies of the treaty travelling, signatures accumulating, more than 500 rangatira eventually signing. The exhibition explores the gulf between sovereignty and governance, and how language shaped destiny. Māori critics have long argued that rangatira never intended to surrender sovereignty — that what was offered was governance, not ownership of authority.
The consequences unfolded quickly. The exhibition traces how, after the treaty, promises were broken, land confiscated, and authority asserted by force. The cutting down of the flagstaff — not once but repeatedly — became an act of resistance rather than rebellion.
One of the most powerful sections dealt with the emergence of the Kīngitanga (Māori King Movement) in the 1850s — an effort by Māori leaders to unify under a single king to protect land and autonomy. In 1863, the settler government responded by invading Waikato, confiscating vast territories. Treaty guarantees of chiefly authority collapsed under military power.
The emotional centre of the museum lies at its conclusion. Visitors are invited to encounter contemporary reflections — written statements from New Zealanders of all backgrounds responding to what the treaty means today. There is no consensus, but there is honesty.
At the very end stands the Pounamu touchstone — a greenstone gifted by Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Wheke. Visitors are invited to touch the stone, dip their fingers in water, and sprinkle it over themselves — a gesture acknowledging the sacred nature of what has been encountered and allowing one to leave with intention rather than burden.
The exhibition closes not with resolution, but with responsibility.
We stepped out into the grounds quieter than when we entered — aware that this place is not a monument to the past, but a living argument about belonging, justice, and nationhood.
Afterwards, I returned briefly to the great waka — the ceremonial canoe — drawn again to its scale and gravity. But that deserves its own telling.
From Waitangi, the road would soon pull us south towards Auckland and the final leg of
Before leaving Waitangi and turning the car south, I took one last slow walk through the grounds on my own. The crowds were thinner now, the noise softened, and the place felt more like what it must have been intended to be: not only a site of history, but a landscape that teaches quietly.
Near one of the bush-lined paths, I came across a plaque that distilled the spirit of Waitangi with remarkable clarity.
The Waitangi Treaty Grounds, it explained, are not only New Zealand’s premier historic site; they are also a living landscape. The gardens, wetlands, and remnants of native forest bring together the country’s natural heritage in the same way that its history brings together its people. Land and story are not separate here. They mirror one another.
This part of the grounds is known as the Realm of Tāne.
In Māori cosmology, Tāne Mahuta is one of the children of Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother, and Ranginui, the Sky Father. In the beginning of creation, Earth and Sky were locked in a close embrace, trapping their children in darkness for countless ages. The children debated how to escape. It was Tāne who acted. Bracing himself, he forced Earth and Sky apart, allowing light to flood the world for the first time.
With that act, Tāne became the atua of all living things of the land. In Aotearoa, once largely covered in forest, he is often spoken of as the god of the forest itself. The World of Light begins with separation, but it is not an act of violence; it is an act of creation that makes growth possible.
The plaque then traced how this realm changed over time.
The earliest human settlers reshaped the land carefully but decisively — clearing vegetation for settlements and gardens, hunting birds for food and feathers, and learning how to live within the rhythms of forest and wetland. Centuries later, a second great wave of settlement brought far greater transformation. Forests were cleared on a vast scale, wetlands drained, farms laid out, and introduced animals released into environments unprepared for them. The impact on native wildlife was devastating.
Waitangi, too, bore these marks. When the land was gifted to the nation in 1932, it was not the sanctuary it is today. It was a tired farm, with only fragments of native bush and wetland remaining. What followed was not restoration in a single moment, but regeneration over time — guided by local conservationists who chose to protect what remained and patiently allow the forest to return.
Standing there, it was impossible not to see the parallel.
Just as the land has been cleared, damaged, contested, and slowly restored, so too has the relationship that began here. Waitangi is not frozen in 1840. Like the forest, it continues to grow, regenerate, and demand care.
I read the plaque twice, then once more slowly, before walking on towards the waka — carrying with me the sense that this place speaks most clearly when it is allowed to do so quietly.
Ngātokimatawhaorua — The Great Waka of Waitangi
Sheltered near Hobson Beach, beneath Te Korowai o Maikuku (the cloak of Maikuku), rests Ngātokimatawhaorua, the largest ceremonial waka taua in the world. Standing beside it again, after everything we had absorbed in the museums and on the grounds, the scale of what it represents became even clearer.
The design and construction of this waka were overseen by Te Rangi Piri Poutapu of Waikato. Its building was a collective effort, carried out between 1937 and 1940 by members of northern and Waikato iwi, led by Te Hoe Peta Heperi Ngāpua. The waka was created to mark the centenary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1940, not as a replica of an ancient vessel, but as a living embodiment of whakapapa, mana, and continuity.
Carved from kauri timber, the waka measures 37.5 metres in length. When dry, it weighs approximately six tonnes; when saturated, closer to twelve tonnes. Its paddlers are known as kaihoe, typically around eighty in number, though the waka can carry up to 150 people. To lift it into the water requires hundreds more — a reminder that this is not a vessel moved by individuals, but by collective effort.
Ngātokimatawhaorua is a waka taua — a ceremonial war canoe. In earlier times, waka taua carried warriors into battle, but more than that, they carried the mana of a tribe: its leaders, its people, its standing in the world. Even now, the waka retains that role. It is not ornamental. It is active, respected, and protected.
The waka makes at least one voyage each year, on Waitangi Day, 6 February. To paddle it, or even to travel aboard it, is regarded as a privilege — something earned, not assumed.
The name Ngātokimatawhaorua carries deep ancestral meaning. According to tradition, Kupe, the legendary Polynesian navigator, sailed to Aotearoa and back to Hawaiki on a double-hulled waka named Matawhaorua. His grandson, Nukutāwhiti, later refitted the vessel and returned to Aotearoa, adding ngā toki — the adzes — to its name, marking renewal, craftsmanship, and purpose renewed through generations.
Nearby, a historic image from 1940, held in the Waitangi National Trust collection, shows Ngātokimatawhaorua moving through the water — vast, balanced, alive. Seeing that image beside the waka itself creates a powerful continuity between past and present. This is not a relic. It is a taonga still in relationship with the people it represents.
Standing there, it was clear that Ngātokimatawhaorua is more than timber and scale. It is a statement — about collective identity, responsibility, and the enduring presence of Māori authority in the story of Aotearoa.
Making Ngātokimatawhaorua — Reviving a Living Art
The creation of Ngātokimatawhaorua was not simply an act of commemoration; it was a deliberate revival of knowledge that had nearly been lost. In the decades leading up to the 1940 centenary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, leaders across Aotearoa recognised that the skills, rituals, and communal practices involved in waka construction were fading. What emerged instead was a project that brought ancestral craft back into active use.
In the 1930s, iwi of the Waikato — shaped by their long river culture — were at the forefront of a renaissance in waka building. Their leader, Te Puea Hērangi, held a clear vision: a fleet of waka would be built to mark the centenary, each standing as a statement of Māori presence, continuity, and dignity. She encouraged northern tribes to build their own ceremonial waka and offered the expertise of master carver Te Rangi Poutapu to guide the work.
The project that would become Ngātokimatawhaorua began in late 1937 and took over two years to complete. Every stage of construction was carried out by hand. The tools were simple and demanding: cross-cut saws, mauls, wedges, axes, and adzes. There were no shortcuts. Time, labour, and patience were intrinsic to the process.
A photograph displayed nearby shows Te Puea Hērangi around 1938, quietly resolute. She supported the project from its earliest stages and was present at the waka’s launch. When the enormous vessel resisted its first movement toward the water, she was asked to offer a karakia, an incantation seeking balance and release. After the prayer, the waka slid forward smoothly, a moment remembered not as coincidence, but as alignment.
From the Forest of Tāne
The waka was formed from three giant kauri trees, each carefully chosen from the forest of Tāne, the domain of Tāne Mahuta, deity of forest life.
- Two trees were taken from Puketi Forest
- One from Ōmahuta
Before any tree was felled, a tohunga (ritual expert) sought the blessing of Tāne Mahuta, acknowledging the gravity of transforming living forest into a vessel of ancestral significance.
Each tree had a defined purpose:
- One trunk became the central hull section
- Another formed the bow and stern
- The third provided the massive planks for the rauawa (top strakes), along with the prow and stern posts
These components were not carved in isolation. The hull sections were hollowed out in the forest itself, where they fell. A team of twenty-four bullocks and many men spent three weeks hauling the central hull section out of the forest — a task requiring coordination, endurance, and communal resolve.
The hull sections were then transported to the Waipapa River in Kerikeri, where they were immersed for several months to season the timber before being spliced together. Only after this long preparation was the waka ready to be assembled.
A Recorded Legacy
Recognising the significance of the undertaking, Te Puea Hērangi commissioned filmmaker and photographer Jim Manley to create a visual record of the waka’s construction. This was not done lightly. The commission was given on a clear condition: the footage and photographs were to be used only in ways that upheld Māori people and Māori knowledge.
Those images now displayed are quietly powerful:
- Hull sections being hollowed deep within the forest
- Builders at work, their tools worn smooth through use
- Women preparing food for the workforce, sustaining the builders
- The fitting of the inner deck using mānuka stakes
- Soft raupō padding laid down for paddlers and passengers
These photographs do more than document craftsmanship. They show a community working as one — knowledge passed hand to hand, effort shared, purpose held in common.
Standing before these images, it becomes clear that Ngātokimatawhaorua was never meant to be a static monument. It was conceived as a vessel in motion — carrying history forward, not freezing it in place.
The Great Fleet and the Long Memory of the Ocean
Standing beside Ngātokimatawhaorua, it becomes clear that this waka does not stand alone.
Alongside it rests a second vessel, Toa, part of what became known as the Great Fleet of 1990. This smaller waka was built by Ngāpuhi as their contribution to the 1990 Kaupapa Waka Project, one of more than twenty iwi-led efforts across the country. Together, these waka marked the 150th anniversary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, reconnecting ceremony, craft, and collective memory.
The project itself drew directly from an earlier vision. In the late 1930s, Te Puea Hērangi had imagined a fleet of waka gathering for the 1940 centenary of the Treaty. Only three were completed before the outbreak of the Second World War brought those plans to a halt. Half a century later, that interrupted aspiration was taken up again—this time on a scale not seen since the nineteenth century.
On 6 February 1990, thousands gathered at Waitangi. Waka came to shore in numbers unseen since the 1860s. Photographs from that day show vessels approaching the beach at Pēnetana, paddles rising and falling in unison, hulls cutting through water that had carried their ancestors centuries before. It was not merely a commemoration. It was a reassertion—of presence, skill, continuity, and belonging.
For Māori, the revival of waka building and crewing was inseparable from cultural renewal. It affirmed tangata whenua not as a historical category, but as a living reality. To paddle a waka was to occupy lineage, not metaphorically, but physically.
Waka for All Waters
The exhibition then widens its lens, placing these ceremonial vessels within a broader maritime tradition. Waka were never singular in form or purpose. Their designs shifted according to terrain, climate, and need.
River waka could be paddled or hauled upstream. Coastal waka balanced speed with stability. Ocean-going waka hourua, double-hulled sailing vessels, were engineered for long-distance voyaging, capable of carrying people and provisions across weeks at sea.
Materials were drawn from the land with precision. Forests provided suitable timbers. Harakeke (New Zealand flax) supplied fibre for sails and cordage—remarkably durable, often outlasting modern rope by many years. Every element reflected intimate ecological knowledge.
Among the most prestigious were waka taua, war canoes. These were the largest vessels, carrying warriors and embodying the mana of the tribe. Their carved tauihu (prow) and taurapa (sternpost) expressed genealogy and spiritual connection. Even today, as ceremonial vessels, they continue to carry that prestige forward.
Voyaging to Aotearoa
The story then reaches further back—beyond Aotearoa itself.
Every Māori person traces descent to an ancestor who crossed the Pacific on a waka hourua, navigating one of the largest and most challenging environments on Earth. The Pacific is not a void but a continent of water, dotted with small, distant islands. Over thousands of years, people originating in Southeast Asia explored and settled nearly all of it.
The final migrations came eastward from what is now French Polynesia, a homeland remembered in Māori tradition as Hawaiki. From there, navigators reached Hawai‘i, Rapa Nui, and eventually Aotearoa.
This was not random drift. It was deliberate exploration.
Navigators sailed into prevailing winds so they could return home with confidence. They read the ocean as a living system—tracking currents, recognising star paths, noting cloud formations that signalled land, observing seabirds as they returned to shore at dusk. Navigation was achieved through attention, memory, and bodily sensing rather than instruments.
In the 1970s, Pacific sailors began restoring this knowledge. Among them was Hekenukumai Busby of Northland, who built Te Aurere, a replica waka hourua. Since the 1990s, Te Aurere has voyaged tens of thousands of nautical miles, including to Hawai‘i and Rapa Nui, proving that these ancestral pathways were neither accidental nor exaggerated.
Leaving Waitangi
By the time you reached the end of the exhibition, it was impossible not to feel the scale of what had been entrusted—and what had been relinquished—at Waitangi.
The ingenuity required to cross oceans without instruments.
The courage to settle distant lands.
The generosity and risk bound up in the signing of Te Tiriti.
And the unresolved consequences that still shape the nation.
As you walked away from the waka, those histories did not feel sealed in glass. They felt active—unfinished, asking something of the present.
Leaving Waitangi for Auckland, what lingered was not a single moment, but a deep admiration: for a people whose relationship with land, sea, and one another was forged through skill, bravery, and an enduring sense of responsibility.
The Road Back, and Letting Go
Leaving Waitangi, the weight of the morning stayed with us. The conversations about land, language, courage, and consequence did not dissolve once we were back in the car. They travelled quietly with us as the road unfolded south.
Our first stop was unexpectedly memorable: the Hundertwasser Memorial toilets. It felt faintly absurd at first—pulling over to admire public conveniences—but that hesitation vanished almost immediately. The space was unmistakably Hundertwasser: curved lines, mosaic tiles radiating outward like ripples, colours refusing symmetry, beauty inserted into the most ordinary of places.
The free public toilets were already striking, their tiled floors spiralling from a central point. The paid facilities—shower included—were something else altogether: walls alive with ceramic birds, colour climbing upward, a reminder of Hundertwasser’s insistence that art belongs in daily life, not just in galleries. It was playful, human, and oddly uplifting. Even a toilet, it seemed, could be a small act of resistance against dullness.
From there, we stopped at Wellsford for lunch. Yet again, we found ourselves eating Indian food prepared by someone from Uttarakhand—a recurring thread through the journey that felt strangely comforting. The food court café, modest in appearance, delivered generously. Lamb biryani again, this time for comparison rather than hunger alone. Mahi returned to butter chicken—sweet, as she noted, tuned more toward European tastes—while Mon chose chicken tandoori. We lingered longer than planned, letting the pace slow, knowing there was no reason to rush anymore.
The final stretch into Auckland unfolded gently. As the skyline rose and the harbour widened, the city revealed itself fully—clean lines, light reflecting off water, the Harbour Bridge carrying us forward like a threshold. On a bright day, Auckland has a quiet confidence about it. Not showy. Assured.
The flight home was slightly delayed but untroubled. Boarding passed with the usual small frictions—a moment of irritation over spare batteries at security—but even that dissolved easily. It was impossible to hold on to annoyance after the days we’d just lived through.
The plane lifted into the evening sky around 8.30pm. By Brisbane time it was still early, but our bodies disagreed entirely. The flight crossed not just distance, but rhythm. A maxi-taxi home. Bags dropped. Lights off.
And that was it.
Twelve days across the North Island.
Rain and wind, cloud and sudden light.
History that pressed close.
Land that refused to be just scenery.
New Zealand had shown us its harsher moods and its quiet generosity. And somehow, even on the worst weather days, it never stopped being beautiful.
Not because it was dramatic—but because it was honest.
The trip ended not with a sense of completion, but with gratitude. For what was seen. For what was learned. And for what will take time, perhaps a lifetime, to fully understand.
