Tainui Memorial

**Tainui Memorial **
by Celia Walker

When the voyager Kupe arrived at Te Hau Kapua/Torpedo Bay over 1000 years ago he may well have been greeted by wandering moa and a host of other extinct or now rare birds, and would have stepped into undisturbed coastal forests of great puriri, taraire, karaka and pohutukawa. Picturing this scene now takes a little imagination, with only the orderly beachfront pohutukawa hinting at past abundance.

A memorial situated on the outcrop at the end of Te Hau Kapua/Torpedo Bay celebrates the arrival around 1350AD of the Tainui waka under the command of Hoturoa, in the great migration fleet of seven voyaging vessels. Prior to the Tainui arrival, in around 1150, came another celebrated ancestor Toi te Huataki, and later his grandson Uika, who was well enough remembered to have left a trace on the landscape through the naming of Maunga Uika (Maungauika/North Head).

The oral history traditions have been backed up by some quite startling recent discoveries of ancient cooking pits and moa bones, uncovered during archaeological investigations prior to building work at the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum site and the site of the 1866 Masonic Tavern, rebuilt in 2016.

Image Credit: Celia Walker