"The site of Mosgiel figures in Māori legend, but surrounding features of the Taieri Plain and adjacent hills have older mythical associations. Of the canoes of South Island migratory legend the fourth and fifth, Takitimu and Arai Te Uru, are mentioned in connection with the area. Maungatua, the large hill to the west of the plain, represents a huge wave which struck the Takitimu, throwing overboard Aonui, who became a pillar on the Tokomairiro Beach. Another account makes Aonui a female survivor of the wreck of the Arai Te Uru, built by Kahui Tipua, who had arrived earlier but sent this vessel to the Polynesian homeland Hawaiki to get kumara. On its return the canoe suffered shipwreck at Shag Point in North Otago, but its survivors quested about the land in search of supplies. If they failed to get back before dawn they turned into natural landscape-features, and this fate befell Aonui. These ancient traditions suggest that some of the earliest Polynesian settlers in the south knew the Taieri Plain."
Quoted verbatim from Wikipedia and to be continued