The Tuia Mātauranga Pōkai Whenua GeoTour follows the footsteps of early explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand taking you to places where leaders of the past searched for food, resources and ways to adapt and survive in this new land.
Use the Pōkai Whenua GeoTour as your classroom to explore the stories of the past, in the present, to preserve what is unique in Aotearoa New Zealand for the future.
Collect the codewords to get the Geocoin puzzle pieces.
To be able to complete this GeoTour and receive your special Geocoin collectable, remember to take a note of the codeword placed in the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded here.
63 of the 150 Pōkai Whenua GeoTour caches will contain a randomly placed special FTF token (a replica of the Tuia Mātauranga GeoTour commemorative coin). This is yours to keep! If you find more than one, you might consider leaving it for the next person who finds the cache.
Whakatipu, was important to southern Māori as a source of tuna (eels), manu (birds), ti kōuka (cabbage tree), mountain daisy (used for cloaks) and taramea (spaniard grass) from which a fragrant oil was extracted.
Māori had settlement and camping sites for highly mobile communities in the Whakatipu-Wanaka area typical of the whole interior of Te Waipounamu (South island). Takerehaka (Kingston) was one of them.
When Europeans first settled the place was named 'St Johns' after police commissioner St John Branigan.
In the late 1850s John Chubbin, John Morrison & Malcolm MacFarlane arrived at the present site of Kingston. But it wasn’t until 1876 the first School opened in Kingston.
In the 1920s a new school was built, which was a big improvement on the old residence previously used(an unused house).The new school was one roomed, which accommodated about 21 children, it had a corridor, a play shed, and 2 nearby toilets. It was a sole teacher school.
In 1984 the school closed.
In 1986 the site was purchased by the (then) Lakes County Council (for community use).
In 1999 the Kingston Library was established & opened in the old School Building , and remains to this day.
Excerpts from: The Kingston Story 1800- 2000 - A publication by the Kingston Community Centre Inc to mark the Millennium