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.
PWGT3 Takaka Hill/Marble Mountain
Takaka Hill divides Nelson and Golden Bay / Mohua. It is a mysterious place, with its ancient rocky karst landscape and extensive cave system that gives the hill its popular name, Marble Mountain.
The topography of the Takaka Hill is classic karst, named after a similar marble structure near Trieste in northern Italy, and formed by the dissolving of rocks such as limestone, dolomite and gypsum. This process leaves funnel-shaped tunnels called dolines, sink-holes and caves around the non-soluble rock in the structure.
Takaka Hill is also a place of mystery. Local Māori believed the taipō (devil) lived in the Canaan area on top of the hill. Taking refuge from Te Rauparaha on the hill at Canaan, they fled when they heard deep underground rumbling, fearing it was the growl of taipō. When Charles Heaphy who, in 1843, became the first recorded European to cross the hill to Golden Bay / Mohua, was later asked whether he had come across the taipō he explained that such noises are thought to be caused by the underground drainage of the hill through the Middle Earth Cave system.
To the settlers in the region, Takaka Hill was a major, if not awesome, obstacle between two valuable regions – the cramped and land-hungry settlement of Nelson, and the promising lower reaches of the valleys of the Takaka and Aorere Rivers. At first the only way for the settlers to get to what are now the towns of Takaka and Collingwood was by ship around Separation Point, where the massif juts out into Golden Bay.
A gold rush on the Aorere River south of Collingwood in the early 1850s saw a foot-track, called the Pikikiruna Track, hacked across the Takaka Hill. It was slowly widened and improved, but it was not until the 1870s that work began on upgrading it first to a bridle path, and eventually to a metalled road suitable for coaches.
The road not only opened up the Takaka and Aorere valleys for farming, but also allowed a marble mine to be established on the hill-top at Kairuru, 10 kilometres from Riwaka, which developed a name for quality stone used in the construction industry around the turn of the century
Marble from Kairuru gained national prominence in 1911, when it was chosen for use in the construction of Parliament Buildings in Wellington. The government architect, John Campbell, specified Kairuru marble because it is a coarse-grained, highly crystalline stone with the necessary strength and could be polished to a high creamy lustre.
Kairuru Marble was used to build Parliament Buildings from 1915 - 1922. A method known as 'plugs and feathers' was used. After drilling to the run of the marble grain, plugs and feathers were used to wedge the rock free from the marble face. No blasting was involved.
In this photograph workers are using the 'plugs and feathers' method.
Parliament house
Marble blocks were transported via a tramline to Marahau. Here the marble blocks were loaded onto scows (flat-bottomed boats) and taken to Wellington for cutting.
The Parliamentary complex in Wellington was "intended to give the people of New Zealand a public building to be proud of, built of splendid materials obtained in the Dominion." Coromandel granite was used for the base and Kairuru marble was used from the first floor up.
The Executive Wing of Parliament, commonly known as the Beehive was the second phase of the Parliamentary complex and built in the 1970s. To enhance the stark concrete, Kairuru marble has been used for decoration internally as well as on the lower external walls.
There is a short drive on a gravel road to get to this cache. There is space to park and turn just past the cache site. Not recommended for towing vehicles.