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 Abel Tasman
The first known European to sight New Zealand was Dutch explorer Abel Janzoon Tasman. He was on an expedition to discover a great Southern Continent ‘Great South Land’ that was believed to be rich in gold and silver. In the 1600’s, many Europeans believed that this unknown continent was necessary to balance the weight of land in the Northern Hemisphere.
On 13 December 1642, Tasman saw a ‘large high-lying land’ off the West Coast of the South Island. The land sighted was part of the Southern Alps, near Hokitika. Abel claimed the country for Holland under the name of ‘Staten Landt’ (later changed to New Zealand by Dutch mapmakers).
For at least 500 years Māori lived along the Abel Tasman coast, gathering food from the sea, estuaries and forests, and growing kūmera on suitable sites. Most occupation was seasonal but some sites in Awaroa estuary were permanent.
The Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri people were resident when, on 18 December 1642, Abel Tasman anchored his two ships near Wainui in Mohua (Golden Bay).
Māori and Tasman record exchanging calls, but when the Dutch fired their cannon, Māori fled in their waka returning in numbers the following day. One of Tasman’s boats was attacked by Māori and four of his men were killed. Because of this incident, Tasman named this area “Moordenaers Baij” – Murderer’s Bay. He sailed north but missed Cook Straight due to bad weather, believing that New Zealand to be a single land. Tasman sighted the northwest tip of the North Island before heading away, without ever setting foot onshore in New Zealand.
Tasman’s employers, The Dutch East India Company, found his explorations a disappointment having found ‘no treasures or matters of great profit’. For over a century until the era of James Cook, New Zealand was not visited by Europeans. As with many explorers, Tasman’s name has been honoured in many places throughout the Pacific, including the Tasman Sea and Abel Tasman National Park.
It was the rumour of a proposal to establish a sawmill at Totaranui in 1937 that prompted environmental campaigner and Nelson resident, Perrine Moncrieff, to start pushing for the area to be designated a National Park. A fire on land at Torrent Bay in 1941 spurred Moncrieff into linking her proposal to declare the area a National Park to mark the upcoming 300th anniversary of Abel Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand. Prime Minister Peter Fraser announced the Government decision to set aside nearly 38,000 acres for the Abel Tasman National Park (ATNP) in November 1942. The area comprised 21,000 acres of provisional State forest, 14,354 acres of Crown land and 1,368 acres of scenic and other reserves. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands agreed to be patroness of the Park and sent a delegation to attend the official opening on 19 December 1942. This opening was meant to take place at Torrent Bay, but rough seas forced them to hold the ceremony in Kaiteriteri instead. After speeches by government and local representatives, the Governor General, Sir Cyril Newall, declared the Abel Tasman National Park open.