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 piece.
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.
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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.
In 1956 a decision was made to divert the Kaituna River from its natural flow through Te Awa O Ngātoroirangi Maketū Estuary directly to sea at Te Tumu so that the surrounding area could be drained and farmed. A cut was made in the sand dunes where the Kaituna River was close to the sea. This resulted in a 90 percent loss of wetlands. The Maketū Estuary has always been of significant cultural value as a valuable food resource ever since Māori people arrived in the Te Arawa canoe at Maketū. The cut was described by the tangata whenua as a “wound that would never heal”. The degradation of the estuary led to a public outcry and demand for the river to be re-diverted. In 2018 the Western Bay of Plenty Council, in collaboration with the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, iwi and community began a significant project to enhance the Te Awa o Ngātoroirangi Maketū Estuary and to make it healthier to swim and fish in. It involved rediverting 20 % of the river’s flow via a new channel and control gates, new public boat ramp and more than 20 hectares of wetlands. This construction work, recently completed, has restored 600000 cubic metres of fresh water flow into the estuary on every tidal cycle.
