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.
The Tuia Mātauranga - Pōkai Whenua GeoTour: Tahi 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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Te Awamutu – the birthplace of the first Māori King.
The Māori King movement came into existence in the late 1850s, part of the dramatic decades that followed the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, as an attempt to unite the tribes, prevent land sales from the pressure of rapid European immigration and retain constitutional autonomy for Māori. The elderly Pōtatau Te Wherowhero of Waikato was one of a number of chiefs who possessed the mana necessary for this role. Appointed as the first Māori King in 1858, at Ngāruawāhia, he died two years later.
Te Wherowhero’s early life was lived in peace, but his early adult life was dominated by war. His Waikato tribe drove Te Rauparaha’s Ngāti Toa from its Kāwhia homeland and in turn had to defend its own territory against Northland’s Ngāpuhi. Waikato also made repeated attacks on the Taranaki tribes. Te Wherowhero refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi but did deal with the colonial government. He sold land to the Crown and, in 1849, signed an agreement to provide military protection for Auckland. He advised Governors George Grey and Thomas Gore Browne, but protested strongly against a British Colonial Office plan to put all uncultivated land into Crown ownership.
While Te Wherowhero did not see his appointment as King as a direct challenge to the authority of Queen Victoria, it was seen that way both by the colonial authorities and by some of his supporters. When he died after just two years as King he was succeeded by his son, who became known as Tāwhiao.
Through war, land confiscation, post-war poverty and continued land loss, the kīngitanga movement remained a focus for Māori resistance. It has provided leadership in Treaty settlements with the Crown, particularly with confiscated land and the management of the Waikato River.