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."
CAUTION: Please take care when driving into the Minginui/Whirinaki area. There are likely to be wild horses roaming along stretches of roadway and they may appear unexpectedly. Roads in the forest are unsealed and may be rough for certain vehicles. Please exercise caution. It maybe wise to visit the area during daylight hours. Why place a cache here? Hopefully, the following description will explain...
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“Whirinaki Forest has no parallel of its kind on Earth today – Professor John Morton (Conservationist)”.
HISTORY: The history of Māori tribe Ngāti Whare is written on the hills, valleys, and trees of the Whirinaki. Numerous historic pā sites are located within the forest, carved wooden bird traps have been found high in the boughs of trees, and living tōtara still bear the preparatory marks of waka (canoe) carving.
From the time their ancestor Wharepakau Tao-Tao-Ki Te-Kapua (from whom Ngāti Whare take their name) migrated south to the Whirinaki area, Ngāti Whare have lived in close relationship with the Whirinaki Forest. As forest dwellers, the people of Ngāti Whare were dependent on the rich food resources of the forest, where birds were plentiful and held in high esteem. The taking of birds was strictly controlled and rāhui (prohibition) would occasionally be put on sections of forest to allow bird populations to recover.
The forest also provided many other necessities: timber for shelters, waka (canoes), weapons, fortifications, and carvings; bark for household vessels and roofing; vines for lashing and hīnaki (eel pots); and feathers for clothing. Fern root was a staple food product and was cultivated in clearings created in the forest and maintained by fire and shifting cultivations. Many other forest plants were used for rongoā (medicine).
Nowadays, Ngāti Whare’s kaitiakitanga (guardianship) of the forest is officially recognised and they co-govern the park with the Department of Conservation. Ngāti Whare has established a native nursery in the Minginui village and has long-term plans to restore hundreds of hectares of land neighbouring the Whirinaki back into native forests. Minginui, once home to sawmills that processed thousands of native logs, is now home to a nursery that will restore the native forests lost to logging.
A PRECIOUS REMNANT: Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne Conservation Park is a 56,000-ha old-growth forest, described by acclaimed British botanist David Bellamy as one of the great forests of the world.
The podocarp ancestors of Whirinaki’s trees evolved more than 200 million years ago while New Zealand was part of the supercontinent Gondwana. Bellamy was so captivated by the primordial character of the Whirinaki he called it the “Dinosaur forest – one of the best Mesozoic plant communities remaining on Earth”. Podocarp (cone-bearing) forests used to be much more extensive in New Zealand, but years of human habitation changed all that. Burning, as a hunting technique by early Māori, and later extensive land clearance for farming and exotic forestry have resulted in few such forests remaining.
Today, 95% of these forests on the North Island have disappeared. Whirinaki is one of the last precious remnants and one of the best remaining examples of lowland podocarp forest left in New Zealand.
Whirinaki Forest is one of eight security sites established to protect whio/ blue duck. Whio are river specialists and live year-round on fast-flowing rivers. The presence of whio is a key indicator of healthy rivers and streams.
TO SAVE A RAINFOREST: The campaign to end native logging in New Zealand came to a head with the great battles for the ‘Gondwanaland forests’ of Pureora and Whirinaki. The Whirinaki Forest Promotion Trust, whose members included Sir Edmund Hillary, published a book, To Save a Forest, calling for an end to native logging in the Whirinaki. The sometimes-bitter conflict, with conservationists and loggers facing off, attracted national and even international media attention. Eventually, in 1984, the conservationists won out and the New Zealand Government created Whirinaki Forest Park. Professor John Morton, one of New Zealand’s greatest conservationists, declared: “Whirinaki Forest has no parallel of its kind on Earth today”.
A NEW ZEALAND RAINFOREST: The Whirinaki is a temperate rainforest with an annual rainfall of between 150 and 225 cm (59 to 88 inches). Unlike Europe, Whirinaki is a forest essentially without seasons. There is never a time when the forest sheds its whole foliage and the floor is opened up to full light, so the lower reaches of the forest are held in deep and permanent shade. The dense lowland forests of Whirinaki are some of the best of their kind and the most visually superb remnants in New Zealand, with podocarps up to 65 metres tall (215 feet) and reaching 3 metres (10 feet) in diameter, with a density of 130 podocarps per hectare.
The northern part of the forest, west of the Whirinaki River, is relatively low country which rises from 360 m to 730 m. There are beautiful river flats and rolling, tree covered hills and gullies. The lowlands stand in stark contrast to the steep rugged greywacke country in the south which rises to 1365 m at Maungataniwha.
THE CACHE: The cache container is a recycled painted plastic jar - the sort that one picks up at a long ago event with the intention of using one day. It is large enough for swaps and trinkets. Please bring your own pen/cil. Coordinates may differ under tree cover. Use given hints to narrow down the hide. Enjoy your visit to Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne Conservation Park and be sure to locate some of the other great caches found here.