A Long Stretch of Gravel
Driving into Hamilton I’m aware that we have had company for quite a while. The strong silent type, a river called the Waikato. Its name in Māori translates as ‘flowing water’. “It is the longest river in New Zealand and gives its name to the Waikato region that surrounds the Waikato Plains. In the North Island, it runs for 425 kms from the eastern slopes of Mount Ruapehu, joining the Tongariro River system and emptying into Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake.
It drains Taupo at the lake’s northeastern edge, creates the Huka Falls, then flows northwest, through the Waikato Plains. It empties into the Tasman Sea south of Auckland at Port Waikato. The river’s main tributary is the Waipa River, which has its confluence with the Waikato at Ngaruawahia.
The Waikato River has spiritual meaning for various local Māori tribes including the large Tainui, who regard it as a source of their mana or pride. The widely-respected marae of Turangawaewae is close to its banks at Ngaruawahia. The area now covered by the city was originally the site of a handful of Māori villages, including Kirikiriroa (“long stretch of gravel’), from which the city takes its Māori name. By the time British settlers arrived, most of these villages, which sat beside the Waikato River, were abandoned.
Missionaries arrived in the area in the 1830s. At the end of the Waikato Campaign in the New Zealand Wars the four regiments of the Waikato Militia were settled as a peace-keeping force across the region. The 1st Regiment was at Tauranga, the 2nd at Pirongia, the 3rd at Cambridge and the 4th at Hamilton. The settlement was founded on 24 August, 1864 and named after Captain John Charles Fane Hamilton, the popular Scottish commander of HMS Esk, who was killed in the battle of Gate Pa, Tauranga. The road from Auckland reached Hamilton in 1867 and the railway in December 1877 the same month Hamilton became a borough. Hamilton was proclaimed a city in 1945.”
Stopping for lunch an interesting moment occurs, like a sign. Walking into the restaurant I hear Sam Cooke whose song ‘A Change Gonna Come’ has had a deep affect on me since November last year. A deeply reflective affect and that irrespective of its actual meaning to Cooke. It’s the music behind the words that has had the most profound affect, I get a sense of the water moving beneath me, like a river, guiding our waka (canoe) northwards. Our tupuna calls.
