Looking out from the Port Hills the olden Maori wayfarer surveyed the far-spreading Plains and the name handed down from the days of the Waitaha tribe, the forerunners of the Ngati-Mamoe, came to his lips: “Nga Pakihi Whakatekateka a Waitaha.” It is a barbed-wire fence, perhaps, to the average pakeha, yet abbreviated it is not inappropriate as a Plains homestead name. In the long ago, before water-races and artesian wells, the trails across the Plains from the Waimakariri to the Selwyn and the Selwyn to the Rakaia and the Ashburton were weary and thirsty tracks, for there were very few springs of drinking water and the Maori disliked the water of the cold glacial torrents. So the tired and thirsting trail-parties, swagging it across the wastes of tussock and cabbage trees, came to call the district “The Deceptive Plains of Waitaha,” for they discovered that it was unwise to rely upon springs and streams on the long tramp. They made water-bags of seaweed, the great bull kelp, which they split and made watertight, and these poha henceforth became as necessary to the kit of a trans-“Pakihi” traveller as a water-bottle is to the soldier in the field to-day.
The Heathcote River, whose native name has been abbreviated to Opawa, was originally the Opaawaho, which means “The outer, or seaward, pa ,” otherwise “An outpost.” A tribe-section or hapu of the Ngai-Tahu, about two hundred years ago, built a village on the left bank of the river, on a spot slightly elevated above the surrounding swampy country; the exact spot must have been
Whaka-raupo, Lyttelton Harbour, looking south-west, showing Quail Island.
W. A. Taylor photo
close to the present Opawa Railway Station. The name of the village was Poho-areare, or “pigeon breasted,” after some chief of those days, and it was because of its situation, the outermost
Kainga
of the Plains and swamp dwellers, commanding the passage down the Heathcote to the sea, that the river became known as the stream of “The Outpost.” Here it may be recalled that the
hapus
who lived where Christchurch City now stands were given a nickname by the outer tribes at Kaiapoi and elsewhere. They were called “O-Roto-Repo,” or more briefly, “O-Roto-re’,” which means “In the Swamp,” or the “Swamp-Dwellers.” They lived in a marshy region which had its compensations in the way of abundant food, for the swamps and creeks swarmed with eels and wild duck. The upper part of the Heathcote was the O-mokihi or “The Place of Flax-Stalk Rafts.” The