Remembering Kupe

Taipa, Far North. April 2009. Ajr

This memorial, beside the highway in the little Northland seaside town of Taipa, was erected to commemorate to all, that “the war canoe Mamaru of the Ngati Kahu was the canoe that the great Polynesian warrior, Kupe used in his voyage from Hawaiiki across the Pacific, to discover New Zealand. According to Maori tradition, the voyage was made 34 generations before the Great Migration. Kupe landed at Ikatiritiri at the mouth of the Taipa River, from where he made numerous voyages around New Zealand.”