A Place of Significance

Castle Hill. August 2009. Ajr

I drove up to Castle Hill, between Porter's and Arthur's Passes last week. My Australian visitor was keen to go rock climbing and this is one of the favoured spots in Canterbury for that. I love it for an entirely different reason. The landscapes up here are majestic and ever-changing - a photographer's paradise. Castle Hill, or Kura Tawhiti is also of special significance to Maori. I've written about it here before so I won't repeat all the information. If you click on Castle Hill in the label line below you'll be able to read the piece I did about early Maori using the area as a natural shelter. It's now a Conservation Area and there are early Maori rock drawings in the area - if you kno0w where to look. It was raining when we were up there last week and the gigantic limestone rocks took on a spooky, almost animate quality - so different to the summer photographs of my previous post.

A Place of Significance

Castle Hill, Porter's Pass. Dec. 2008. Ajr

The hefty limestone outcrops of Kura Tawhiti (Castle Hill), near Porter’s Pass - between the Torlesse and Craigeburn Ranges in the Southern Alps - are among my favourite places. Towering, sculptural, with an almost animate quality to them, they were used as shelters by early Maori navigating their way across the South Island along a network of trails….. hunters and gatherers visiting the rich food and fibre sources of the Waimakariri River basin. Some of the outcrops still show evidence of early rock drawings said to have been made over 500 years ago by the Waitaha people, the first Maori travellers in the area – but you have to know where to look and what to look for. The limestone valley is of special spiritual, cutlural and historical significance to Ngai Tahu and the area was declared a topuni ( a protective cover), in 1998 as part of the givernment's Treaty of Waitangi Settlement with Ngai Tahu.