Photo Credit: 2430 - Lloyd Homer – GNS Science | Te Pū Ao – All rights reserved
Among the many stories of Pacific navigator Kupe is one about his arrival in New Zealand. After sailing for a long time, he thought he saw a large whale in the distance. He was mistaken, however; the whale was a high hill on the Aupōuri peninsula, later called Tohoraha. Tohoraha translates to whale or specifically a southern right whale (Eubalaena australis).
Te Ara Wairua, the path spirits travel up to reach Cape Reinga / Te Rerenga Wairua and then depart for Hawaiki, traditionally runs up the west coast of the Aupōuri peninsula. It is also said that there’s another path along the east coast and Tohoraha forms part of that.
In early December 1769, Cook sailed past on the HMB Endeavour. Seeing a large hill with a small dip in the top, on a sandy, desert-like shore, he named it ‘Mount Camel’. Master’s Mate Richard Pickersgill misheard and wrote Campbell.
Sometimes, over the years, the mountain has been referred to as Houhora, taken from the name of locality. In 2015, as part of the Treaty settlement with Ngāti Kurī and Te Aupōuri, the hill’s official name was assigned as a dual name ‘Tohoraha / Mount Camel’.
References
- NZ Gazetteer -Tohoraha / Mount Camel
- From the Gazette: Brief of evidence of Rapata Romana for the Wai 262 claim.
- ‘Tohoraha’, Māori Dictionary
- Claudia Orange, 'Northland places - Aupōuri Peninsula', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
- Dorothy Urlich Cloher, The tribes of Muriwhenua: their origins and stories, Auckland University Press, Auckland, p. 34
- James Cook, ‘10 December 1769’, South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific (1760-1800)
- Anne Salmond, Two Worlds, Viking, Auckland 1991, p. 237