Here the hills on both sides of the valley were higher and steeper, and covered in scruffy pines and wattles. In some places the steep land had been cleared and large houses, most with protruding decks, had been built on the cleared sections. Because the land was so steep, most of the houses were supported by poles, appearing to perch precariously on the hillsides.
Before the valley met the sea it fanned out, and between the sea and the paddocks were the houses of Logan Bay. They were half hidden by mature trees: Norfolk pines, eucalypts, puriri and several Moreton Bay figs. A tidy town, it looked, with none of the usual overhead power and telephone lines disfiguring it.
Oliver's eyes were drawn to the place where the land and sea met, and to the bay beyond. An indigo colour in the early summer sunshine, the sea stretched away to half a dozen humpbacked islands on the horizon. There were other islands too, much closer to the shore. These were sheer-sided and rocky, appearing to float in the water like stone icebergs.
The beach was about a kilometre long. At each end were high headlands, their biscuity-coloured cliffs gnawed into interesting shapes by the sea. The headland at the western end was very high, and covered in large houses; the one at the eastern end was grassy, with pohutukawas growing along the cliff-tops. Oliver could see horizontal ridges on the headland, and he guessed that this was the pa site his historian friend Michael had told him about.
Letting his eyes drift over the coastal settlement which would be his home for the next four months, Oliver thought how attractive it looked. Sheltered too, he guessed, from the southerlies.
He'd been here once before, more than 20 years ago, before there was any town at all, just a store and a camp ground and a few fibrolite baches.
But since then a town had been built, right across the level foreshore and up the hills at either end. Looking to his left, towards the pine and wattle-
covered hill, he recalled Werner Weiss' email instruction.
Take the first turn left, before the houses. Drive up the hill, through the trees. The road's rough, but never mind. At the top of the hill is the only house. My house.
A movement in the sky caught Oliver's attention, and he looked up. Dark brown against the bright blue background, a hawk was drifting, its wings outstretched, borne along by the wind currents. He studied the bird for some time, admiring its grace, but aware too that the hawk was watching for any movement on the ground. Its quarry. And as he stared up at the drifting bird of prey, he recalled the recent conversation he'd had with Michael.
"Logan Bay's a beautiful place. Idyllic even, today. But it's got a dark past."
"What do you mean?"
"Before the musket wars Logan Bay was heavily populated, by the Ngati Waiau. The bay had everything - fertile land for kumara, a small stream close to the pa, fishing grounds, a pa site which was virtually impregnable. Life must have been good, blessed in fact. Until the Ngati Kaha came."
"When was that?"
"In 1822. They were raiding the tribes around the Auckland isthmus and the Coromandel Peninsula. With the muskets their chief had bought in Sydney, they slaughtered or enslaved every tribe they encountered. But even when the Ngati Waiau heard rumours that Ngati Kaha were planning another raid on the peninsula, they stayed put. After all, their pa was on a headland 50m high, surrounded on three sides by the sea.
"They could see any canoes approaching from miles away. Even if they were besieged, they thought, they would survive because there's a stream at the base of the headland. They had plenty of food, fish especially. So they stayed put.
"The Ngati Kaha came down the coast in three canoes. They camped near what's now Bensons Beach. The war party's scouts reported on the terrain, telling their chief that the pa would be impossible to take by sea. But there was a stream, they said, on the landward side. The chief made his plan and the next night the war party set out, overland.
"After creeping along the stream banks by night, the Ngati Kaha attacked the Ngati Waiau pa from the rear. A bit like the Japanese taking Singapore, in 1942. The warriors scaled the palisades and stormed the pa slopes. Taken by surprise, the Ngati Waiau didn't have a chance. Over three hundred men women and children were killed. To save ammunition, the Ngati Kaha threw their victims over the cliffs and on to the rocks.
"Many of the bodies of the dead were cut up, cooked and eaten on the beach."
Refilling Oliver's wine glass, Michael gave a little laugh. "So, the next time a part-Maori university radical tells you how idyllic life was here before the nasty Pakeha arrived and seized their land, you could remind them of what happened to the poor Ngati Waiau."
Oliver's eyes again panned across the bay, then stopped at the headland. It was almost impossible to reconcile the atrocity with today's bucolic outlook, the postcard-pretty panorama of land and sea. Then, jolting himself back to reality, he got back into the car. He hadn't come here for the scenery, he had work to do.
*
Tomorrow:
A nostalgic beach walk is rudely interrupted.
*
Graeme Lay grew up in Taranaki and was educated at Victoria University, Wellington. A novelist, travel writer and editor, he works from home in Devonport, on Auckland's North Shore. His latest books are the novel Alice & Luigi, a travel memoir, Inside the Cannibal Pot and the anthology The New Zealand Book of the Beach.
