KEY POINTS:
It begins modestly - cool clear water running fresh from the slopes of Mt Tongariro, an idyllic stream meandering from the edge of Lake Rotoaira in the central North Island.
Whanganui River, says a sign on a small nondescript bridge.
Yet from here the country's third-largest river will swell over 290km to the broad muddied flows which cloud the Tasman Sea as it joins the ocean.
The river's power and the idyllic isolation have drawn thousands of people over the centuries - from Maori whose villages once dotted almost every turn, to the hardy settlers and missionaries eager to open up the North Island's interior.
Their different worlds live on in the long-running naming debate. Since 1991 the river and the forest have been officially spelt Whanganui at the request of local iwi but the city at the river mouth remains Wanganui.
Wahi Marama Teki has called the once bustling Maori settlement of Koriniti home for all of her 75 years. She can recall when the community, 47km northeast of Wanganui, was home to more than 80 whanau members, and an Anglican nun, Sister Elsey Smith.
Koriniti is the Maori transliteration of the famous Greek city Corinth, a name given by missionary Richard Taylor in the 1840s on his travels along the river in search of converts.
For the Ngati Poutama iwi member the river is the giver and taker of life.
Once it was a means of transport for the waka travelling and trading between settlements bordering its edge. It was also a provider of food - plump eels, mullet and mature whitebait (ngaore). They hung from broad lines beside the village, drying among the plumes from the fires fed in turn by wood washed ashore by regular flooding.
Ms Teki remembers the baptisms, which still occur, and the healing at the river's edge for those in need.
"It was, and is everything - our river - its great mana, our awa tupuna. It takes away life and it gives life."
She recalls a childhood spent playing in the river, fishing, diving from trees, and exploring the playground of her ancestors.
"They were happy days. We knew no violence, saw no violence, children were seen and not heard."
Louise Gilbert, 66, now runs the family farm and homestead and is one of the few remaining residents. She also rents a small cottage to tourists eager to enjoy the area.
Though her youth was spent on a farm just north of Wellington, she has called Koriniti home for more than 46 years.
She recalls learning to cook on a coal range, nights brightened by kerosene lamps, the advances from dirt road to gravel, and just recently tarseal and the arrival of electricity in 1967.
Mrs Gilbert, who is Pakeha, moved back permanently in 1988. Her husband, Pamiona, now returns when he can. He lives with their son Tekimiti's family, while he serves as a soldier in Lebanon. Another son, Shayne, also a soldier, is stationed in New York.
"The river was the community's highway. It brought stores, mail, everything came up on the river.
She remembers the commune of Jerusalem around 20km north. James K. Baxter would wander down the road, scruffy and unkempt, his bare feet seemingly immune to the jagged gravel roads. He would visit to chat with her father-in-law, Rangi Pokiha, a Ngati Poutama chief, a gifted orator and historian.
Ms Teki speaks fondly of her adopted whanau member and cousin-in-law.
"She is tangata whenua. She is one of us, she is a caring person, and she will take in anyone. The old people taught her many of our traditions and history."
Ms Teki was part of the drift to the cities that left many of the river's settlements abandoned.
She was forced to seek work in Wanganui after the death of her husband. She was 31 and had three children.
She now lives in Wanganui, as do most of her whanau, but returns to Koriniti daily to teach at the kohanga reo. None of the original founding families remain permanently at Koriniti.
The marae is now home to a kohanga reo, where brown, cream and white tamariki learn te reo Maori.
The marae also offers tours and sleepovers for busloads of mainly Dutch and German tourists.
Further north, where the road is still gravel, is Jerusalem, home to around 30 people, mainly Maori, but also the Sisters of Compassion.
Sister Sue breaks from lunchtime prayers to offer a brief tour of her home.
She has lived at the spiritual retreat for the past six years.
"The river watches the road go by," she says, quoting poet Greg O'Brien.
"It will always be here."
A narrow track behind the nunnery leads to the former Baxter commune.
Just one of the two homes still remains. There are gravesites, and fruit trees, a long-drop at the rear of the property. While the cluttered rundown house, once home to many seeking to escape, is still lived in, today no one is home.
Further north at Pipiriki, Ken Howarth runs a jet-boat business, Whanganui River Adventures, started by his father in the 1970s.
He has lived in the isolated settlement - 79km north of Wanganui and once a stronghold of Maori religious sect and the often-warlike Hauhau - all his 36 years.
"The river is everything to me. I have lived worked and played on the river all my life."
There is a warmth and sense of pride in his narrative as he powers his diesel jet along the broad river, past cliffs coated in dripping moss.
A solitary shag glides easily ahead of the boat, casting its shadow on the soaring cliffs, some 100m high.
There is a sense of travelling back in time to the highway of the country's ancestors. An appreciation of the awe that would forever fix the respect and connection of Maori, and the sense of wonder and adventure of the first European explorers nervously entering the uncharted rugged terrain.
Mr Howarth recalls ferrying the crew of the recent River Queen movie.
He speaks warmly of the film's stars, including Temuera Morrison and Kiefer Sutherland, and the easy banter that developed between the men.
Samantha Morton, he says, never made it to the river due to illness.
For Mr Howarth there was only one star in the movie anyway - the river.
"That's Whanganui River with a WH," he says cheerfully at the end of the tour. "Make sure you spell it right."
