Mini Mysteries - the strange case of the Kawautahi taniwha

The trusty Mini Cooper S did some off-roading on the way to the Kawautahi Stream Lagoon. Pictures / Paul Charman

Parking the Mini Cooper S at Owhango revived memories of working as a cadet reporter at the Taumarunui office of the Taranaki Daily News.

I'd written stories on colourful elderly Scotsman Sandy Devereux, who in the mid-70s revived the "Owhango Sports Day", a village fair harking back maybe 100 years, to the old King Country. These rustic celebrations were a hit with the bushmen who cleared the forests with slashers and axes.

At the peak of native logging, maybe 30 sawmills surrounded Taumarunui. Hakiaha St, the main drag, seems quiet today but at the height of the native timber trade the throngs out shopping could shoulder you into the gutter. Even in the 1960s, the men's hairdresser would clock up 150 haircuts on a Friday, working till late evening.

Hundreds of mill hands needed not only groceries but also entertainment; booze was scarce in that dry region, so events such as "sports days" were huge. New Zealand once paid its bills by logging native forests such as those near Owhango, with King Country native timbers said to be the most prized.

With these thoughts in mind, my wife, Debra Rose, and myself drove the Cooper S across the railway tracks, into Oio Rd, heading deep into the Kaitieke Valley, a back-blocks wonderland leading all the way to the Whanganui River.

We wanted to revisit the story of a monster, said to have resisted the long ago transformation of a once heavily forested valley into farmland.

A painting by T.W. Downes shows the menacing dragon scattering land surveyors who'd arrived in 1892, to begin the process of parcelling up settlement blocks.

Downes said he painted it from first-hand accounts of the men concerned. Such giant reptiles once haunted the upper reaches of the Whanganui River, he claimed.

Historian Ron Cooke shows a photo that includes two of the men supposedly attacked by the taniwha.

The Taumarunui historian and Ruapehu District Councillor Ron Cooke tracked down photos of two of the men mentioned in Downes' account, whose descendants still live in the district.

Ron also referred us to two farmers living close by the lagoon where it was all supposed to have happened, Kawautahi Rd residents Michael and Joan Petersen.

Michael told us that a neighbour leasing the land concerned had lost cattle, leaving no trace, and he'd also heard mysterious growling sounds at night (only pulling my
leg).

Rugged, beautiful and a little mysterious, Kaitieke Valley seemed just the place for a monster legend. The couple showed us fossils they'd gleaned from rivers in the area; so abundant that fossil-hunting tourists now come here from all over the world to collect them.

Retired Retaruke farmer Doug McFadyen knew the lagoon well. Doug explained it was tucked in beside a 40-metre pumice cliff, having been formed following a big backwash from the Kawautahi Stream; very deep, with raupo edges, no shoreline and a big spring bubbling up out of it.

Kawautahi Rd farmers Michael and Joan Petersen with two of fossils they collected from rivers in the Kaitieke Valley.

He'd shot black shags there that feed off fresh water mussels growing in the river. We did observe these shells. Doug also shot an enormous eel, one of many living in the lagoon, and theorised one of them might have been mistaken for a taniwha, causing panic among superstitious surveyors.

After lunch we crammed into Michael's ute, for the steep and tricky descent to the Kawautahi Stream far below ...

To be continued...

From Te Ara - The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand:
"Kawautahi is a small lake 15 kilometres up Retaruke River, a tributary of the Whanganui. It was avoided by Maori because a ferocious taniwha was said to live in it. In 1892 a surveyor employed three Maori from Taumarunui - Warahi, Pita Te Aitua and Piki - to assist him in his work at the lake. Despite their concerns, they agreed because of the good wages on offer. However, while there they were allegedly attacked by the taniwha, and although slightly wounded, they all survived. They later told their story to T. W. Downes, who based this image loosely on their description."
The monster is supposed to have lived just upriver from this waterfall.