More than just a site of plenty

Looking across Lake Hawea to the Neck. Photo by Mark Price.
Looking across Lake Hawea to the Neck. Photo by Mark Price.
Today ''the Neck'' is known to most as not much more than a couple of steep bends on State Highway 6 between Wanaka and the West Coast. But this isthmus between Lakes Hawea and Wanaka has always been a sacred place to southern Maori and, as Mark Price reports, it is scheduled to be accorded again the prominence it once had.

Two hundred years ago, a visitor to the Lake Hawea side of the Neck, north of the Lake Hawea township, would have found a Maori village called Manuhaea.

It had, perhaps, 20 houses surrounded by gardens of potato, turnip and other vegetables and had easy access to a freshwater lagoon.

There was an abundance of weka, kakapo, kiwi, kea and kaka, and the streams were full of ''tuna'' or eels.

A place rich in such resources is termed ''mahinga kai'' in Maori. But Manuhaea had greater significance than most mahinga kai. It was central to an extensive network of walking trails linked to all the major settlements and resources of the South - to the West Coast via what is known today as the Haast Pass and to the east and south coasts via the Clutha, Waitaki and Mataura Rivers.

As Ngai Tahu historian Takerei Norton wrote in 2003: ''Manuhaea means much more than mahinga kai.

''It is the centre point of all the mahinga kai trails, a place used to defend the mana whenua [the exercise of traditional authority over an area of land] and a spiritual centre.''

The area is also regarded as sacred to Waitaha and and Ngati Mamoe.

What happened to the ownership of the land at the Neck after the arrival of European settlers - and the lengths to which Maori have gone to regain some influence over it - is contained in volumes of material presented during the tenure reviews of Glen Dene Station.

The tenure reviews concluded in 2006 and as a result the land at the Neck - between the shores of Lakes Wanaka and Hawea - has become a conservation area administered by the Department of Conservation.

A department spokeswoman said it was now working with Ngai Tahu on ways to ''celebrate Ngai Tahu values'' in relation to the landscape and a spokeswoman for Ngai Tahu confirmed it was working with the department on ''how best to recognise the value''.

Iwi relations manager [pou tairangahau] for the department in Otago and Southland Dave Taylor told the Otago Daily Times ways to make the story of the area available to the public were being examined.

''It's an iconic site and there's a desire to tell that story.

''There's been some initial thinking, but it's very much in the early days.

''It's probably way too early to say just what might happen on the site.''

Nothing visible remains of Manuhaea.

In 1966 University of Otago anthropologist the late Prof Peter Gathercole recorded that 20 ''saucer-like'' depressions thought to be house sites were seen in 1938.

However, by 1956 they had been ''ploughed out'' and since then the raising of Lake Hawea for hydro generation has flooded the site of Manuhaea and the lagoon.

- mark.price@odt.co.nz

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