Te Whitianga a Kupe

By | 1 May 2021
Last week we celebrated the arrival of the waka hourua of Kupe

Matawhaorua about 1100 years ago and HMB Endeavour in 1769

of then Lieutenant James Cook.

                                                          Kupe’s wife Hine Te Aparangi,

according to Ngāti Hei, named the islands Aotearoa

which refers to the Māori name for Great Barrier Island,

Aotea, with the main landmass of the Coromandel

marked by its high peaks observed by her as the longer,

 ‘roa’ of Aotearoa. When they landed, Kupe named the first landing

or crossing, Te Whitianga a Kupe.1

				                              When Cook arrived

for twelve days in November 1769, he named

Te Whanganui o Hei Mercury Bay. They were there

to see the Transit of Mercury on November 9

so that the astronomer Charles Green could work out

the longitude of Terra Australis Incognito.

The crew gave other names such as the Aldermen Islands

for their high rock needles like a court.






    

  1.  Steele, John and Richard Gates. When Toawaka Met Cook. Stories of Whanganui o Hei – Mercury Bay.
    
Whitianga: Mercury Bay Trust, 2019. ↩
    2.
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Robert Sullivan's twelve books include the long-poem Star Waka (Auckland University Press) which has been reprinted five times and translated into German, the graphic novel Maui: Legends of the Outcast, illustrated by Chris Slane, and the New Zealand Post Children’s Book of the Year, Weaving Earth and Sky, illustrated by Gavin Bishop. He co-edited two anthologies of Polynesian poetry in English with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri, Whetu Moana and Mauri Ola. Again with Reina Whaitiri, in 2014 he edited the first comprehensive anthology of Maori poetry in English, Puna Wai Korero (Auckland University Press). Sullivan is head of Manukau Institute of Technology’s Creative Writing School. On his maternal side he belongs to the Northland iwi of Ngapuhi, and on his paternal side he belongs to the South Island iwi, Kai Tahu, with Irish roots in Rosscommon and Galway.

More by Robert Sullivan on Cordite Poetry Review →

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