Snow-clad, steeply pitched Kakīroa on the craggy Aroarokāehe range is among the highest peaks in the Aoraki Mount Cook district. Conforming to prevailing colonial practice, in 1862 they were renamed Mount Sefton and the Moorhouse Range respectively by geologist and museum director Julius von Haast. William Sefton Moorhouse was then the superintendent of the Canterbury Province. What was then difficult-to-reach terrain became more accessible from 1885, when the Hermitage hotel opened for tourists. The hotel’s location in what is now Mount Cook Village is very near the vantage points later taken by watercolour painters Margaret Stoddart, Dorothy Richmond and Esther Hope.

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)