The Kura Tawhiti Castle Hill area was an ancient moa habitat and hunting ground for Waitaha people and later a trading and seasonal kūmara gardening site for Kāti Māmoe and Kāi Tahu. Oral histories from the Waitaha period recalls a giant pouākai nest here from which a terrifying marauding bird was lured to its death by the visiting warrior Te Hau-o-Tawera, to be set upon by fifty men armed with spears. The mountain on which the bird nested was named Tawera, after him, but later renamed after Canterbury Association surveyor Charles Torlesse, who climbed it in 1849. Watercolourist James Richmond was also the former Minister of Native Affairs and Commissioner of Crown Lands, and was committed in both his political career nd personal endeavours to expanding settler territory and suppressing Māori resistance to European land acquisition.

moa ~ large extinct flightless bird

kūmara ~ sweet potato

Waitaha ~ tribal group that occupied much of Te Waipounamu South Island before they were displaced by Kāti Māmoe

Kāti Māmoe ~ tribal group that was largely replaced by Kāi Tahu through intermarriage and conquest

Kāi Tahu ~ tribal group of much of Te Waipounamu South Island

pouākai ~ giant, extinct eagle, later also known as Haast’s eagle

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