Waikaremoana Day 2

Waikaremoana means ‘Sea of Rippling Water’. We are in the Te Urewera National Park (Te Urewera means ‘Burned Penis’!). The lake was formed when a giant landslide blocked a river (many thousands of years ago) so underneath the lake are thousands of submerged trees. The whole area is shrouded in mist and mysticism. The local Tuhoe people, known as ‘Children of the Mist’ never signed the Treaty of Waitangi. At the beginning of the 20^th Century the army of Te Kooti took refuge in the mountains during the running battles with government troops. He was eventually arrested in 1916 but you still tend to look for him when out in the bush. I think that most of the Tuhoe people now live in Ruatahuna which is on the northern edge of the national park.

The Lake House Hotel opened in 1900 and become the official Government Tourist Hotel in 1909. The hotel, along with the other hotels under Government managed, were never financially viable. The Lake House catered for people who had money to stay there, but the costs of providing a deluxe service were so high, that they closed the hotel in 1972. I am not sure whether the building burnt down or it was demolished – a bit of both I think.

I worked in the hotel from November, 1964 until March 1965. There were 15 rooms in the hotel and there must have been about 20 or more staff. It was a bit of an ‘upstairs, downstairs’ arrangement. The hotel manager and his wife (the Wagstaffs), the girls who were in the front office (of ‘good’ background) and the bar manager (ex British military) and his wife, slept in guest rooms, ate in the guest dining room and mixed with the guests. We did not mix with them or the guests. The rest of us slept in the staff quarters and ate in the staff dining room and had a great time. Gossip abounded in the hotel, and we were always making stories up about the guests. The staff were an interesting bunch of people and consisted of the head waiter (who disappeared now and again to go on a drinking binge), his wife (Austrian) and baby, the cook (Swiss), local Maori, students, two teachers earning extra money, and people who were on ‘working’ holidays. The chef was very volatile, and threw a knife at me once because I messed up an order. Luckily it missed but we had trouble pulling it out of the wooden floor. In our free time (afternoons and one day off a week), we explored the area. We took a dinghy out most days, sometimes we used oars but mostly we took one that had an outboard motor. We tried fishing but the line kept getting caught around the propellers and we were forever getting into trouble for messing up the motor. My parents sent me a life jacket which I took with me, but never wore! We walked all the short tracks, often wearing rubber flip flops, and learnt about the history and geography of the area. I was not a successful waitress, but it was a tremendous experience and I made many really good friends, especially Jackie who I then continued travelling with to Christchurch and Sydney. (And we are both still travelling).

Today, it was very misty and sometimes drizzly. Altogether we spent about 4 ½ hours walking, half of which was uphill. It got very chilly when we walked up to Lake Waikareiti and we were glad we wearing fleeces and jackets. We had lunch by the Aniwaniwa Falls – we could not talk because of the noise of the water but sat and admired the scenery.There were very few people around so we had the place to ourselves, which was a real treat. We did not meet Te Kooti, or any wild bulls either, which was a relief. We did hear lots of sounds from the birds though, magic.