Forty Years in New Zealand: Including a personal narrative, An Account of Maoridom, and of the Christianization and Colonisation of the Country. 

J Buller 

1878 

Hoddes and Stoughton 

 

Book 

The spacious entrance lies between overlapping sand-spits, upon which the sea is always breaking. FOur large rivers flow into the estuary, which is about six miles across at teh Heads. These are the Kaipara, the Oruawaharo, the Otamatea and the Wairoa. THey are all navigable for large ships. It is far up, on the last-names of these rivers, that our station was being formed. Vessels of heavy burden can go up fifty miles or more. After that the river gradually narrows, is toruous in its course, and suited only for steamers. BUller describes the harbour as being surrounded by valuable forests of kauri pine. In going across the country, I have rested on the apeax of a lofty mound, bare of trees from which I had a wide outlook. As far as the eye could range, there was but a vast sweep of slient and sombre woodland with the river like a silver thread, wandering through it. 

Mātauranga Māori 

Kaipara (N.Z.)--christainity--religion--Wairoa--history--european settlement--Matauranga Maori