Judith Galtry embarks on an exploration of marine monikers to figure out the correct designation for the body of water that we can see from our shores.
Denis Glover, New Zealand poet extraordinaire and onetime Paekākāriki resident, had a Royal Navy and sailing background. He also wrote many poems about the sea.
The Sea
Calm as a buddha, or with wrinkled brow
Cats-pawed or flailed by the feckless wind,
The sea surrounds us.
Turn now the
Enquiring eye
To the sea’s margin,
To the land’s rough edge,
To the antiseptic, salt-tongued, smothering sea:
For the sea’s a link…
I recently authored a piece titled ‘The Last Hermit of Paekākāriki’ about my neighbour, which can be found here. But little did I know that I was blithely sailing into the tricky waters of marine terminology, effectively caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
In the initial draft of the story, inspired by the hermit’s old drinking companion and one of New Zealand’s foremost poets, Denis Glover, I had written that the hermit’s cottage (The Hutch), ‘overlooked the Tasman Sea’. However, a knowledgeable geographer friend who reviewed it recommended stating that Paekākāriki faces the Cook Strait for accuracy. I took this comment onboard and changed it accordingly. But no sooner was ‘The Last Hermit’ published, than a reader wrote to me claiming that Paekākāriki looks out over the Tasman Sea, not the Cook Strait!
So, which is it? I must confess that I have gazed at this sometimes fierce and blustery seascape for more than forty years, indifferent to its name. It was high time to embark on an exploration of marine monikers to figure out the correct designation for the body of water before us, the sea that we see.
The Sea, the Sea
In ‘The Rip,’ part of his famous, fourteen-poem series Sings Harry, Denis Glover takes a big picture view of Aotearoa’s coastline:
At one flank old Tasman, the boar,
Slashes and tears,
And the other Pacific’s sheer
Mountainous anger devours,
Sings Harry in the wind-break.
In this work, the poet vividly depicts the frequently tempestuous character of the Tasman Sea along the west coast of Aotearoa. And even when in residence in his Paekākāriki cottage, at 66 Ames Street, Glover was convinced it was the Tasman Sea that he gazed out over. In a typically evocative letter to an old navy friend, he asked him to post his snuff supply to the Paekākāriki Hotel to bypass his ‘wife’ Khura (who feared it caused brain damage), ‘then I can snuff up overlooking our loved and feared rolling ocean, named for Tasman that redoubtable sailor and drunkard.’
But clearly not everyone agrees with the master wordsmith’s nomenclature. So which oceans, seas, sea, or other stretches of water does Paekākāriki look out over?
Globally, Aotearoa consists of a series of small islands in the expansive Pacific Ocean / Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. However, within these oceans are seas – specific parts of the ocean that lie between major landmasses. Positioned between the west coast of Aotearoa and the east coast of Australia is the Tasman Sea / Te Tai-o-Rēhua, named, as Glover notes, after the plucky Dutch explorer who first navigated it in 1642.
Then there are straits: narrow waterways that connect two larger bodies of water. Many of us can readily grasp the nautical metaphor of being in dire straits. Cook Strait / Te Moana-o-Raukawa, located between Te Ika-a-Māui (North Island) and Te Waipounamu (South Island), is the most famous strait in Aotearoa. Its European name belongs to the English explorer, James Cook, the first known European to have sailed through it in 1770, in his circumnavigation of the North Island. Over a century earlier, Abel Tasman bypassed this passage of water, believing it was closed off at one end, forming a bight. According to Māori oral tradition, the renowned navigator Kupe traversed this strait in his waka while chasing after a giant octopus, Te Wheke-a-Muturangi.
The Cook Strait area features numerous types of waterways with distinct characteristics. One such type is a channel, which is a body of water connecting two larger bodies, especially seas. The English Channel in the northern hemisphere is a well-known example. Although not visible from Paekākāriki, the distant Tory Channel / Kura Te Au is part of this network.
More locally, the Rauoterangi Channel, also known as the Otaheke Strait or, colloquially, as ‘the moat’, lies between the beaches of Paraparaumu and Waikanae and Kāpiti Island. This particular channel is 5.6 kilometres wide and up to 70 metres deep, named after Kahe Te Rau-o-te-rangi, a Ngāti Toa chieftainess who swam its length in 1824 to alert mainland residents of an imminent threat. A significant portion of the Kāpiti marine reserve falls within this waterway, known for its strong ocean currents and as a migratory route for whales. Interestingly, Kahe, famed for her swimming feat, eventually ‘married’ John Nicoll (‘Scotch Jock’), the first recognised publican of Paekākariki and former whaler; she was subsequently known as Peti, or Betty, Nicholl.
From Paekākāriki you can see Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui; a sound is a smaller body of water typically linked to a sea or an ocean. Out of sight, is another narrow and dangerous stretch of water, Te Aumiti / French Pass separating Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D’Urville Island and Te Waipounamu / South Island. French explorer and man of many names, Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont D’Urville, christened the pass after navigating it in his ship, Astrolabe. French Pass is known for the fastest tidal flows in Aotearoa; reportedly swift and turbulent enough at times to stun fish!
So, what are the boundaries of the Cook Strait, the main body of water before us? And is this really the correct designation for this stretch of water?
What do Ngāti Toa think? On their website, the Iwi say ‘[t]he rohe of Ngāti Toa extends from the Whangaehu River south along the ranges to Turakirae. It then crosses Raukawa Moana (Cook Strait) to Marlborough and Nelson.’ So, for Ngāti Toa, it is not the Cook Strait but Raukawa Moana, although sometimes it is named Te Moana-o-Raukawa or, as on the Interislander ferry website, Te Moana o Raukawakawa.
If you listen to the marine forecast, the Cook Strait area runs from Cape Campbell on the Marlborough coast, across to Cape Palliser on the Wairarapa shores. Its northern boundary is north of Kāpiti Island off our coast and straight across to Stephens Island at the northernmost tip of the Marlborough sounds.
The LINZ Cook Strait NZ 46 marine chart covers a similar area to that described by Ngāti Toa.
Toitū Te Whenua | Land Information New Zealand highlights the power and unpredictability of tidal streams in the Cook Strait, advising mariners ‘to exercise every precaution when navigating in the vicinity.’ In 2006, scuba diver Rob Hewitt, brother of former All Black Norm Hewitt, learnt this the hard way while on a diving trip off the Kāpiti Coast. Caught in a rip, he was dragged by powerful tides and currents along Paekākāriki’s coast for three nights, until he was eventually rescued.
Tides and currents deposit mountains of mulch on our beach after floods carry sticks, leaves, and occasionally unusual items like onions and golf balls from the many rivers to our north. This typically results in a diverse mix of sand, sediment, and various debris that usually flows in a southward direction.
Turning our attention from the ocean to the coastal shorelines, Paekākāriki residents may find another map interesting: the Ecological Districts map created by the Department of Conservation. On this map, the Cook Strait Ecological District covers the ‘very exposed steep coastal escarpments, terraces, headlands and islands on either side of Cook Strait’, the Paekākāriki-Pukerua Bay Escarpment Track and the former Perkins’ Farm escarpment, as well as Kāpiti Island. The coast north of our village is part of the Foxton Ecological District, while Whareroa Farm Reserve and Mt Wainui to the east belong to the Wellington Ecological District. The DOC boundaries let you place one foot in each ecological district, much like the artificial tsunami line.
So, despite his maritime experience and his eloquence, I believe Denis Glover should have said that he was observing Te Moana-o-Raukawa / Cook Strait.
Regarding Glover’s former Paekākāriki companion, the hermit, during his prime fishing days in his small wooden dinghy without a life jacket and occasionally under the influence, he likely did not give a damn whether he was on the Cook Strait or the Tasman Sea as long as he had a snapper or two to clean on the beach and later fry in butter for his dinner.
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