Taonga

After dropping Gill off at work, I went to the Auckland War Memorial Museum to see the National Geographic Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition 2014 - stunning stuff, highly inspiring!!

A wander through the galleries afterwards led me to Tiki. According to the blurb:

"This waharoa (gateway) is named Tiki, after an ancestor of the Ngāti Tūnohopū people of Rotorua, who are a hapū (subtribe) of Ngāti Whakaue.

In the 1830s, the people of Ohinemutu fortified Pukeroa pā - on the hill now surrounded by the town of Rotorua - in preparation for an attack by Te Waharoa and his Ngāti Haua warriors. Three entrances were left in the stockade that surrounded the hill, each guarded by an ancestor carved on the gateway. Tiki was on the north side facing Utuhina Stream.

Later Tiki was moved down to Ohinemutu village on the lake shore."