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Motungarara: stone walls and intertwined communities

Motungarara is the innermost of three small islands off Kāpiti’s south-eastern end. Its whaling settlement occupied much of a narrow eastern shore platform, between roughly 15 and 30 metres wide. When archaeologists inspected it in April 1982, at least four dry-stone walls remained beneath secondary bush. The walls, no more than about 1.2 metres high, were probably parts of accommodation huts or other station buildings. Builders used local phyllonite, a schist-like stone also found on neighbouring Tahoramaurea.

Contemporary writers used several names for the island. Ernst Dieffenbach referred to “Hiko’s”, while other accounts called it “Lewis” Island. In December 1839 Dieffenbach described European whalers’ houses and Māori huts. The American whalers were associated with Captain “Horse” Lewis; Ngāti Toa leader Te Hiko-o-te-rangi was also whaling from the island with one boat around 1840. These accounts place Māori enterprise alongside the visiting whaling parties rather than outside the story.

The starting and closing dates of the station are not established. Its absence from the published 1844–47 returns suggests that whaling had ceased there before 1844, but does not give an exact end date. Drawings by William Swainson and J. A. Gilfillan provide additional visual testimony. Prickett also noted damage to parts of the site from later buildings and paths. Source: Prickett (2002), pp. 87–88; Dieffenbach and Wakefield as cited there.