This historic place is the main rock art shelter at what is known as the Takiroa Rock Art Site. The rock art is protected by metal caging on a portion of land vested in Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu. The earliest known European recordings of rock art in New Zealand were taken here by Walter Mantell, who sketched a group of drawings of the site in 1852. In 1896 the site was photographed by Augustus Hamilton, then director of the Otago Museum. These early recordings are extremely important as many of the figures shown by Mantell and Hamilton were later removed from the shelter by a visiting American scholar, Dr J. L. Elmore.