Of high cultural significance to Ngai Tahu whanui, Rakituma / Preservation Inlet also bears witness to journeys of the earliest European explorers and residents of New Zealand. Rakituma / Preservation Inlet draws together evidence of Maori traditions and life-ways, the experiences of early European explorers, and the people who followed in their wake to this remote area. Rakituma / Preservation Inlet provides insight into the first commercial industries that prompted prolonged early contact between Maori and Pakeha. The sites at Rakituma / Preservation Inlet - early Maori settlement sites; places named by Captain Cook; one of New Zealand’s first whaling sites, the subject of the first written land use agreement between Maori and Pakeha; and evidence of shipping, mining, and milling - tell stories that are of outstanding significance in New Zealand’s history. Together, these places tell the history of people using resources in this isolated and spectacular area.
Ngai Tahu korero records that the fiords represent the raised sides of Te Waka o Aoraki (the canoe of Aoraki) which foundered, its occupants turning to stone. Generations later, the southern fiords were carved out of the waka by Tu Te Rakiwhanoa to create a place to live, safe havens on the wild coastline, stocked with fish and birds and plants that would sustain travellers. Maori seasonally occupied the fiords and travelled the rugged coastline for over six hundred years prior to Europeans first venturing to their islands.
Although visited by sealers in the 1790s, whalers were the first Europeans to live in Rakituma / Preservation Inlet when Peter Williams set up one of the country’s earliest shore whaling stations at Cuttle Cove in 1828. Williams’ land deal was also the first documentary land arrangement with Maori in the South Island. The whaling station closed in the mid-1830s. The next people to live in the inlet were the lighthouse keepers at Puysegur Point who manned this isolated station from January 1879 until the keepers were finally withdrawn in 1990.
Gold and coal miners and sawmillers followed in the 1890s – carving out an existence in New Zealand’s most isolated goldfields at the small settlements of Cromarty and Te Oneroa. The miners built batteries, pack tracks, adits (horizontal mining tunnels) and tunnels. These remains, including boilers and the Tarawera Smelter, though buried deep in Fiordland’s dense bush, are monuments to the rugged lives of these miners.
In the twentieth century, the lighthouse keepers were the only permanent residents. Rakituma / Preservation Inlet remained a haven for boaties and increasingly an attraction for visitors and tourists on cruises to this wild and scenic area. In 1986, Rakituma / Preservation Inlet’s natural heritage values were recognised when it was inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of Te Wahipounamu – South West New Zealand.
Ngai Tahu korero records that the fiords represent the raised sides of Te Waka o Aoraki (the canoe of Aoraki) which foundered, its occupants turning to stone. Generations later, the southern fiords were carved out of the waka by Tu Te Rakiwhanoa to create a place to live, safe havens on the wild coastline, stocked with fish and birds and plants that would sustain travellers. Maori seasonally occupied the fiords and travelled the rugged coastline for over six hundred years prior to Europeans first venturing to their islands.
Although visited by sealers in the 1790s, whalers were the first Europeans to live in Rakituma / Preservation Inlet when Peter Williams set up one of the country’s earliest shore whaling stations at Cuttle Cove in 1828. Williams’ land deal was also the first documentary land arrangement with Maori in the South Island. The whaling station closed in the mid-1830s. The next people to live in the inlet were the lighthouse keepers at Puysegur Point who manned this isolated station from January 1879 until the keepers were finally withdrawn in 1990.
Gold and coal miners and sawmillers followed in the 1890s – carving out an existence in New Zealand’s most isolated goldfields at the small settlements of Cromarty and Te Oneroa. The miners built batteries, pack tracks, adits (horizontal mining tunnels) and tunnels. These remains, including boilers and the Tarawera Smelter, though buried deep in Fiordland’s dense bush, are monuments to the rugged lives of these miners.
In the twentieth century, the lighthouse keepers were the only permanent residents. Rakituma / Preservation Inlet remained a haven for boaties and increasingly an attraction for visitors and tourists on cruises to this wild and scenic area. In 1986, Rakituma / Preservation Inlet’s natural heritage values were recognised when it was inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of Te Wahipounamu – South West New Zealand.
