Editorial: Mysterious Mt Parihaka sign vanishes from sight

This Mt Parihaka sign was erected above a slip, and then it disappeared. Photo / Terry Conaghan

Some people thought they were seeing things at the weekend.

So it was a relief for a few readers when the Advocate published a photograph of a sign on Mt Parihaka, proving it was real. Well done Terry Conaghan for taking the photo.

Because the sign vanished over the weekend as mysteriously as it appeared.

It seems like it might have been a new phenomenon - a mobile tag.

One thing that was very clear - it was dangerous.

The sign was erected at the top of a slip that shows as a white scar on the side of on Mt Parihaka, and has done for more than a century.

A photograph taken in 1902 shows farmers gathering on Kensington Park. And in the background, on Mt Parihaka, is the same white scar of a landslip.

It was mostly covered over with bush and plants until a few years ago, when it "slipped" again in heavy rain.

So to stand atop the scar, and erect a large sign (albeit temporary) is risky business.

It's not the first time someone has sent a message from this spot.

In the early 1940s, adjacent to the slip, some Whangarei characters carved a "V" in the hillside, to replicate British PM Winston Churchill's V for victory sign.

By the way, it was well known that away from prying media cameras, Churchill was prone to flipping the V around and raising a cheer or two from the troops.

In Whangarei, according to local Jim Collier, some lads from the Beazley, Conaghan and Collier families were involved in the carving of the V.

(Funnily enough, the person who took the photo of the sign is a Conaghan.

The V is still there, somewhere.

And 70-odd years later, someone else is sending a message from the Parihaka slip, albeit a little less clear than the one the town got in the 1940s.