Mt Maunganui challenge

By COLIN MOORE

Asked to choose an icon that represents the city, Tauranga residents had no hesitation in picking Mt Maunganui.

The sentinel that guards the entrance to Tauranga Harbour is just 232m high but it is a soaring beacon along the length of the Bay of Plenty coast.

On its summit is a stone cairn commemorating Peace Day on July 19, 1919 (the Treaty of Versailles had been signed late in June). A beacon fire lit on Mt Maunganui on Peace Day was answered by 14 others between Athenree and Maketu.

Known to Maori as Mauao, the ancient volcano has been a regional focal point for more than six centuries.

Mt Maunganui was the site of one of the country's most significant Maori villages and a defensive pa. Its shell middens, still visible today, were so deep from centuries of use that they were once mined to pave many of the streets of an infant Tauranga.

Maori terraced the slopes to site their homes, dug storage pits and cut defensive trenches. Their efforts are visible from the system of tracks and paths that were built around the volcano in the 1960s in tandem with a programme of replanting native vegetation.

Now Mauao again feels the tramp of many feet as the trails around it and to the summit draw thousands of visitors every year.

The coastal track, which takes about one hour from start to finish, begins at Pilot Bay where, in the 1860s, the British militia built a camp and a stone jetty, the first in the bustling port of Mt Maunganui. Stone steps they laid are still visible.

The track mainly stays about 50m above the coastline but there is a short detour to a sandy beach near the statue to Tangaroa that guards the entrance to Tauranga Harbour.

Further around the volcano there are tidal platforms beneath the pohutakawa and sandy coves at low tide.

The Oruahine and Waikorere tracks to the summit, suitable for people of reasonable fitness, begin in the camping ground in downtown Mt Maunganui. A full circuit of the coastal and summit tracks can take two to three hours, but is well worth it.

From here almost the whole of Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty is laid out, south along the coast to Whakatane, north to the Coromandel and inland to the Kaimai Ranges.

Probably the most enjoyable and interesting route is to take the Oruahine Track around the base of seaward cliffs to the summit and descend down the Waikorere Track through native bush.

Mountain bikes and dogs are not permitted on the mountain.

When you have finished the walk you can take a dip in the hot saltwater pools at the foot of the mountain. Natural salt water is warmed to a soothing 39 deg C in three private and two outdoor spa pools. The complex also has a slightly cooler swimming pool.

* Details of the Mt Maunganui walks are included in a Tauranga City brochure, Walkways of Tauranga, available from the city information office. They are also described in Wild Walks, Sixty Short North Island Walks, by Mark Pickering.