NZ travel: Searching for greenstone in Hokitika and the West Coast

Tour guide and katiaki pounamu, Te Rua Mason from Te Rua & Sons Pounamu Trails. Photo / Jacqui Gibson

Where on the West Coast is New Zealand greenstone found? Jacqui Gibson journeys upriver to find out

We meet at Arahura Marae, a five-minute drive north of Hokitika, just after nine. The morning is warm and overcast when I pull into the carpark. My tour guide, Te Rua Mason from Te Rua & Sons Pounamu Trails, 45, is kitted out in Canterbury rugby shorts, rugby socks, well-worn tramping boots and a sky-blue sweatshirt embroidered with the words: Kiwi Rugby Football Club. "Did you put on sunblock?" he asks, grabbing a fistful of long grey hair, tying it into a top knot and revealing an intricate tā moko (facial tattoo). I nod. Taking Te Rua's lead on the weather, I leave my woollen beanie, heavy tramping jacket and knitted scarf in the car and follow him on to the marae grounds.

I've flown to Hokitika from Wellington to learn about New Zealand pounamu from Ngāti Waewae, one of two Poutini Ngāi Tahu hapū (West Coast sub-tribes) responsible for its harvest, sale and care. The plan is to walk the Arahura River with Te Rua, take in his kōrero (talk) and maybe find a stone or two while we're there.

Arahura Marae

Our first stop on the three-hour hikoi (walk) is Ngāti Waewae's hilltop marae, Tūhuru. With views over the Arahura river mouth, the bejewelled, blue-green marae is the tūrangawaewae (standing place) of approximately 6000 people with family ties to Tūhuru, the Ngāti Waewae chief who led the fight against Ngāti Wairangi that ultimately wrested control of pounamu for Ngāi Tahu.

I see Tūhuru's patterned face atop the wharenui, directly under the carved jade figurehead of Tamāhua. Tūhuru wears tā moko and large droplet earrings made of pounamu. Pounamu is embedded in the eyes of the pou, Tūmatauenga (the Māori God of War), at the marae entrance gate. Two large immovable greenstone boulders mark the left and right edges of the marae grounds – one partly worked to reveal a dark bottle-green face, the other in its natural whitish state yet somehow still glowing a luminous green underneath a chalky skin. There is carved pounamu throughout the meeting house, in walls, in carvings and laid at the base of the wharenui's central pillar.

Pointing to a bush-clad hill out front, Te Rua explains it's where tribal elders planted a pounamu kōhatu (stone) more than decade ago when the marae opened in 2014. "It was like the planting of a seed – it marked the beginning of this new marae and a new era for our people."

Walking the river

We're walking the banks of the Arahura River when Te Rua describes his personal connection to the sacred riverstone depicted in the pounamu-green lines on his face. "Foraging for pounamu is something that's been passed down the generations from father to son for hundreds of years," he says, using the wet tip of a mānuka staff to poke at a dry rock under foot.

Foraging for pounamu in the rivers of the West Coast is something that's been passed down the generations for hundreds of years. Photo / Jacqui Gibson

Turning it over and over before walking on, Te Rua tells me: "Growing up, I remember my grandfather saying how he'd get his 13 kids, my aunties and uncles, down here after a flood, spacing them out at a particular distance to comb the river banks looking for pounamu. There wasn't a price on pounamu back then. It was a taonga for other reasons – for its wairua, strength and mana."

"Ah ha!" I call out, interrupting our chat. Picking up a greenish coloured rock, I pass it to Te Rua for closer inspection. "Serpentine," he says, shaking his head. "It's a brittle stone, a bit like fools' gold. But, if you like it, take it home. If it spoke to you in some way, it's yours."

As we walk the river, Te Rua guides me on what to look for, drawing from a collection of raw pounamu in his backpack. Chalky white stones or stones that emanate whitish green can be pounamu, he says, pulling out a greyish green rock known as inanga to illustrate the point. Yellow, green and even a brown speckled stone known as kōkopu is considered pounamu, too.

Before colonisation forced Poutini Ngāi Tahu from their prized pounamu rivers, greenstone was widely traded among tribes and fashioned into weapons, tools and keepsakes.

In more recent years, anyone strong enough or with the necessary means could take it and often did, including farmers, miners and tourists. In 1997, the law changed, returning all New Zealand pounamu to Ngāi Tahu, formally acknowledging the iwi's status as kaitiaki (guardian) of the precious resource.

A brown speckled stone known as kokopu is considered pounamu, too. Photo / Jacqui Gibson

Kaitiaki pounamu

As Te Rua's dogs, Rasta and Beth, pace happily around us, I ask him what it means to be kaitiaki pounamu.

"It's about ensuring Arahura pounamu and its traditions are here for future generations. Personally, for me, it's about passing on what I know to my kids and together, as a whānau, bringing people – local school kids, tourists, anyone really – to the river to see, experience and learn about it for themselves."

I don't find any pounamu on our walk — so Te Rua gives me a stunning raw stone from his collection to take home instead. Yet I know coming to the river today to load up on pounamu wasn't the point.

As we say goodbye, Te Rua says: "One of the best things about foraging for pounamu is that you get to walk the awa, listen to the birds, hear the rustle of the leaves in the trees and enjoy the sound of rushing rapids. Sometimes you think about life and loved ones. Sometimes you think about nothing at all."

The pounamu pou at the Paparoa Track. Photo / Jacqui Gibson

• Book a pounamu hikoi with Te Rua & Sons Pounamu Trails at: westcoast.co.nz/visit/plan-your-trip/activity/jade
• Buy your own professionally carved piece of authenticated Ngāi Tahu pounamu (sourced from the Arahura River or another pounamu river on the West Coast) by visiting the Ngāti Waewae pounamu centre in Hokitika or by checking out: waewaepounamu.co.nz
• For more things to see and do in the region, go to westcoast.co.nz

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