THIS WAS WAITAHA LAND. I am Waitaha. Most of us are gone, but I have found a way to stay. Given the choice, we would all stay because the lake is very tapu. There is a great sadness in the lake and this gives it power. We have all known sadness and can understand this.

Long ago, when the first Maori came to Aotearoa, we pulled our canoe from the ocean and built villages up and down the islands. The Waitaha settled here, next to a bottomless well. A wise priest guarded this well. He slept next to it and told it stories to keep the well happy and full. And the well never went dry, but it grew harder and harder to see until only the priest could use it. We call a man with this special sight tohunga.

The tohunga decided to marry. His high station allowed him to choose a beautiful wife, Mona, and Mona was very young indeed. The whole tribe cheered at their wedding but for one man, Rupe. Rupe was a hunter and he lived alone in the forest. He envied the tohunga for his water and for Mona.

The tohunga was called away to a neighboring tribe to help them find water in the well that became Lake Te Anau. While he was gone, Rupe came to Mona and told lies about her husband. He gained her trust and took advantage by laying with her in the forest. Mona hid this from the tohunga, even during the pregnancy that followed. She had made a mistake and knew this.

The time came for Mona to give birth and the tohunga brought her to his well. He said to her, "Mona, I will draw the water from the ground. If you drink straight from the well, our baby will be strong and brave. The well protects goodness and cleanses evil." Mona knelt beside her husband and the water rose up like a spring fountain. She took a small sip and felt a pain in her stomach. The water became fire in her belly, and in this way, she knew that the baby would die. Rupe's baby would die.

Mona cried, "I have betrayed you! I am sorry for what I have done!" The tohunga placed his hands on her belly and saw Rupe, saw the angry water at work inside his wife. "I am ashamed," he said and with his hands still on her belly, the tohunga eased Mona's pain. She cried again, but he pulled her to her feet and told her to leave. "Keep walking Mona, until you reach the ocean on the other side," and this is why the penguins come to Oamaru, where they once played for Mona in her grief. The tohunga looked deep in the well and it started to rise, higher than before, faster and higher until the ground broke free in a torrent of tall waves.

The whole village was destroyed in the flood that made the lake, this lake here, Manapouri. And that is why we respect the lake, because it is the wrath of a man and the tears of a woman. Kia mahara ki te he o Rona ... remember the wrongful act of Mona, who opened her heart too wide for this world ... kia mahara ki te he o Rona.


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