canoe.’
Mike looked at each person in the room. Matt glanced around too. He wasn’t sure how often the others had heard this story, but they all appeared to be as eager to hear it as he was. Mike looked at him directly and continued.
‘They watched, afraid, as the boat floated toward them. Closer and closer it came. Then, before it reached them, the paddles were lifted out of the water and the boat turned as it floated where it lay. As it turned, her true size became apparent to the fishermen. The number of the crew and the measure of the boat were far greater than they had at first realised.’
One of the dining chairs creaked. Matt didn’t know who had shifted their weight. No one said a word. Only Mike’s voice broke the silence again.
‘As the fisherman watched, the men on the boat started to do something familiar. They were baiting fishing lines and throwing them into the sea on either side of the boat. The fisherman watched in awe as the newcomers hauled in huge numbers of fish. Each line carried a dozen or more and there were lines all up and down both sides of the boat. This excited the fisherman and their fear was forgotten in their greed. Their leader gave a signal and they raised the anchors and hurried in the direction of the biting fish. As they got closer, the people on the large boat collected up their lines, giving the Maori a chance to see them closer up. These men were different, appearing very strange to the locals. As a team, the newcomers raised their anchor, everyone in the middle of the boat chanting and pulling on a rope in harmony. The language of their chant was not one that the Maori knew, but the words sounded like this.’
Matthew caught Aimee’s eye. It was obvious from the look in them that this was the part she remembered from school. She was mesmerised and hanging on to Mike’s words. Mike cleared his throat.
‘Ka whakatakotoria… Ki te ika te wa o tu… E ko te tae o tu… E kore rarii. That was the chant as they pulled on the rope. When the anchor was on board the newcomers took up their paddles and chanted as they moved about. Their words sounded like… Pakepakeha, pakepakeha… Hoihoi hii, hoihoi hii… Hiho hoo, hihi hii.’
Aimee stifled a laugh. Her father glared at her. But Mike just smiled, oblivious to the disturbance. Finished with the chant, he relaxed a bit again and sat back to continue.
‘The Maori could now plainly see the occupants of the boat. They were turehu, fairy people. They were punehunehu, misty looking. Ma, which means fair or white and ma korako, which means pale like albinos. The boat turned and the newcomers retraced their arrival route, leaving by the same waters. As the Maori watched, the boat seemed to rise up on the sea as if they were paddling in mid air and they were lost in the billowing white clouds. The Maori knew that these must be fairy people, evil gods, or stillborn and whistling spirits. They were sighted many times before and after that day. Their chants are still remembered and the place where they chanted was called the Haka of the god. Mohi Turei tells that this boat of fairy people was seen long before the arrival of Captain Cook.’
Matt waited to be sure that the story was finished.
‘They chanted pakepakeha?’ Aimee asked, confirming the story was over.
‘Yes.’ Mike said. ‘It’s suggested that this could be the origin of the word Pakeha in its usage in context of white people.’
‘And who do you think the people in the boat were?’ Matt asked.
‘Your guess is as good as mine. But the historian who published the story in English suggested that it was probably remembering the visit of Abel Tasman. I think it’s older though.’
‘Fascinating. I wonder if it could have been the Spanish.’
‘Some say that Fernandez made it here. There’s also plenty of speculation about other Spanish ships, not to mention Portuguese. Until now though, any evidence is only circumstantial.’
‘We hope to change that, don’t we Matt?’ Aimee said.
Matt smiled. If he was able to find real evidence that the tale he just heard was true, it would be the proudest moment of his life.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We do indeed.’
CHAPTER 24
The countryside scrolled by the car windows at a comfortable 100km per hour. Aimee had busied herself studying a map, attempting to find their way to the site of the Crosshouse of Miringa Te Kakara. Now she was trying to explain what it was about the Crosshouse that should be interesting to them. Warren, upon hearing of their visit to the site, had been kind enough to supply Matt with a website printout that provided information of the theories of the house. More than could be comfortably consumed it seemed. Aimee held out a diagram briefly so that Matt could take a glance. She paraphrased some of the description of the house.
‘Two wings actually lay along the observable rise-and-set line of the winter solstice sunrise and summer solstice sunset at 60-degrees and 240-degrees respectively. The other two wings lie, therefore, at azimuths of 150 -degrees and 330-degrees.’
‘That would be hard to fluke. When was it built?’
‘Wait a sec.’ Shuffling of paper from his left. ‘Oh. No-one’s sure, but they reckon it was completed about 1865. Bishop Thomas Herangi, guardian of the Crosshouse up until the 1980’s, cited evidence of the star temple having been built in 1682, with renovations occurring in 1788 and 1887.’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Bugger.’ Aimee changed the subject. ‘This is Atiamuri junction. We’ve gotta turn left here and soon we turn back on 30 again, to Benneydale.’
‘Got it,’ Matt said, turning left at the T-junction they had just arrived at.
‘It’s probable,’ she switched back without pause, ‘that the winter solstice sunrise and the summer solstice sunset were observed from the centre pole or secondary poles through the open doorways. It’s also highly likely that the northern-most lunar standstill rise and the southern-most lunar standstill set could be observed through the elevated windows, with the observer seated to the front or side of the centre pole.’
‘That’s getting complex,’ Matt said.
‘The Crosshouse was described as a place for conducting the rites as in old times. The mathematical attributes of the Crosshouse show us very clearly what many of those rites were. Maths also shows how these traditions replicate the astronomical and navigational knowledge of the great civilisations of the Northern Hemisphere. The knowledge coded into the Crosshouse at Miringa Te Kakara has a direct pedigree back to Egypt, Great Britain and North America.’
‘It’ll be interesting to see if my compass can confirm any of that. I wonder where the Maori folk that built this house got such knowledge. Did they stumble upon the same lunar charting as other great civilizations by chance?’
‘You mean like what Jung called the collective unconscious?’
‘Exactly.’
Twenty-five minutes later, they left the car at a farmhouse near the settlement of Tiroa and made their way on foot to the remains of the Crosshouse. There was really nothing left except for the clear footprint of the building. Matt pulled out his pocket GPS receiver and set it to compass mode.
‘The website is right, you know, the axis of this wing is directly along the solstice. That is really interesting.’ Matt stared at the figures on his screen.
‘The website goes on to dissect the dimensions of the building in excruciating details, Matt. Do you want to see them?’
‘I have to admit I’m intrigued, but what does it all prove? We can only speculate where the knowledge to build this came from. Even the website agrees that these sorts of measurements were used by a multitude of civilisations.’
‘They apparently have a lot of correlations with the measurements made in Rennes-le-Chateau,’ Aimee added.
‘That’s more Warren’s sort of thing. Fascinating as it is, I don’t know enough to go much beyond being curious. It would be damned interesting to have some real research done here though. I wonder if that DCI mob
