Kohukohu is an historic village on the Hokianga Harbour in the far north of the North Island. It was one of the first European settlements in New Zealand. The Hokianga Harbour, also known as The Hokianga River or more frequently simply as The Hokianga is a long estuarial drowned valley and its surrounding area on the west coast in the north of the North Island of New Zealand. ... North Island The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, the other being the South Island. ...

Kohukohu is situated on the northern shore of the harbour where it splits into two rivers, the Mangamuka River branching inland to the northeast and the Waihou River leading towards the east past Mangungu, Horeke and Rangiahua. Rangiahua is a small locality near the Hokianga Harbour in the Northland Region of New Zealand. ...

Where the harbour divides there is a small island called Motiti which was painted by Augustus Earle, the first European artist to spend several months in New Zealand, during his visit to the Hokianga in 1827. He wrote "we were sailing up a spacious sheet of water, which became considerably wider after entering it; while majestic hills rose on each side .... looking up the river we beheld various headlands stretching into the water and gradually contracting its width, 'till they became fainter and fainter in the distance and all was lost in the azure of the horizon". Augustus Earle, , (1824): watercolour; 17. ...

Early History

According to Te Tai Tokerau tradition, Kupe visited the area in 925 AD prior to his return voyage to Hawaiiki. Angry at the food from the hangi (earth oven) being insufficiently cooked, he cursed those responsible using the word kohu. Hence Kohukohu. Stephenson Percy Smith, 1905[1] In the Māori mythology of some tribes, Kupe was involved in the Polynesian discovery of New Zealand. ...

The first recorded European to enter the Hokianga Harbour arrived in 1819 and by the 1830's, Kohukohu was the heart of New Zealand's timber industry.

For nearly one hundred years Kohukohu was an important timber milling town and the largest commercial centre on the north of the harbour. In 1900, the township had a population of more than 1,000 people.

External links

• Kohukohu community website

Coordinates: 35°21′S 173°32′E Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...