My Taranaki Anniversary Day 9.2

More Sites between Oakura and town

At the top of the hill west of Omata is the ridge running towards the sea from Hurford Road. Here a number of skirmishes took place during the wars of the sixties. At the highest point is the site of the home of Tom Gilbert, a pacifist Baptist minister, who was friendly with many local Maori, and was warned of impending trouble and took shelter with Parson Brown, the vicar at Omata, on the day of the Battle of Waireka.

To reach the battle site, you turn right along Waireka Road a bit further down the ridge, and a few hundred metres down Waireka Road, before if turns downhill, on the left-hand side is the site of the

battle.

Almost opposite Waireka Road is the site of a redoubt built by the militia.

The cottage beside its original site, on top of the mound.

Immediately above it, on a cleared spur of the Kaitake Ranges,

is the site of the Kaitake Redoubt. 

The next wartime site is immediately past Koru Road. Right against a small hill on the left of the main road is a nineteenth century cottage, used by farm workers. Originally it stood on top of the hill as part of a defensive position. It was prefabricated in Auckland and shipped by barge and erected there as part of a blockhouse. After the war it was re-erected on its present site and has been used by farm workers ever since. It has been described by historians as the most important historic building in Taranaki.

Just before the road goes down to cross the Oakura River, there is another Redoubt site, St Andrew's, on the right on the edge of the valley. And from this part of the road one has a view of the Kaitake ranges with the Kaitake Ridge reading down towards Oakura, where the Kaitake Redoubt was built, just beyond the end of the present Wairau Road.