PROVENANCE

Purchased from International Art Centre, c. 1994

Private Collection, Bay of Plenty

In Kakahi much of what makes life worth living has been preserved: it's countryside has retained some of the beauty that made New Zealand unique.

I know every pool on it's miles of river, every track in it's surrounding bush. It has been my escape and hideout from an ever more strident and ugly world, my refuge from the inane persecution of the telephone. It has restored my faith in this world as a place to live in and has bought to me like heaped-up riches, the beauty of the bush and rivers of my country, New Zealand, for Kakahi is New Zealand.

Text: Kakaki, New Zealand, Peter McIntyre, A H & A W Reed, 1972.

The King Country is a region of the western North Island of New Zealand. It extends approximately from the Kawhia Harbour and the town of Otorohanga in the north to the upper reaches of the Whanganui River in the south, and from the Hauhungaroa and Rangitoto Ranges in the east to near the Tasman Sea in the west. It comprises hill country, large parts of which are forested.

The term King Country dates from the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, when colonial forces invaded the Waikato and forces of the Maori King Movement withdrew south of what was called the aukati, or boundary, a line of pa alongside the Puniu River near Kihikihi. Land behind the aukati remained native territory, with Europeans warned they crossed it under threat of death.