Taieri Mouth

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Fishing boats moored at Taieri Mouth

Taieri Mouth is the small fishing village at the mouth of the Taieri River, New Zealand. Taieri Island lies in the ocean several hundred metres off the river's mouth.

It has a nice white sand beach for swimming and several picnic areas. Another feature is the walking track that follows the Taieri River from the mouth through the lower gorge through to Henley.

Taieri Mouth is located 40km southwest of urban Dunedin (and is at the southern corner of the official city of Dunedin) and 10km east of Lake Waihola.

It gained a little notoriety or sadness in the 1990s as the place where the father of convicted murderer David Bain worked.

There was a Maori occupation site at Taieri Mouth, with moa bones, indicating it was from the Moa Hunter (Archaic) period of Maori culture.

According to oral tradition in the early 18th century Tuwiriroa moved from Tititea on the Kawarau River near modern Queenstown and built a pa, (fortified settlement), Motupara, near Taieri Mouth. A rival, Tukiauau, had already built a pa, Whakaraupuka, inland on the Taieri Plain by Lake Waihola. Tuwiriroa had a daughter Haki Te Kura, famous for swimming across Lake Wakatipu. Tukiauau had a handsome son Korokiwhiti. The daughter and son now fell in love but the woman's father, the chief of the Taieri Mouth pa, disapproved. The young man's father was a hunted man. Hearing his enemies had discovered his whereabouts he decided to abandon the upriver settlement and move his people further south. As they came down the river in their canoes the distraught young woman attempted to jump from a rock into her lover's craft but struck the prow and was killed. Adding insult to injury her head was severed and held up angrily to her people on the shore as the flotilla passed by to the sea. There were repercussions and Tukiauau and his son were pursued and eventually killed.

Maori occupation continued and Edward Shortland recorded a small settlement here in 1843 and Maori were still living there in 1850.

An early European settler was a former whaler, 'The Hermit of Taieri Mouth', also known as 'John Bull' whose real name was John Edward O'Neil. He is remembered for his boisterous ways and prodigious strength.