It’s hard to get lost on the Milford Track, but you’ll still want to take a map. There’s the trusty Topo50 CB08 Homer Tunnel paper map. Or you could take a digital map on your GPS or phone. Or, how about… a song? 

In the 1920s and 30s, Pākehā historian and ethnographer James Herries Beattie travelled the South Island by train and bicycle visiting Ngāi Tahu elders to record customary knowledge. He was notorious within the tribe for asking up to a thousand questions. Beattie was talking to an old hākui (grandmother) one day and mentioned he’d heard reports of a Māori route between Te Anau and Milford, which he’d assumed to be false. “She very considerably surprised me by giving me the Māori name of Sutherland Falls,” he wrote, “and quoting an old Māori song in support of the name.” 

‘Te Tau-tea ka tu’, went the song. It’s a lovely line in te reo Māori, likening the tallest waterfall in the country to a white thread standing against the cliff – an excellent description of the falls. 

The song didn’t just mention that epic waterfall. It detailed key landmarks along the route from Te Awa-o-Hine (Arthur River) to Ōmanui Mackinnon Pass. In fact, it wasn’t simply a song. It was an oral map.

So what is an oral map? It’s a song, story or chant that passes on knowledge about a route. Māori culture is full of them. Woven into each story or song is a list of place names in the order you’d encounter them. They’re entertaining mnemonics, designed to help retain geographical knowledge.

Take the Ngāi Tahu creation story of pounamu. If you’re walking the Paparoa Track, keep an eye out for places along the tops where you might get a glimpse of the coast. It’s known as Te Tai Poutini, the coast of Poutini, a bad-tempered taniwha said to swim around there. He is famous for kidnapping the beautiful Waitaiki from Tūhua (Mayor Island) in the Bay of Plenty, then fleeing south to Arahura with Waitaiki’s husband Tama-ahua in hot pursuit. At Arahura the jealous taniwha turned Waitaiki into his own essence, pounamu, and placed her in the river, where she still rests. 

How is this an oral map? Well, each place where Poutini stopped just so happens to be the site of an important pre-European quarry, including Pāhua, near Punakaiki where the Paparoa Track ends. There, embedded in the limestone, is a flint used to drill holes in pounamu: essential knowledge when your people prized pounamu tools and jewellery. 

These days, you don’t need an oral map to access historic Māori place names in Te Waipounamu. Ngāi Tahu has selected over 1000 traditional names for inclusion in the online atlas Kā Huru Manu (kahurumanu.co.nz). It’s the product of decades of research, and grew out of the Ngāi Tahu Claim for which the iwi needed to show strong evidence of occupation and use of the land. Today it’s a universal resource and a reliable one at that: the New Zealand Geographic Board/Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa has designated it an authoritative source. 

So next time you’re planning a tramp in Te Waipounamu, jump on Kā Huru Manu and take a minute to search for traditional place names in the area. In Māori culture, place names come with stories and histories. To learn more, follow the links in many entries to the Ngāi Tahu online archive, Kareao, which is crammed with relevant articles and books.

Maybe navigation technology will come full circle. Rather than our smartphones and watches merely telling us to turn left or right, perhaps one day they will provide directions by reading us a story or singing us a song.