Pahia was once NZ’s westernmost settlement
Pahia takes its name from Tahu Pahi or Pahi-nui, who was the local chief. Early Europeans called the area Pahi’s and the ‘‘s’’ was exchanged for an ‘‘a’’, giving the alternative name Pahia.
Pahi drowned with 40 of his people when two double waka sank in Foveaux Strait in 1823.
The village, once the westernmost settlement in New Zealand and one of the largest on the south coast, was unusual in having a pa¯ or stockade on a small island just off the shore.
This was Matariki Island, and the palisade was visible for many years after the pa¯ , Te Kirio-Tunehu, was abandoned.
The area was known as Teihoka before it was Pahi and a battle was fought here between Nga¯ ti Ma¯ moe and Nga¯ i Tahu.
By the 1840s Pahi was no longer occupied and nothing remains. The village was to the east of Cosy Nook where a sandy beach is an obvious landing place for waka.
Anglican marriages
The first Anglican marriages in the south were performed by the visiting Bishop Selwyn in 1844.
Selwyn visited settlements at Ruapuke, Bluff, Riverton, Port William, Horseshoe Bay, Codfish Island, Murray’s River and Wakaputaputa, marrying 24 couples and baptising a slew of children.
In the following years the Rev Johann Wohlers got to some of the less accessible settlements. On his arrival, the eligible young people were promptly matched and married on the spot.
Mataura gold
Southland’s first gold was found in 1856 in the Mataura River.
Gold was discovered at Nokomai in 1862, Orepuki in 1864 and Waikaka in 1867.
In December 1856 Charles Ligar wrote to the Otago Provincial Council: ‘‘[O]n my recent visit to the south part of the Province of Otago, I found gold very generally distributed in the gravel and sand of the Mataura River at Tuturau; and
. . . I am of the opinion that a remunerative gold field exists in that neighbourhood’’.