It’s so sad that as children many of us only got one version of the local stories that bring the land alive. I was very privileged to be support crew for friends who were walking on ‘Te Heke’ from Omarama to the mouth of the Waitaki river. The walk honoured the Waitaha prophet Te Maiharoa, who was evicted from his ancestral homelands and had his village at Omarama destroyed by the constabulary in the winter of 1879.
I painted in the stunning Waitaki valley and have since returned many times to add to the series of paintings I started then.
