Montrose Estate overlooks the Rakaia river featuring stunning glacial, river-carved terraces set in a spectacular geological area. With lava flows of rhholite, pitch stone and andesite, Montrose Estate is not a place to be missed.
New Zealand’s human history is relatively short: it was the last habitable land mass in the world to be discovered by the ancestors of Maori, probably in the 13th century. Large-scale European settlement began in the 1840s, and the subsequent social, political and economic changes have moved New Zealand from British colonial outpost to multicultural Pacific nation.
Ngai Tahu or Kai Tahu, is the principal Maori iwi (tribe) of the southern region of New Zealand where Montrose Estate is located. It’s takiwa (tribal land area) is the largest in New Zealand, and extends from Blenheim, Mount Mahanga and Kahurangi Point in the north to Stewart Island in the south.
One of the owner’s of Montrose Estate is a descendant of the Ngati Raukawa iwi (tribe), which is located in central North Island across the districts of Waikato. Ngati Raukawa recognise Raukawa as their ancestor, who was descended from the settlers of the Tainui canoe. Given this background, the three main houses of Montrose have been given the following Maori names:
Horturoa - named after the Chief of the Tainui Canoe
Paewaka - literal translation of “mooring the canoe"
Te Ata - literal translation of “the morning” - also the name of New Zealand’s last Maori Queen