Where the harbour divides there is a small island called Motiti which was painted by Augustus Earle, the first European artist to spend several months in New Zealand, during his visit to the Hokianga in 1827.

He wrote "we were sailing up a spacious sheet of water, which became considerably wider after entering it; while majestic hills rose on each side .... looking up the river we beheld various headlands stretching into the water and gradually contracting its width, 'till they became fainter and fainter in the distance and all was lost in the azure of the horizon".

According to Te Tai Tokerau tradition, the legendary Polynesian explorer Kupe visited the area prior to his return voyage to Hawaiiki.

Angry at the food from the hāngī (earth oven) being insufficiently cooked, he swore at those responsible.

[4] The first recorded European to enter the Hokianga Harbour arrived in 1819 and by the 1830s, Kohukohu was the heart of New Zealand's timber industry.

[5] The country's first Catholic mass was celebrated 8 kilometres north of Kohukohu at Totara Point in 1838.

For nearly one hundred years Kohukohu was an important timber milling town and the largest commercial centre on the north of the harbour.

It was built some time between 1843 and 1851 at the mouth of the Waihouuru Creek where it flowed into the Hokianga Harbour.

[21] The school was established in 1883, but moved to a new location in 1972 because the ground on the original site was unstable.