Orepuki

Once a thriving gold mining settlement of 3000 people, today Orepuki is something of a ghost town with an assortment of abandoned stores, goldmining relics and sluicing scars as the only reminders of its former glory.

In pre-European times, local Māori used the unique and highly prized garnet gemstones on the beach to polish and sharpen their 'toki' or adzes/axes.

The beach runs between the sea and a line of cliffs meaning that only a moderate tsunami of 2–4 metres high would have been needed to cause so many deaths.

In Ngā Ingoa o Aotearoa: an oral dictionary of Māori placenames, recorded in 1992, local kaumātua (tribal elder) George Te Au offers as pronunciations both Ore-PUki and ō-RĀpaki.

An array of old buildings still exist and currently the township supports a pub, a bowling green, a community hall, a church [2] and a population of around 100 people.