Upokongaro

Supposedly the preserved head was hidden in a cave on the banks of the Ūpokongaro Stream north of the settlement, from which the village takes its name.

[1] At the time of European contact, both Ūpokongaro and adjacent settlements Waipakura and Kukuta were home to the Ngāti Patutokotoko hapū of the iwi Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi.

Designed by local architect Edward Morgan and built by John Randal, St Mary's is distinctive in having a spire with a triangular cross-section, on a four-sided steeple.

Its stained glass window was installed in 1879, in memory of Archibald Montgomery, a young Upokongaro man lost in the sinking of the clipper Avalanche in the English Channel just before the church was completed.

[5] In the 1930s, thousands of moa bones were recovered from mud springs in the Upokongaro Valley at Makirikiri by a Whanganui Museum expedition.

A punt crossing the Whanganui River at Upokongaro in 1908, pulled across on a wire. The punt operated until 1935.
St Mary's Anglican Church. In 1885, Alfred Burton noted: "Upokongaro boasts a church with a three-sided spire something like a bayonet."
Ūpokongaro cycle bridge