WIND

Air is always moving and flowing and when the flow is strong we can feel it on our skin and hair. We can hear it in the trees and sometimes whistling around buildings. And we can see it swaying trees and blowing leaves and dust around. We’re lucky in New Zealand that when it’s windy our air pollution gets blown away over the ocean where it can’t hurt anyone. When it’s still and the air isn’t moving much, then our air pollution has no way to go anywhere, so it just drifts about.

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Hauāuru, the West Wind

 

Hauāuru is also known as the West Wind, listen to the beautiful music he makes with the trees in the Waitakere Ranges

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Perhaps you have experienced Hauāuru's musical ability when camped out in the bush and listened in awe to the muted rustling of the leaves accompanied by the subdued caressing of branch against branch, which as Hau's mood changed became a crescendo of Sound and movement. It was such Sweet love Songs and wild stirring chants that drifted Over the Waitakere Ranges and charmed Wairaka, the wife of Tamatea-O-te Ra, a powerful mythical hero who dwelt in the volcanic cones of the Tamaki isthmus. Tamatea would now and again leave home to visit other territories, where his presence would be disclosed by earthquakes and other underground activity.

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When Tamatea was away visiting, Hau would sigh gently in the forest trees or whisper words of love and waft them over Sweet-scented trees to Wairaka at her home on the Volcanic Cone of Owairaka, Mt Albert.  (J. Diamond &  B. Hayward, 1979. p 32)

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