The restoration of Otorohanga’s Krupp Howitzer reminded Te Kuiti historian Ross O’Halloran of the tale of Te Kuiti’s buried gun.
A historic First World War artillery gun could be rotting away beside the Mangaokewa River in Te Kuiti.
The restoration of a trench mortar to Ōtorohanga Memorial Park in April prompted Te Kūiti historian Ross O’Halloran to remember the story of a buried gun told to him by his late father Jim who died in 2017.
“The gun stood beside the World War I cenotaph in King Street, but it was put into a hole by the river and buried,” O’Halloran, also Waitomo Caves Museum and Discovery Centre education officer, said.
“As a kid I had wanted to go dig it up being mad keen on archaeology but as my father explained it wouldn’t be that easy, as it was on public land and he couldn’t quite remember where the hole was it was put in.”
O’Halloran has never been able to corroborate the story but has discovered Te Kūiti Borough Council may have been ordered to bury the gun after the fall of Singapore in 1942.
“With the British Naval base there being lost to the Japanese the big fear was they were coming south as well as the Japanese invasion of New Guinea and the western Pacific Islands,” O’Halloran said.
“The gun could have been buried earlier due to a thought that the Germans could invade, they had certainly been laying sea mines off the coast and surface raiders had been attacking ships as they left New Zealand waters. But I lean more towards the threat of Japanese invasion.”
Jim O’Halloran was born in Te Kuiti in 1934 and educated at St Joseph’s Catholic School until he went to St Peter’s School. Cambridge, around 1943.
“The gun may have been a memory from his early childhood,” his son said.
He can only speculate at its vintage.
“It was probably a British and empire piece unlike the two pieces in Otorohanga. It could possibly have been an 18-pounder field gun, or maybe either a 4.5-inch or 6-inch howitzers,” he said.
“Dad served as a gunner during the Compulsory Military Training (CMT) scheme from 1954-58. Te Kuiti had a battery (42 Bty) in the 4 Medium Regiment Royal NZ Artillery from circa 1949 to at least the early 1960s. But I doubt the gun was from that period. Te Kuiti had an army hall from circa 1911, I believe it was last on King Street but it was gone by the 70s or there about but the main units were 16th Waikato infantry up until the 1950s & 4th (Waikato) Mounted Rifles.”
O’Halloran is a Lance Corporal and a section 2IC of the Hamilton Platoon, Hauraki Company, 3/6 Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (RNZIR) and vice president of the Te Kuiti and District RSA
He is also North Island President of the House of Gordon of which his mother Glenyss was convenor for about 30 years.
The News has asked Waitomo District Council whether it has any records of the gun burial. Contemporary records are unlikely for fear of them also falling into enemy hands.
