Te Aurere has featured in a number of television programmes over the years.  Perhaps the most significant was the 2004 BBC Televsion documentary “Monsters we met”, an exploration of the impact of humans on the giant animals that lived during the last Ice Age.  Te Aurere featured in the documentary (very appropriately) as the migration canoe bringing Maori to Aotearoa. 

The sequences with the waka were shot at Cathedral Cove near Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula.  Hekenukumai and a number of the crew were part of the production working with the team of actors recruited for the programme. It screened as the third of three episodes and was entitled “The End of Eden (New Zealand 1280 AD)”.  Click here for further information. Photography by John Panoho.