In answer to D Gordon The Weekend Sun 19 October 2012, the only historical fact of Maori's using a compass (no GPS then) was about 130 years ago when Te Rauporaha and some of his tribe stole a British sailing ship from Taranaki and either circumnavigated New Zealand or used the Cook Strait to sail to the Chathams and massacre the remaining, Moriori's and then sail back.

In looking back at history I was told that the Chinese junks used the North Star and the Loadstone to navigate the Pacific Ocean about 2,000 years ago. Then I was told that the Moriori's first settled in New Zealand and the Chathams and then the Maori's arrived and slaughtered the Moriori's. How did they do it? They did not walk here, there was no airlines flying aeroplanes. However, the godwits (birds) fly from New Zealand to Russia/China and breed and return. The whales swim from the Southern Antarctic to Hawaii and Alaska and return.

So then some bright spark, in both the Moriori's and the Maori's said we will follow the whales (not the godwits, as they go over Indonesia, Australia, China) back to the South. To my mind that's feasible and could be done.

However, to start a nation in a strange land to the South, you had to have the Loadstone of a nation, and bingo, the answer is women. Therefore to have men, women and possibly children and food aboard the boat you had to have an ocean going large vessel. Also you had to have intelligent minds to understand the way to navigate using the Loadstone (magnetic north) and to keep the North Star at your back to get from Hawaii to New Zealand and to use currents and follow the whales.

Brilliant, mysterious Maori navigators. As we used to sign at school after solving a theory or problem.

Rex O'Connor, Tauranga.