The Arowhana kumi: a giant lizard on W. D. Lysnar's station

Māori tradition on the East Coast of New Zealand's North Island told of the kumi, also known as ngārara, a great lizard. It had once been well known in the area. By 1898 it had not been seen for at least three generations. Arowhana station lay in the bush inland from Gisborne, near Mount Arowhana in the Raukūmara Range. Its owner was W. D. Lysnar, a Gisborne lawyer who had lately purchased the property.

September 1898. A Māori bushman was working on the station. He was startled. A huge lizard, some 5 ft long, was advancing towards him. Then the animal disappeared into a rātā tree.

That is nearly all the record keeps of the moment. The bushman's name was never published. His description of the creature, though, was clear enough for those who heard it. It matched the traditional kumi.

Lysnar took it seriously. He intended, if possible, to catch the animal alive, and he was confident from reports that it was still in the tree. He gathered a party and went into the bush.

They found footprints larger than a man's hand on the ground. Circling round the tree was the track worn by the claws of the creature. Lysnar and his party photographed the footprints. But they failed to disturb the animal. A reward was reportedly posted, and newspapers carried the story through the middle of September 1898.

Not everyone was convinced. The 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand noted that "the absence of any more certain report lends weight to the scepticism freely voiced in the Gisborne press at the time." No specimen was ever collected.

A modern reading goes further. The Anarchist History of NZ argues that the sighting, the chase and the reward were all a hoax, a piece of political theatre. It points out that Lysnar was a prospective politician. He did go on to serve as Mayor of Gisborne from 1908 to 1911, and as a Reform Party MP for 12 years. The same writer flags the unnamed witness as a warning sign. This is an inference, and no confession or exposure from 1898 has been found.

The same month brought other talk of reptiles. A meeting of the New Zealand Institute on 20 September 1898 reportedly heard of a large, strange reptile near Gisborne, about 2 to 3 feet long, said to burrow, with a serrated dorsal crest. It may have been a separate report. In the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute that year, F. W. Hutton described a supposed rib of the kumi, or ngarara.

Lysnar's photographs have never surfaced online. Nobody knows whether they survive. Without them, the Arowhana kumi lives on in retellings, among them Robyn Gosset's New Zealand Mysteries and later accounts that liken the animal to a monitor lizard.

It sits within a longer thread. Māori told Captain Cook of feared lizards that lived in trees. A large lizard was reported in the Hokianga in 1875. And there is the kawekaweau, a giant gecko known from a single nineteenth century specimen, now called Delcourt's giant gecko. It remains the only physical specimen of a giant New Zealand lizard. As for the creature in the rātā tree, no more certain report ever followed.