Pauakaiwawe Bay is located slightly south of Patuki. In the past the area was known for the vast number of paua that could be gathered here.
This bay was given the European name, McLarens Bay after the whaler James McLaren and his wife lived here from the 1830s to the late 1840s.
From the 1860s a European settler took over the McLaren homestead. It is from this point onwards that the name Patuki became associated with the area.1
1. Olive Baldwin, Story of New Zealand’s French Pass and d’Urville Island (Plimmerton: Fields Publishing House, 1979) 75-78, 126.
