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Come to the Dawson Falls, New Zealand, only a ten minute walk from the Dawson Falls Visitor centre a part of the Egmont National Park. Dawson falls is on the top end of Mania Road, Fourteen kilometer to Kaponga. While you are here, get the local people to give all tales and fables that helps in giving you a colorful picture of the famed Dawson Falls. The local Maori people are of the view that a local Maori warrior who after committing some crime was on the run fearing to be killed by his pursuers. He took shelter in the east coast and hid behind the eighteen meter falls so they ran past him. This Dawson Falls is known in Maori as the Te Rere 'O' Noke. When others heard about him, they named the falls as the "The Falls of Noke". Thomas Dawson was the European who discovered the Falls of Noke first and in the process was about to fall in the flowing waters as he was trailing the Kapuni River. He had built himself a hut to near the place to explore at leisure as he spent long hours researching the mountains. Today the falls carry his name, and the tourist lodge 600 meter above the road also bears his stamp. The starting point for the walks around the side of the mountains you have to drive nine hundred meters on the south eastern slopes of Mount Taranaki to get to the Dawson Falls Road end. Visit the rare working example of a simple hydro-electric power station- the oldest working station in New Zealand, built by the General electric company, New York, USA in 1896. The generator was finally purchased by the Egmont National Park Board and established at the Dawson Falls with the official opening on 30 June 1934. After the flood, it moved to its present location.
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