Te Māra Reo from the road.

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The pīwakawaka always flies home.

The hue will also return you to the home page.

This logo will take you to the descriptions of the garden

This tui will escort you to the Time Travel overview page ...

... but this one always heads straight for home

 
Finding Your Way Around

This set of pages will help you find your way around the web site, and also the garden itself as it was in 2010. You can get to each of the four pages accompanying this one by pressing the annotated links below, or the corresponding button in the dropdown "Finding your way / Hōparatanga [Exploration]" menu at the top of this page.

On this introductory page we'll just outline the general features of the site, how to get to the various sections, and what you can expect to find there.

First, before you go anywhere else, note that all the main pages that you can reach from the buttons and pull-down menus at the top of this page have headers identical with this one. All other pages created or substantially revised from November 2010 will be like this, so you can scoot around them from wherever you happen to be. However, well over a hundred pages do not yet have that feature. Instead, they have a little "pīwakawaka" logo in the top left corner and the flower of the hue (calabash gourd) in the bottom left. Pressing on either of these will take you to the "Home / Pūtaki" page, the same one you can reach from the "Home" button or by clicking on the tui at the top -- or on the hue flower in the bottom right-hand corner -- of this page and the others like it.

Information on the pages linked to this one.

The Page Design ~ Ngā Whārangi button takes you to an explanation about the design of the pages which give information about individual names and the history of each word. These are the key components of the site and there are over 100 of these pages already on the web, and another hundred or so yet to come. These are listed and linked on the page reached through the "Index of Names ~ Rārangi Ingoa" button on the main menu.

The other three linked pages focus on the garden itself.

The first of these on the pull-down menu (The Garden ~ Te Māra Whānui) takes you to a brief description of the garden and has links to pages about specific sectors (just a few at present; a lot more to come). It also has explanations of a couple of short-cut logos, reproduced on the side-panel to the left.

Next is the Time Travel ~ Haerenga-ā-wā home page, which, through over 40 linked pages, takes you on a quick tour of the garden, pausing twelve times so that you can see one name (and learn about the plants associated with it) from each major stage in sequence of the Austronesian migration from Taiwan through the Philippines and the North-eastern coast of New Guinea through the Pacific and south to Aotearoa".

Finally there is the Koru page, describing the notional labyrinth on the terrace above the river, the spiritual center of Te Māra Reo.

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Other Sections of the Site

Besides this one, there are seven other major sectors represented by buttons on the main menu.

(1) The Home ~ Pūtaki page is just that, the introductory page to the site which explains briefly what it's about and what we are trying to do.

(2) The Origins ~ Whakapapa page is the introduction to three linked pages, telling you about how the garden came into being, who was involved, and outlining the history of plant names and the migrations which paved the way for the Polynesian explorers to bring them here.

(3) Index of Names ~ Rārangi Ingoa. This is a single page, with a list of NZ plant species which bear names brought from Polynesia, linked to the pages giving information about each of the Maori words, and their Polynesian and wider Austronesian counterparts. Eventually, about 250 separate pages on the Māra Reo site, along with related pages on many other sites, will be accessible through the index

(4) Thanks ~ Ngā Mihi. This section links two pages. The first pays tribute to the many people who have helped us in the past, as well as those helping now -- it will be updated from time to time. The second page acknowledges the various sources of information -- personal and unpublished, and also the published materials which have been consulted in preparing the web pages, organized in a set of bibliographies. These are added to as new works are consulted.

(5) You can help ~ Arohaina mai! is a plea for your practical affection! There are two sections on this page, one listing the kinds of help that we need to develop the garden to its full potential, and the second telling you how you could send us a cash donation, if you would like to do that.

(6) The Contact ~ Whakapā mai button takes you, as you might expect, to a page with email, fax and snail mail addresses. It we eventually get a Facebook page, we'll put a link to that there, too.

(7) New developments are reported on the News ~ Nga Rongo page. This includes new pages, major revisions of other pages, changes to the way the site is organized, and what is going on in the real-world garden! To make sure that you are reading the latest version of this page, hold down the "Shift" key while you press the "Refresh" button on your web browser when the page first appears. By scrolling down through this page you can read a chronicle of the development of the site.

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