Honeycomb Rock is located on the Wairarapa coast, on the southern edge of New Zealand’s North Island. According to legend, the North Island is the fish Te Ika a Maui that Maui hooked from his boat (the South Island). Palliser Bay is the mouth of the fish, and Lake Wairarapa is the eye.

 

The place is nick-named honeycomb for obvious reasons; these remarkable structures are strikingly similar to the lithified flora on the coast of Taiwan. 

British explorer James Cook named the southern part after his friend and patron, Sir Hugh Palliser after he sailed around the Wairarapa coast in 1770. It was not until 1841 that the first settlers arrived from Europe in 1841.