Egmont Cape

Egmont Cape is the westernmost point of the Taranaki coast on New Zealand's North Island, splitting the Northern and Southern Taranaki Bights. The low headland lies close to the volcanic cone of Mount Taranaki, which dominates the horizon and gives the region its name, and the open sea off the cape is exposed to the full force of the Tasman swell.

Māori tribes had made their homes in Taranaki from the thirteenth century. Abel Tasman sailed past in 1642 and named the cape Kaap Pieter Boreel, but bad visibility kept him from seeing the mountain. James Cook did sight the peak, named it Mount Egmont after the Earl of Egmont, and gave the same name to the promontory, which became its lasting name. From the 1820s whalers worked the waters of the Southern Taranaki Bight, and in 1828 Richard Barrett opened a trading post at Ngāmotu. After a bloody encounter there in 1832, most of the roughly two thousand Āti Awa living near Ngāmotu migrated south to the Kāpiti region.