Provenance: From the Collection of the artist's great niece

illustrated p. 223 C F Goldie: His Life & Painting, Alister Taylor & Jan Glen, 1979.

Guide Sophia Hinerangi was the principal tourist guide of the Pink and White Terraces at Lake Rotomahana. Following their destruction during the Mt Tarawera eruption of 1886 she became a guide at nearby Whakarewarewa, Rotorua. Guide Sophie, as she was widely known, was well educated and bi-lingual. She introduced thousands of visitors to the beauty of the Terraces, acknowledged by Mark Twain as the eighth wonder of the world.

Sophia was born in Kororāreka in the early 1830s. Her mother, Kotiro Hinerangi, was a Ngāti Ruanui woman who had possibly been captured by a Nga Puhi raiding party. Kōtiro married Alexander Grey (or Gray), a Scotsman who had arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1827. Mary Sophia Gray was baptised by William Williams at Kororareka in 1839. It is thought that Sophia was raised by Charlotte Kemp at the Kerikeri mission station before attending the Wesleyan Native Institution at Three Kings, Auckland. In 1851 Sophia married her first husband, Koroneho (Colenso) Tehakiroe, with whom she had fourteen children. Following her second marriage, to Hori Taiawhio in 1870, she had a further three children.

Tuhourangi tohunga, interpreted the devastating Tarawera eruption as a warning and reflected that the exploitation of the terraces as a tourist attraction showed scant regard for ancestral values. Guide Sophia herself saw these omens as a sign that her time as a guide at Rotomahana was drawing to a close. Works from the Collection of C F Goldie's great niece, Auckland Lots 40 - 46 On 10 June 1886, the night of the eruption, over sixty people took shelter in Sophia's whare at Te Wairoa. Unlike many of the buildings in the village her home withstood the destructive power of the eruption due to its high-pitched roof and strong reinforced timber walls. Tuhoto Ariki also survived the eruption and was dug from his buried house four days later.

Sophia continued her work as a guide when she moved to nearby Whakarewarewa. In 1895 she joined George Leitch's Land of the Moa Dramatic Company, playing herself on a tour of Australia. In 1896 she was appointed caretaker of the Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve. A number of royal parties were amongst the many thousands of visitors that Guide Sophia led through Whakarewarewa. She encouraged a number of local women to become guides, helping to establish this occupation as a lucrative form of employment for Tuhourangi women.Sophia was also deeply involved in the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union, becoming president of the Whakarewarewa branch in 1896. Remembered as a leading light of her generation and a unique personality of that time, Sophia fostered friendship between Maori and Pakeha and showed great courage in adversity. She was a friend and favoured subject the artist C F Goldie. Guide Sophia died at Whakarewarewa on 4 December 1911