MANUKAU HARBOUR

With a water surface area of 394km2, a tidal variation of up to 4m and a relatively narrow mouth (with a bar) at the Manukau Heads, a fast-moving tide can make entering/leaving the harbour a tricky affair. The country’s most tragic shipwreck occurred on the bar in 1863 when HMS Orpheus ran aground with a loss of 189 lives.

But the harbour’s history dates back to the country’s first inhabitants. A quick check with Wikipedia reveals that the harbour was “an important historical waterway for Māori. It had several portages to the Pacific Ocean and to the Waikato River, and various villages and pā (hill forts) clustered around it.

“Cornwallis, beside the Puponga Peninsula, was the first site for the future city of Auckland. But because of fraudulent land sales and rugged conditions, the settlement was abandoned in the 1840s.

“Vast amounts of kauri were removed from the surrounding hills and shipped from a wharf on Paratutai to either the other end of the harbour at Onehunga for use in house building in the new city of Auckland, or along the coast to other New Zealand settlements. The last mills were abandoned in the early 1920s.

“But the difficult entry into the harbour – which limited ships to about 1,000 tons – together with the extension of the railway to Onehunga in 1873, made naval traffic on the harbour less important again.

“Construction of a canal between the Manukau and the Waitemata was considered in the early 1900s, with the Auckland and Manukau Canal Act 1908 passed to allow authorities to take privately-owned land for this purpose.

“But no serious work (or land take) was undertaken. The Act was reported as technically still being in force as of 2008, but was repealed on 1 November 2010. An 0.82km canal reserve, 40m wide, remains in place.”