Dedicated to democracy, enjoying and restoring the Mahurangi, meaningful climate action, and curiosity—
primarily pre-pandemic content accessible from this page. Go to lastest content…
Topic-paper feedback closes – Keep calm and carry on
Mahurangi Action has frantically prepared feedback to enable members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, to quickly email a comprehensive submission to Auckland Council. This is a work in progress, but the target was to…
Structure plan topic-paper switchboard
In an ideal world, everybody interested would have time to read the Warkworth Structure Plan consultation documents. But those just issued run to a total of 623 topic pages and maps. Between the first call for feedback and the 23 April deadline…
Boatbuilding begins in the Mahurangi
Some of the first vessels to be built in the Mahurangi may well have gone unrecorded, since registration was a little haphazard in those times. But it is clear that the first shipwrights established themselves after the Mahurangi Purchase of 1841 and…
Climate-reaction rubber meets the road
New Zealanders have just demonstrated the perfect problem, perfectly. After three decades of denial and procrastination, including nine years of Clark-led Labour government inaction, Jacinda Ardern has announced transport policy timidly…
Canadian Maritimers to New Zealanders
Sheltered coves and good timber were prerequisites for shipbuilding. These the Mahurangi coast had in abundance, but the third ingredient was shipwrights. Outstanding among the pioneers of the industry here were the Scottish immigrants from the Maritimes…
Art of the chartmakers Cudlip Pudsey-Dawson et al
During his voyages of 1833, Henry Williams records scrambling to the south end of Kawau “to take bearings of the various islands points etc. around us…” and climbing Motutapu to take similar bearings around the Waitematā. We are reminded that the charts we…
Cutter calm before the storming scow
Although Mahurangi settlers were not far from Auckland, the journey overland was arduous and to be avoided. By water, it is only 26 nautical miles to the Waitematā, via the semi-sheltered waters of the Hauraki Gulf. From the 1850s till the 1930s, sail was the settlers’…
Extraordinary Mahurangi rowers
Importance of good rowing boats to the settlers is emphasised in the previous chapter. A number of rowing stories survive which deserve inclusion here. In these days when most boatmen appear to need an outboard to get from the beach to their…