Dedicated to democracy, enjoying and restoring the Mahurangi, meaningful climate action, and curiosity—
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1865 Mahurangi Regatta comparable with Cowes
The first Mahurangi Regatta is not remembered, but Joseph Gard noted in his diary that he saw the event in progress on New Year’s Day, 1858, while passing up-river on his way home from Auckland. The regatta of 1865 almost did not occur. On 28 December, the New Zealand…
Wicked climate action starts with Wenderholm Regional Park
Wenderholm is a wicked place to tackle the wicked problem of anthropogenic global warming. Wickedly symbolic, to begin with. Wenderholm was the first of Auckland’s wonderful 41 000-hectare network of now 28 regional parks. Throughout their otherwise…
Talking Heads community vhf land mobile radio
In an ideal world, or even a fractionally less perverse one, the free-regatta-shuttlebus drivers would need to do nothing more than download an app. The cellular coverage at Scotts Landing would be so comprehensive that the opportunity, for example, for a driver to…
Weed control’s loss wicked sediment mitigation gain
“The good roads in the north, are in the south.” Thomas R Roydhouse, fourth owner–editor of the Rodney Times, in his lament to parliamentarians he’d enticed to the Mahurangi tidehead town, reflected that following deforestation, Warkworth was an island in a sea of…
Regional government rescues seacoast in the sixties
On a sunny afternoon in 1965, I sat upon a headland of the Mahurangi, enjoying the familiar beauty, and wondering how long it could last. I had spent half that year in the United States, where I had seen the evils of private ownership and development of the shoreline…
Mahurangi reserves beyond the regional parkland
I have begun with an account of the Mahurangi Regional Park, far and away the most important of the reserves. Others upstream are also important. Some account of their history and qualities is given here. When Charles Heaphy began the survey of…
covid-19 didn’t mobilise but climate must
Fifty-one weeks ago, the Mahurangi Magazine warned: “The eventual toll of this pandemic could be in the order of 3 million deaths.” At the time, the reported global toll had only just exceeded 100 thousand, but the calculation wasn’t complex. Subtract the population…
Restoration beyond the Mahurangi regional parkland
Mahurangi is unusually well endowed with caring residents. Some are native to the area, some have chosen it as a congenial place and community in which to live and work, others can imagine no better place to spend years of retirement. They have collectivised their…