March 31, 2024
Finding ourselves in St. Heliers, we decided to go for a walk and visit another of Auckland’s volcanoes, Glover Park. We started out down in St. Heliers and made our way up and along Cliff Road which follows, unsurprisingly, a cliff that rises east of the beach.
Just around the point from St. Heliers is a secluded beach nestled down at the bottom of the cliffs named Ladies Bay. We think it may be the only nude beach in the city. Despite the blustery day, there were plenty of folk out getting an all over tan. Sorry, no photos.
A little further around is Achilles Point, where a look-out offers extensive views over the harbor. The point is named after HMNZS Achilles, a Leander-class light cruiser which helped defeat the German battleship Admiral Spee in 1939, during the Battle of River Plate. The point’s Maori name is Te Pane o Horoiwi (The Head of Horoiwi).
One volcano that we will not be visiting is Brown’s Island, unless we can convince one of our boat owning friends to take us out there, because it is not served by ferry. We did get a great view of it from the point. The island is named for William Brown who, along with his business partner, Logan Campbell, was one of the European founders of Auckland. Brown had owned the island along with Campbell and lived on it for a while running a pig farm. In Maori, the island is called Motukorea (island of the oyster catcher).
It’s virtually impossible to look over the harbour and avoid seeing Rangitoto.
We eventually arrived at Glover Park, which is located inside a 500 meter diameter explosion crater. It is one of Auckland’s oldest volcanoes, having erupted between 140,000 and 180,000 years ago. It is named after Albert Edward Glover, a city councilor and Member of Parliament in the 1890s- 1910s. In Maori, it is called Whakamuhu, meaning ‘to lead into a thicket’ referring to its once swampy crater floor. In the middle of the twentieth century the swamp was drained and filled. It is now used for sports.
From Glover Park, we continued on into the neighboring suburb of Glendowie. Here are some houses, we saw along the way.
At the center of Glendowie, stands Churchill Park. Named after Winston Churchill, at 40 hectares, it is one of Auckland’s largest parks. It is also much more rural than most of the others, with farmland supporting a number of grazing cattle.
Mal and Lauren 