Last weekend we visited Scott’s Landing in Mahurangi. This week we crossed the bay and visited the Regional Park in Mahurangi West. The tide was out so we were able to follow the coastline around the point before returning over the headland and through the park.
With a rain storm blowing in from the ocean we decided to head back toward Auckland, but caught this rainbow as we were leaving.
We decided to stop off at the historic village of Puhoi on the way back. European settlement began in Puhoi in 1863 by a group of German-speaking migrants from Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic. Today, with its General Store and Trading Post you would more easily think that you were in the United States than Bohemia.
The village has a very cute little library.
But, undoubtedly, the village’s main attraction is its pub, which has been serving patrons for almost 150 years.
A teenage band was entertaining the guests with covers from the eighties and nineties.
Unfortunately, the storm that had driven us out of Mahurangi caught up to us in Puhoi, bringing a quick end to the performance and driving the band and guests indoors.
At the end of a street full of commercial buildings, we came across a row of beautiful homes built in 1899 called Dilworth Terrace. It was like suddenly being dropped in England. It is these little surprises that make our urban walks interesting.
This part of Parnell is mainly commercial buildings with some streets of houses interspersed among them.
There were also some state owned apartments.
And Auckland’s own version of London’s brutalist icon, the Barbican.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon we decided to head out of town to the beach. Gathering our niece Debbie, we hopped in the car and headed north to meet up with our good friends Simon and Michele and go for a swim at their local beach, Scott’s Landing. The water was so inviting that even Lauren ventured in.
The landing is named after the Scott family who settled there in 1849 to build ships. The house they built in 1877 still exists. Originally serving as a family home, it was soon extended to serve as a hotel and boarding house. The Scotts lived there until about 1912 after which it was used by the family as a holiday home for the next 50 years. It is now owned by Auckland Council and used for community events.
After an enjoyable afternoon on the beach we headed back to Simon and Michele’s deck to sip on a cup of Earl Grey tea and to admire the view.
Previously we walked through the residential neighborhoods that make up much of Parnell but there is also an extensive redeveloped industrial zone and that is where we began our walk. Today it is the center of Auckland’s design industry and there are a number of upmarket furniture stores and galleries. There is also a very nice pub called the Paddington.
We dropped in at Foenander Galleries where they had an exhibit of works by Simon Ogden called Diving For Pearls. The paintings were crafted from and on linoleum which he had sourced from an old house that was being renovated. They were very cool.
Here are some more photos from the walk.
We walked by the home of Reverend Robert Burrows, one of the first missionaries to come to New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands in 1840. The home, constructed in 1850, had a beautiful garden.
The Pah Homestead is a historic home located in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough. It is, currently, owned by the Auckland Council and is operated as an art gallery. It was built in the 1870s for businessman James Williamson. Among other things, Williamson was a Member of Parliament and co-founder of the New Zealand Insurance Company (NZI) and the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). On the day we visited, they were having a Community Day, so there was a lot happening.
A couple of posts ago, we mentioned the New Zealand artist, Max Gimblett, whose childhood home we passed. Here is one of his paintings.
And here is one by another well known New Zealand artist, Michael Smither.
The windows themselves looked like paintings.
The homestead sits in the middle of a beautiful park with views to One Tree Hill (Maungakiekie).
We walked over to our good friend John Gow’s gallery, for an opening for the Australian artist Dale Frank. Along the way we passed Onehunga High School
which has its own marae (maori meeting house).
We struck up a conversation with one of the school’s teachers and local musician, Dave Taylor.
Here’s some photos from the Dale Frank opening
John and his son Jack
After the opening, we continued our walk. Onehunga sits beside the Manukau Harbour and the name loosely translates from the Maori to “mud flats”, which aptly describes the harbor at low tide. During the 1800s, most of the shipping coming into Auckland entered through Manukau harbour which is on the west coast but the harbour is particularly treacherous (as evidenced by the sinking of HMS Orpheus in 1863, killing 180 people). Accordingly, as ships got larger, the wider and deeper Waitemata harbour on the east coast became the primary port which it remains today. Mal’s father grew up in Onehunga where Mal’s grandfather worked at the local slaughterhouse. The toxic discharge from the slaughterhouse back then had made the water unsafe for swimming or fishing and the neighborhood became a less attractive place to live. Although Onehunga was a predominantly working class suburb for much of the twentieth century, more recently there has been some gentrification and many of the bungalows built in the 1920s have been renovated. Here are a couple of examples of the typical houses in the neighborhood.
Previously, we have mentioned how during the walks we have often come across homes that once included a corner store. Here is another example.
On yet another beautiful sunny day we set out to explore Parnell, one of Auckland‘s oldest and most affluent suburbs. We started off walking around the edge of Hobson Bay before heading up into the neighborhood streets. These are some sites we saw along the way.
If you find yourself in Parnell, we recommend dropping by the Brighton Road Cafe. In a land full of amazing cafes, this is one of the best we have come upon. Definitely, try out the Avocado on Toast. So good.
Finding ourselves in Milford on the North Shore, we decided to walk up the coastline to Castor Bay. Because this is New Zealand where having a cafe nearby at all times is mandated, we came across this cute little cafe by the marina.
We then headed up around the headlands looking back down over Milford Beach.
We stopped in at Castor Bay
Where we loved this beautiful old tree.
Perched above Castor Bay is the site of an old Maori pa (fortified village) called Te Rahopara o Peretu. Sitting atop a steep hill with extensive views over the harbor and surrounding land, it is easy to see why the local Maori picked it as a prime spot to defend.
In fact, during World War II, a battery was built on the site that included two six inch gun emplacements and a battery observation post. The concrete gun emplacements still exist.
The Castor Bay Battery and camp is believed to represent the most extensive survival of Second World War ‘architecture of deception’ where the battery was disguised to make it seem like seaside housing to prevent aerial detection by an invading force. For example, influenced by Modernist style, the Battery Observation Post was designed to look like a seaside kiosk.
The park on which the battery stands was named John F Kennedy Memorial Park in 1962 after the assassination of the American President. A number of homes look over the park and harbor.
Back on Milford Beach, the water was so warm, that even Lauren went for a paddle.
A number of major roads converge on the suburb of Newmarket from all parts of Auckland and from early settlement times, it has been a retail center. Around 1850, it received the name Newmarket because it was the site of the new market for livestock, where farmers would bring their cattle and sheep for sale. Now it is the home of one of Auckland’s largest shopping malls, surrounded by narrow streets lined with trendy boutiques.
In the 1980s, the New Zealand government changed the country’s immigration laws to make it easier for Chinese to immigrate to New Zealand. Many took the opportunity to send their children to New Zealand to get their education. Newmarket is in the acceptance zone of two on New Zealand’s most prestigious public high schools, Auckland Grammar School (AGS) for boys and Epsom Girls Grammar School (EGGS) for girls. Wealthy Chinese began to buy homes in the Newmarket area so that their children could attend those schools. When Mal attended AGS in the 1980s there were barely any Asian students. Now the majority of students in both AGS and EGGS are Asian. Newmarket itself is now majority Asian with many living in new apartment buildings and townhouses that have sprung up on the northern edge of the neighborhood.
The new development has not stretched far, however, and further afield the streets of older single family homes still dominate.
We found interesting, the juxtaposition of this traditional home and its modern neighbor.
Tucked in behind the new developments and old neighborhoods is Newmarket Park. Its Maori name is Te Rua Reoreo which derives from the rua-reoreo (echoes) that could once be made when shouting across the valley where the park sits. In 1841, Apihai Te Kawau, the chief of the local Ngati Whatua tribe gifted 3000 acres of land to the Crown to establish Auckland city. That, supposedly, included the land on which the park sits, although Ngati Whatua still dispute this, arguing that the border of the grant was west of the park. The land was not always the pretty park it is today. It has been among other things, a garbage dump in the 1920s and 1930s, a golf driving range and a soccer stadium. In fact, a visiting Manchester United played there before 26,000 fans in 1967. In the 1980s, it was the home of the Auckland Grammar Old Boys rugby club. The clubhouse where Mal enjoyed many an after match beer has now been replaced by a playground.
Today we set out to explore one of Auckland’s oldest suburbs, Grafton. Today it is dominated by Auckland Hospital, surrounded by narrow streets that have not changed much since the neighborhood was established in the 1800s. The suburb is bordered on the east by what has always seemed to us to be the strangely named Khyber Pass Road. It is a not very memorable road, lined by nondescript buildings, that does not appear to have anything in common with the famous pass in Pakistan. Apparently, when it began life as a dirt track during the early settlement of Auckland in the 1840s, it was seen as a dangerous frontier along which British soldiers would travel during the wars with the Maori tribes, hence the name. Today the only dangerous thing about the road may be this adult store.
Waiting at the traffic light was the definitely the most stylish cyclist we have seen during our walks.
We liked this apartment building, although we weren’t sure how quiet it would be, nestled as it was right next to Grafton train station.
It is not uncommon, while walking through Auckland suburbs, to come across houses that used to include a small corner shop where the proprietor would also live. In fact, Mal’s grandparents used to own just such a shop and home for a while. Here is an example, which also happened to be the childhood home of one of New Zealand’s most famous artists, Max Gimlett, whose parents ran the corner shop.
There are very few old red brick homes in Auckland, because the bricks had to be imported from Britain at great expense. So, often, what looks like red bricks are actually the local pale brown bricks covered with red cement stucco with fake mortar lines. Here is an example.
Here are some other photos from the neighborhood.
Based on their impressive buildings that we have come across during our walks, the Church of Scientology appears to be doing quite well financially. The Auckland building was no exception.
Speaking of churches, we liked the, admittedly less impressive, Liberal Catholic Church of St. Francis.
Grafton includes The Auckland Domain, a 190 acre (75 hectares) park that is the home of the Auckland War Memorial Museum. We finished the day’s walk by wandering through its beautiful parkland.
Mal and Lauren 