Mahurangi Coastal Trail
The Mahurangi Coastal Trail will link 900 hectares of regional parkland, with public transport at Waiwera, and the concept has already helped to ensure Te Muri remains car-free forever.
Exploring a plan-B Pūhoi River Mouth ferry
With a long-term solution calculated to cost $2 million, it is time to consider a plan b. This not to suggest that $2 million is too rich to realise the magnificent potential of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail. It is too much, however, given the several significant…
read more
On the coastal trail to the Mahurangi Regatta
For 45 years, the Mahurangi coastline between Waiwera and Ōpahi has been in public ownership, begging to host a nine-kilometre coastal trail, linking 900-hectares of regional parkland. But while the potential of the trail has existed since the 1973…
read more
Tidal-river-power and grid electricity
Most public transport in Aotearoa is fossil-fuel powered. But that would not excuse a fossil-fuelled ferry forming a key component of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail. Fortuitously, as described in Minimum Impact 100% River-Powered, a fossil-fuel-free solution…
read more
Mahurangi Action president’s report
The planned fivefold increase in population of its tidehead town is critical to the future of the Mahurangi watershed. If, within a couple of decades, a town of more than 20 000 has an attractive, swimmable river as the hero element of a broad linear…
read more
Minimum impact 100% river-powered
In one respect, it could not be easier. Build a coastal trail linking three regional parks, all on publicly owned land. However, if it had in fact been easy, it would have happened soon after Mahurangi Action first suggested it, three decades ago. The...
read more
Coastal trail and the river-mouth ferry
The urge to walk the coastline is as old as humankind. Within three years, the 4500-kilometre England Coast Path will be opened, initiated in 2014 under a Conservative – Liberal Democrat government. Aotearoa is geographically twice…
read more
Criteria for crossing Pūhoi River revisited
The principal objective of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail is to provide primary access to Te Muri. Based on vehicle counts, Wenderholm Regional Park receives an estimated 225 362 visitors per year, and Mahurangi Regional Park 59 595. It is probable…
read more
Te Muri officially car-free forever
If they understood the momentousness of their decision, there was no outward indication. On Tuesday morning, Auckland Council, without discussion, voted to adopt the recommendations of the independent commissioners on Te Muri. Given…
read more
Criteria for non-footbridge crossing
There were good and obvious reasons for considering a footbridge. But there were also a good many reasons why a footbridge across the Pūhoi Estuary, as part of the long-proposed Mahurangi Coastal Trail, was a less-than-optimal solution. Firstly it would have had…
read more
Fire station Givealittle-athon dry run for coastal trail
Mahurangi West has much to thank Pūhoi for. Historically, it was one of two watering holes achievable. Locals, on reaching the Notice Tree, would know whether to head to Pūhoi, or to Waiwera, to find the evening’s frivolities. This year, support from…
read more
Car-free Te Muri with coastal trail no mirage
The indications were entirely auspicious, even before the wrap-up. Then the commissioners, who had just finished hearing submissions on the future development of Te Muri, outlined the points they expected Auckland Council’s planning officers…
read more
Convince the commissioners and Te Muri car-free forever
Auckland Council and the community are now in accord. Scheduled to be published today, are the council’s recommendations to the commissioners who will effectively determine the future of Te Muri. When the draft management plan was…
read more
Garnering major help to connect this coast
You read it there first, in a full-page spread in Junction Magazine, profiling ‘uber-human’ Tessa Berger, the 21-year-old chair of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail Trust. Anyone reading the glossy Matakana-based magazine’s description of Tessa’s achievements…
read more
Submission on Te Muri management plan variation
The following is Mahurangi Action Incorporated’s submission, as lodged in PDF format on 18 March, but without the executive summary provided here. In the pursuit of transparency, this submission was published in instalments as a work…
read more
Mahurangi Action on draft variation in respect to Te Muri
The submission needs to begin by putting the planning process in context. The timing of the Auckland Regional Parks management plan variation in respect to Te Muri, coinciding as it does with the regional parks 50th anniversary, presents…
read more
forParks Te Muri walk-in open day single-issue issue
Because of the urgency and importance of the upcoming Te Muri open day, we are breaking with our usual practice and making this a one-issue issue. There is, however, much going on in the regional parks, particularly during Seaweek…
read more
Share Te Muri with walking Aucklanders or their cars
It’s been timed for low tide that day, at 12.22 pm. Because, despite the Auckland Regional Authority’s citizens advisory group 29 years ago embracing the concept of developing Te Muri for walking access only, there is still no all-tide access across the…
read more
Long-form formal submission supporting coastal trail
Auckland Council has provided an online form that short-changes the Mahurangi Coastal Trail. While it allows submitters to respond to the primary actions and developments contemplated in the draft variation to the Auckland Regional Park…
read more
Reasons to believe footbridge will receive fair shake
Prospects for the Mahurangi Coastal Trail aren’t as dismal as they appear. Or at least as they fail to appear, in the ‘primary actions and developments contemplated,’ in the draft variation to Auckland Regional Parks management plan published yesterday. While…
read more
Disdaining community input council plans new group
Simultaneously, it’s one of the best and the most preposterous proposals of the draft plan: Establish a friends group for the park and wider network of Mahurangi regional parks. Preposterous because, having relegated the concept most widely…
read more
Until March to counter plan to relegate coastal trail
Anybody who’d read the summary of phase-1 submissions would be utterly flummoxed. Of the 140 who made submissions to the Auckland Regional Parks management plan, 101 explicitly supported the concept for a Mahurangi Coastal Trail as the…
read more
21-year-old president rocks coastal trail dream
Her Facebook lit up. It is clear from the rapturous response to the New Zealand Herald article featuring newly elected Mahurangi Action president Tessa Berger, that Facebook is an essential tool in spreading the Mahurangi Coastal Trail…
read more
Re-imagining the Mahurangi Regatta beyond coastal trail
That the Mahurangi Regatta is a regional event is beyond dispute. The venerable event’s region-wide appeal is now backed up by data, collected at this year’s regatta by Auckland Council following its decision to grant $4000 towards the costs of hosting the…
read more
Celebrity fundraiser rescheduled then reimagined
This proposed event was rescheduled, then reimagined following the spectacularly successful ‘Buy this beach’ campaign that has seen Te Awaroa Beach become part of Abel Tasman Nation Park. Long story short, the timing of the event will be…
read more
Feedback supports coastal-trail primary Te Muri access
Notification of public consultation on the intention to undertake a variation to the Auckland Regional Parks Management Plan to include Te Muri was undertaken in mid-July 2015. Information about the consultation went live on the Shape Auckland…
read more
Mahurangi Action phase-1 Te Muri submission
Mahurangi Action Incorporated is well known to be the initiator of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail concept. This unapologetic focus on the proposed coastal trail and Judge Arnold Turner Footbridge across the Pūhoi River, however, is symptomatic of the…
read more
Views sought on long-term future of Te Muri
It is only the first phase, but it might also prove to be the most important. When, in its dying days in 2010, the Auckland Regional Council purchased the $15 million, 383-hectare Schischka farm, a large part of the motivation was to take pressure off…
read more
Invitation to join the Mahurangi Coastal Trail 100
There will only ever be one, Mahurangi Coastal Trail one hundred. In one hundred years’ time, the 100 visionaries who, on 1 November 2015, pledged to support the bid to make the Mahurangi Coastal Trail the Auckland Regional Parks 50th…
read more
Need for coastal trail celebrity fundraiser 1-pager
There will only ever be one, Mahurangi Coastal Trail one hundred. One hundred years from now, the 100 visionaries recorded as having made the Mahurangi Coastal Trail the Auckland Regional Parks 50th anniversary legacy project will…
read more
Mahurangi Coastal Trail celebrity fundraiser
The Auckland Regional Parks 50th anniversary, legacy project. That is what the Mahurangi Coastal Trail must become, if Aucklanders are to mark the first fifty years of their incomparable network of regional parks in a manner befitting its scale…
read more
Embolden parks chief by bussing in bridge supporters
The Mahurangi Coastal Trail has been paid a considerable compliment. Friends of Regional Parks, in addition to making the coastal trail its flagship project, is making the concept the subject of its annual general meeting, on 29 June. Amongst the speakers…
read more
How trail can help save a habitable planet
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Guardian is throwing everything at it. Well, nearly everything. While its ‘Keep it in the ground’ campaign is all over its environment section, there is no trace, on the newspaper’s main online masthead, of the millennial moral…
read more
3 separate vs one magnificent Mahurangi Regional Park
Waitākere Ranges Regional Park is more than 19 times the combined size of the three Mahurangi regional parks. Waitākere Ranges dwarfs the combined 900 hectares of the largely contiguous regional parks of Mahurangi, Te Muri and…
read more
Roll on the regional parks rolling 50th celebrations
Auckland Council is planning to push the regional parks 50th boat out. But rather than one grand event, or weekend, the celebrations will likely take the form of a season of events, rather like the way Warkworth’s 150th anniversary was celebrated. For…
read more
Wenderholm celebratory sunrise breakfast
There were very good reasons for celebrating in 2016. Thirty-first of March is the 50th anniversary of the purchase of Wenderholm Regional Park, meaning that the main celebratory event could justifiably been held on Tuesday. But while…
read more
Trail trustees sign on and board votes to support
This week sees concrete step number three, with step four imminent. Concrete step one towards the Mahurangi Coastal Trail was last November, when Christine Fletcher’s parks, recreation and sport committee voted for work to proceed on the…
read more
Second concrete step as coastal trail wins Friends
Friends of Regional Parks is strictly a high-level, umbrella group. It was formed to ensure that the Auckland Regional Parks network survived and flourished under the new unified governance arrangements for the region. So for Friends of Regional…
read more
Next step on coastal trail is trust and working group
Trust is the essential element in any successful collaboration. And it is never more so when that collaboration involves various community groups, elected council representatives, and council staff. Trust was clearly a key factor in Mahurangi Coastal Trail…
read more
Coastal trail gains first concrete step
No better proof could possibly be had. Sat in the top-floor council chamber in the Auckland Town Hall, nine supporters of a $0.9 million coastal trail could have been excused for feeling unsure as to whether Auckland Council’s busy parks, recreation…
read more
Mahurangi Coastal Trail high-tide Seaweek walk
Last year’s was a low-tide walk, and wade, with the odd wallow. Partly to demonstrate that the Pūhoi River can be readily be crossed at low tide, and partly to avoid the need to arrange for craft to ferry folk across, the Mahurangi Coastal Trail was done…
read more
Resolving outstanding practical problem
It’s nine years six weeks since it was signed. So there is every likelihood that, by the tenth anniversary of the signing of heads of agreement, what Justice Rhys Harrison described in his declaratory judgement as the outstanding practical problems…
read more
Low-tide walk to sample low-hanging fruit
Mahurangi can best ease the region’s growing pains by not housing its share of Aucklanders. According to the introductory video on the new unitary plan website, Aucklanders want a high quality, more compact city, in the face of the expected 30-year growth rate…
read more
First draft of report for coastal trail discussion at club
Te Muri is the centre of four regional park identities: Mahurangi East, Mahurangi West, Te Muri and Wenderholm. Mahurangi Regional Park was extended by a $15 million purchase of 407 hectares of adjacent farmland during the latter part of…
read more
$15 million Te Muri purchase lucky Te Araroa break
An additional argument has surfaced for the coastal trail. Between Pūhoi and Wenderholm, it was planned that Te Araroa should follow the south bank of the Pūhoi River. However, that plan unravelled when a property holder along the route refused to…
read more
Ten minutes and local board agrees to walk
A coastal trail, for the most part, should be built close to the water. But not only is it necessary to skirt the steep and cliff sections of the coast, the elevation gained rewards walkers with views that more than compensate for the slight exertion involved. The…
read more
After a century or more ferrymen to work Sunday
Once, they were an essential part of the roading infrastructure. Ferrymen were paid the princely retainer of £15, or more if they were very lucky, to be on hand to transport travellers across the region’s various rivers. Pūhoi River ferryman George Ryan received £20…
read more
Road would ruin future for Mahurangi coastal trail
The grandest entrance to the harbour is from the sea, under sail. Coming a sublime second is to discover the Mahurangi on foot, from Waiwera. Currently, this requires closely judging the tide and some determined wading, to cross the Pūhoi. Once across the…
read more
A unique role for Mahurangi and public transport
The public transport needs of the Mahurangi, in most ways, are unremarkable. Warkworth and Mahurangi East have long needed both a local bus service as well as better connectivity to Auckland’s bus system. But what is unique about the…
read more
Te Muri acquisition key to coastal trail
It was to form part of a scenic coastal road. In 1966, when the regional council secured 63.8 hectares of coastal land at Te Muri for that purpose, such car‑centric thinking went unchallenged. Subsequently, the regional council’s ardour for the…
read more