Mahurangi magazine
Dedicated to democratic climate-action mobilisation and the Mahurangi
Changing Mahurangi Magazine preferences and unsubscribing
This form is a work in progress—with a little more work, it will make unsubscribing from the Mahurangi Magazine even easier! Meanwhile, fully recognising that the content and writing style is not everyone’s cup of climate-action-mobilisation meat, acclimatised readers are urged to…
Te Muri Crossing high-tea silent auction online
Generous Friends of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail: The design and consenting of this 260-metre boardwalk-and-footbridge Te Muri Crossing is what your bids will help to complete. Because some of the best friends of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail were unable to be present…
Grand start to greater Mahurangi coastal path
Even Conservative-led England has its England Coast Path. A coastal pathway from Waiwera to Waipū, Whangārei or anywhere, once built, will seem the most obvious, and most marvellously magnificent thing in the world. Coastal urban Tāmaki Makaurau can…
High tea and then high time for community crossing engagement
Transparency, in a democracy, should be the default behaviour that is only departed from rarely, rather than routinely. Thus, it is a relief to report that, come next Sunday’s high tea at Tu Ngutu Villa, Mahurangi Coastal Trail trustee and coastal engineer Craig Davis will be…
Imperative for private-vehicle-free Te Muri future
Not everyone supports the proposed Te Muri crossing. Nor does everyone who supports the proposed Te Muri crossing, support every aspect of it. For example, many Mahurangi West people would have preferred that development of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail began…
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…
Mahurangi Harbour’s scenic ridge roads
Of the many scenic byroads in Kaipara ki Mahurangi, the two most important are those that wind along the ridge tops to give access to Mahurangi West and Scotts Landing. They have assumed new significance as entries to the regional park. The most used, as the…
Mahurangi as missionary way-station
First missionary to enter the Hauraki Gulf was the pioneer of them all, Samuel Marsden, during his first visit in the brig Active, 1814–1815. Abounding in energy and curiosity, he explored to the mouth of the Waihou. According to his companion, Nicolas, theirs was only the…
Sculptured hills and headlands of Mahurangi
Terraces, ditches and pits, so prominent on the headlands of the Mahurangi, remind us that this peaceful harbour had a turbulent past: “Māori were not constantly at war, but they did live with the constant threat of war. This fact of life is literally carved into the…
Vessels built beside the Mahurangi by year by builder
Following are listed vessels known to have been built in Mahurangi Harbour from circa 1832 to 1880, by Pākehā builders many of whose stories are told in Part 5 – A Maritime Community. Sadly, neither the name of the boat built at Spar Station Cove, nor its builder there, is known…
Hour for Sunday 30 May Te Muri Crossing high tea
One hour can make a world of difference. Arrive at the stream mouth 15 minutes ahead of the turn of a spring-high-tide high, and a leisurely sidestroke, beach towel aloft, will quickly have even the far-from-fit across to enjoy Te Muri’s sense of splendid isolation. Forty-five minutes…
Better-not-bigger on beauteous display
Mahurangi Regatta’s better-not-bigger mantra is intoned in the full knowledge that with better comes bigger. The Mahurangi Regatta is so sublimely and uniquely attractive, its growth is utterly inevitable. Mahurangi Action, as the 1977 revivalists of this at-least 163-year-old…
Mahurangi Regatta 2021 photographic gallery
An even dozen charming images kindly provided to the Mahurangi Magazine, within minutes of a plaintive plea being put out. The editor fully expects to be corrected on one or two of the gallery images, not least of all the owner of this sublimely demure vestigial transom…
2021 Mahurangi Regatta programme
Celebrating the 44th anniversary of the regatta revival by Mahurangi Action, and Teak Construction’s 6th year. For a period, this programme did not reflect the intention—later reversed—advertised in the Mahurangi Cruising Club Yearbook, to skip the 2021 prize-giving dance…
Scow-building Darrochs of the Clyde
George Darroch, born 1797, was one of six children born to James and Elizabeth née Murray, in Whitehouse. This village lies on the southern shore of Loch Tarbet, the sea-loch that is the northern limit to Kintyre. James’ line went back five generations to Mulmuroch…
Darrach and sons of Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island, the smallest province of Canada, is possibly best known as the site of the novel Anne of Green Gables. It lies within the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, off Nova Scotia, of which it is not part. It was from the adjacent Cape Breton Island, part of Nova Scotia…
Darrachs and Darrochs of Colonsay and Kintyre
The next two shipbuilding families on the Mahurangi Harbour, and the most notable, shared a common ancestry. The names Darroch and Darrach are but variant spellings of the same name. They represent a clan in Argyll of Clan McDonald of the Isles. The family…
Thomas Scott lands in the Mahurangi
Thomas Scott, builder of the William, the third vessel of 1849, was no transient. His efforts marked the beginning of a Mahurangi Harbour industry. Thomas Stuart Scott was born around 1800 at Blackwall, and grew up among the sights and sounds of shipbuilding. It seems…
Great lesser boatbuilders of the Mahurangi
A number of other boatbuilders worked briefly on the Mahurangi or nearby. Builders at Mangawhai, Pākiri, Ōmaha, Ōrewa and the Wade are not included here. The appendix lists those who built at Waiwera, Pūhoi, Mahurangi and Matakana, that is at Mahurangi in…
Direct-democracy threat to free fair and frequent elections
Four depravedly indifferent years of failed-fake-reality-show-host-led democracy in the United States is but the most recent demonstration of the race to the bottom that is populist politics. The line, however, between depraved populism and unprincipled party politics…
Reporting on not just the latest in a litany of Mahurangi actions
chart is not just the latest in a long line of Mahurangi actions. Nor is it the first initiative that might have national significance, given that that distinction might arguably go to Ronald Harry Locker’s Jade River: A History of the Mahurangi, which Mahurangi…
Wicked coastal-trail progress thanks to Sir Peter
Sir Peter was reluctant, he said, to use the term wicked problem, lest it imply insolvability. He did allow that addressing climate was very difficult, otherwise it would already have been. Speaking at the Te Muri Crossing charity cocktail party, Distinguished Professor Sir Peter…
Free regatta shuttlebus to Tu Ngutu Villa
Until Scotts Landing locals came to the rescue in 2019, the free Mahurangi Regatta shuttlebus was driven by Mahurangi West locals. Such was the commitment of one of those sober drivers, Lex Marshall, he would kayak across the harbour to do his shift…
Crossing splendidly preserves Te Muri sense of isolation
Walk along Te Muri Beach on a sunny Sunday, and on up the gentle hillside to the saddle overlooking Wenderholm, and the contrast can be breath-taking. Outside of the summer school holidays, and when the tide slides into Te Muri Estuary smooth and crisp and early…
Donald’s depraved indifference indiminishable at 100 000/day
Ahead of itself, but by less than two months, the Mahurangi Magazine, 5 July, predicted: The depraved indifference of Donald Trump means that, come 5 September when New Zealanders begin flocking to the polls for 13 days of early voting, it will be against a backdrop...
chart schools art competition successfully piloted
chart in Schools – the Coastal Heritage Art competition was launched in January of this year as a pilot programme, with the involvement of three primary schools in the immediate Mahurangi region: Warkworth Primary School, Snells Beach School and Horizon…