Regional parks

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…

The principal objective of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail is to provide primary access to Te Muri. , Wenderholm Regional Park receives an estimated 225 362 visitors per year, and Mahurangi Regional Park...

  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 to...

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 published in November 2015, most of...

Submitted 18 March 2016 Executive summary added 26 March 2016 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...

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 Auckland Council with an...

Event Walk-in open day at Te Muri Topic Draft management plan variation Where Te Muri woolshed—west of campground When 10.30 am 2 pm Saturday 20 February Low tide 12.22 pm Note Allow at least 20 minutes to walk in from terminus of Ngārewa Drive Hello Friends of...

Event Walk-in open day at Te Muri Topic Draft management plan variation Where Te Muri woolshed—west of campground When 10.30 am 2 pm Saturday 20 February Low tide 12.22 pm Note Allow at least 20 minutes to walk in from terminus of Ngārewa Drive It’s been timed for low...

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...

It’s simultaneously 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 supported by community...

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 primary access to Te Muri, and...

Updated 11 November 2015 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...

Updated 1 December 2015 Update 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...

As submitted 19 August 2015 Preface Mahurangi Action Incorporated (established 1974 as Friends of the Mahurangi) 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...

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, 407-hectare Schischka farm, a large part of the motivation was to take pressure off Wenderholm, the...

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 anniversary, legacy project, will...

Update 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 determined only after...

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 and vision. And in...

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 will be...

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 Wenderholm, including the 407-hectare...

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 that calendar of...

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 there was a certain amount of...

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 Te Muri Concept Plan. The...

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 Parks to make a...

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 gaining its...

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 and sport...

Corrected 25 February 2014 Event date 9 March 2014 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,...

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 of 600...

Draft report for Mahurangi Club discussion 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 ‍m purchase of 407‍ ‍hectares of adjacent farmland during the...

Updated 10 July 2015 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...

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...

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...

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 river, the...

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 Mahurangi is that it is...

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 coastal road...