Campaign finance reform
Without which bought-and-paid-for government swamps democracy
2025 Mahurangi Regatta
Mahurangi Regatta 2025—hopefully, this one summer only—will not include the wildly enthusiastically patronised prize-giving dance. Despite the heroic, 2024 effort to future-proof the dance with the purchase of the Mahurangi Harbour community marquee…
Sign on 2025 shoreside Mahurangi Regatta crew
By signing on the shoreside events crew, Mahurangi Regatta lovers carry forward a tradition dating from before the first recorded, on New Year’s Day 1858. When Mahurangi Action revived the regatta in 1977, the committee members, most of who had lived through the Great…
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-polycrisis megamobilisation meat, acclimatised readers are…
Mahurangi Regatta 2024 programme
Having been atmospheric-riverly obliged to cancel the 2023 Mahurangi Regatta, demanded that the better-not-bigger mantra be invoked to ensure that 2024 shoreside events sparkle better and brighter than ever before. On the horizon, is a perfect, Bedouin-styled…
Dire forecast cancels the 2023 Mahurangi Regatta
Easterlies forecast for the four days ahead of Saturday would have generated too great a swell at Sullivans Bay for the traditional Mahurangi Regatta shoreside events to be held. Ultimately however, a convergence of dire forecasts has cancelled the regatta in its entirety…
Sign on the 2024 shoreside Mahurangi Regatta crew
By signing on the shoreside events crew, Mahurangi Regatta lovers will be helping to carry forward a tradition dating at least as far back as that first recorded, on New Year’s Day 1858. When Mahurangi Action revived the regatta in 1977, the committee members, most of who had lived…
Mahurangi Regatta programme
– 2023 regatta cancelled
If held, always held on the Saturday of Auckland Anniversary weekend. Utterly unavoidably, the 2023 Mahurangi Regatta, in its entirety, is cancelled due. Since its revival by Mahurangi Action in 1977, this is possibly only the second time an extreme-conditions forecast has cancelled sailing…
Mahurangi Action’s marvellous year, and then some
Far from ideal, this annual report, and the annual general meeting it will be presented to, is four months late. Only part of that delay can be attributed to the on-going covid-19 pandemic. The principal cause of the delay was, having decided that as important as it is to…
Mahurangi Regatta 2022 sailing proceeding under Red setting
Sailing is proceeding on Saturday, under the Red covid-19 protection framework setting. The traditional shoreside events, however, will definitely not proceed, their cancellation having been notified nine weeks ago, in time to catch the Mahurangi Cruising Club Yearbook 2022…
Pursuing perfect spot-prize picnic spot for 2022
Tungutu Point, indubitably, provides the ultimate Mahurangi Regatta viewing platform. Come 29 January, however, unless camped out there at sunrise—which normally comes extremely highly recommended—the chances of finding at a picnic space providing adequate…
Every action equal and apposite climate action
As a catchy climate-action-mobilisation call-to-arms, equal and apposite is a pun too far. An incisive shorthand phrase to convey the imperative that every action be a climate action is, nevertheless, in desperate need of coining. Glasgow’s overarching message…
Transcending council boundaries in wahapū Mahurangi
When Mahurangi Action Incorporated was formed, in December 1974—as Friends of the Mahurangi—the local town council was seen as the enemy. The proximate threat, in the eyes of the community, was that the town council’s plans for a new wastewater treatment plant would…
J Barry Ferguson Fund 2021 gallery
Where vendor and vendee combine practical philanthropy with love for the Mahurangi – inspired by J Barry Ferguson’s joint desire to support, in particular, the Mahurangi Coastal Trail, and to find appreciative homes for the balance of his lifetime’s—mostly botanical—art collection…
Rare and heroic inclusion in charity art exhibition
Alecto Historical Editions Banks’ Florilegium prints are rare for a reason. The never-used engraved copper plates from which they were printed had lain, effectively forgotten, for 200 years before being resurrected by a printery established in the late 1950s by Cambridge and…
J Barry Ferguson Fund supporting Mahurangi actions
First few items of a 103-piece botanical and floral artwork, and New Zealand and book, collection donated by J Barry Ferguson establishing the J Barry Ferguson Fund to perpetually support Mahurangi actions. Items range in value from a few hundred to quite a few thousand dollars…
Splendid summer to protect Te Muri sense of isolation
Already three years behind in its 10-year review, the draft regional parks management plan is now not due to be approved for release until November. Submissions on the monumental—the current document runs to 504 pages—and monumentally important…
Tickets to J Barry Ferguson Fund botanical art exhibition
Venue Warkworth Hotel – upstairs banquet room, courtesy Warkworth Oaks
Date Postponed from 20 August…
Time 3.30–8.30 PM
Format Wine and hors d’oeuvres, expert curation, silent auction
Proceeds 2021 Mahurangi Regatta…
Te Muri access dictated drop-in location
Was it not for John Darrach’s 1880s activism, Saturday’s coffee-and-croissants drop-in day, in Mahurangi West’s former school, would have been held in Sullivans Bay. John Darrach was so exercised about the danger to the 23 Māori and 14 Pākehā children living at school-less…
Mahurangi West land restoration planting Sunday 11 July
Officially, the West is East, but in practice it is neither, nor is it in the Mahurangi hydrological catchment, it being in that of Te Muri. First planting day under the Mahurangi Land Restoration label appears to be an echo of the first under the $3 million Mahurangi Action…
Dozen reasons to want not-a-tickets to the prize-giving dance
Dozens of reasons exist for not selling tickets to the prize-giving dance. Tickets were sold to the first, revived, regatta dance, which was styled the Mahurangi Regatta Ball, complete with all-singing-all-dancing World War II harmony tribute troupe, and dance floor…
Te Muri Crossing coffee-and-croissants drop-in day
Te Muri Crossing high tea 2022, will be on Mother’s Day. Mothers who were treated to Sunday’ high tea at Tu Ngutu Villa clearly enjoyed the afternoon, the star-studded speakers, and the silent auction. The silent auction, after initially having nothing not on offer at the…
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…
2020 Coastal Heritage Art Competition finalists
The three prize-winners and one special mention, and balance of the 16 artworks short-listed in the 2020 chart pilot. Three schools participated in the pilot: Horizon, Snells Beach, and Warkworth Primary. In 2021, 11 primary schools in the broader Mahurangi are aboard, and…
Sir Peter is Te Muri Crossing cocktail party guest of honour
Self-identifying as a Westie, Distinguished Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, after 21 November, hopefully, will also identify as a Mahu Westie. Time was running out, and the Mahurangi Coastal Trail Trust was facing the ignominy of sending out invitations to its charity...
Regional parks review round-1 feedback deadline extended
Round one of Auckland Council’s 10-year regional parks management plan review began 1 September. It was to end next Monday afternoon, close of play, but has been extended to 26 October. The 12 October date continued to appear in the discussion paper linked, but has...
Act now and Aotearoa could own Democracy Day 2021
With Donald Trump’s best prospects now being immediate resignation and prompt a Mike Pence pardon, the United States’ flawed democracy might now survive long enough to face redemption. Shy seven weeks, it is 20 years from the United States election that…
25% less democracy doesn’t equate to 25% less can-kicking
Blamed for everything from the lack of climate-action mobilisation to the lack of a capital gains tax, to the failure to raise the retirement age, the three-year parliamentary term—it is persistently opined—must go. Evidence for the efficacy of longer parliamentary terms….
$30 million Mahurangi action plan
$3 million over 5 years seemed, for a moment there in 2004, as though all the Mahurangi Harbour’s Christmases had come at once. Even in today’s money, $9.06 million is more than twice the 2004 amount, but nor, back then, does it mean that the Mahurangi’s sediment woes…
Depraved indifference to humanity and the home planet
Aotearoa has demonstrated that democracy can work. Globally, however, covid-19 demonstrates the deadly degree to which governmental and intergovernmental governance, democratic or otherwise, is grossly unfit-for-purpose. The world’s ascendant…
Making molehills out of mobilisation mountains
What should have been no worse than a four-thousand-death epidemic is determinedly on its way to becoming an at-least-four-million-death pandemic—a cruel and unnecessary global demonstration of the nothing-to-see-here-folks instincts of bureaucrats and…
Democratic climate-action mobilisation or martial law
That which should have been one of the most influential books of all time ranks 302 209 places behind Nevil Shute Norway’s On the Beach in Amazon’s best sellers, speaks volumes. Comparing Shute’s fiction with Dr James Hansen’s non-fiction Storms of My Grand…
Every global thing to gain by taking coalition initiative
Messiah complex is a label few would wish have bestowed. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would likely rather run a Walker mile than be portrayed as the one who sought to lead the world through the 2020– Pandemic, and through the increasingly unavoidable climate…
Last habitable landmass must lead covid–climate mobilisation
Last habitable landmass to emerge, and to be inhabited, Aotearoa, should now play to its strengths by demonstrating life after zero-carbon, and covid-19. New Zealanders have never been backward about being world-beating, whether sailing black-hulled America’s Cup yachts or…
covid-19 climate and bird-flu-strength-pandemic clarion call
Spain, officially, has had not quite 0.5% of its population infected by covid-19, about a third of the rate the maligned country experienced during the 1918 Pandemic. But 10% of those undeserving more than 230 000 people have died, and its economy is in its worst…
Yes Aotearoa can mobilise climate action
As the epitome of physical distancing, Aotearoa is perfectly placed to lead the global project to survive the covid-19 pandemic, and anthropogenic global heating. In respect to climate, after petulantly insisting cop26 must proceed, on 1 April it was finally postponed…
Yes Aotearoa can mobilise by example
As the epitome of physical distancing, Aotearoa is perfectly placed to lead the global project to survive the covid-19 pandemic, and anthropogenic global heating. In respect to climate, after petulantly insisting cop26 must proceed, on 1 April it was finally postponed…
Splendid self-isolation opportunity for civilisation
Having wasted two months of preparation time, the challenge for civilisation now is to break its determined habit of wasting every crisis in its entirety. Aside from abiding by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s succinct advice to act as though one had covid-19, and stay strictly…
Sweet Te Muri Crossing consensus
In its 33-year story, the Mahurangi Coastal Trail has seen some meaningful milestones. Last Thursday’s is one such significant trail marker. Circa 1987, Auckland Regional Parks management had decided where a bridge was to cross Te Muri Stream; it was to run smack…
Octavius Browne second brother to visit Gordon
William Browne’s son Octavius Browne was born on 2 November 1809. Charles Browne says “the place of his birth and the date of his baptism is not known, but we have been told that just before he left Courtlands on the journey to Scotland in the course of which he died, he…
Planning Mahurangi Regatta 2021 at the town hall
Revival of the Mahurangi Regatta was the direct result of 1970s Mahurangi River restoration efforts. Two years of determined advocacy for a more far-sighted solution to tidehead town’s sewage woes had comprehensively convinced the regional water authority…
Mahurangi Regatta 2020 results combined list to come
Results are ordered alphabetically by division, then by handicap place within each division. However, for those desiring an overall picture of the day’s racing, a combined-fleet list ordered by elapsed time will, in time, be appended below the division placings…
Regatta 2020 lost, found and thanked
Effusive thanks have been lavishing the organisers, sponsors, and volunteers from even before Saturday’s Mahurangi Regatta began, but also in its immediate aftermath: ”Thanks mate. Such an awesome event—huge congrats to everyone involved…
Climate action of the people, by the people for the planet
That government of the people, by the people, for the people, has perished from the earth, has placed all earth’s creatures in existential peril. All too foreseeably, the half-billion creatures and counting destroyed by wildfire this globally-heated Australian summer will later…
Octavius’s brother Gordon Davis Browne
Gordon Davis Browne was born in early 1805, and baptised at St Mary’s Lambeth on 22 March that year. The explanation for his given name of Gordon is not known. Charles Gordon Browne (who was born in January 1845, and whose own second name was obviously a…
Compulsory voting cart before smarter-democracy horse
Big business would be the biggest loser, was a Labour-led government to legislate to prosecute non-voters. Currently, unlike Australians, New Zealanders are legally allowed to abstain from voting. But with global voter turnout in determined decline, New Zealand’s lack…
Aotearoa might best advance stv by enhancing mmp
Aotearoa is not just the world’s first full democracy because it was first to enfranchise women. Thanks to New Zealand’s geographic isolation and late colonisation, a partnership approach was attempted from the get-go, with greater and lesser success. One uniquely…
Climate and democracy at the mercy of plutocracy
Epically ironically, salvaging a survivable climate and a free society possibly now depends upon a one plutocrat deposing another plutocrat, turned dictator. Far preferably, Republican Party senators would suspend self-interest for the survival and dignity of their once…
Low-hanging election-turnout fruit and silver bullets
It is more than semantics. In the thousand-year war to survive anthropogenic global heating, a magazine of silver bullets the size of the 59 000-hectare Hawthorne depot, Nevada, will be needed. However, regardless of the problem, received wisdom would…
Sunday Sunset Boulevard town-hall matinee idyll
In a former life, J Barry Ferguson, amongst many things, was “the garden curator of Greenacre Park on 51st Street Manhattan, a private ‘vest-pocket’ park, open to everyone and owned by the Rockefeller Greenacre Foundation.” Having been florist and event organiser to New York’s…
Mahurangi Action turning 45 – 2019 annual report
On 17 December, Mahurangi Action will be 45. This, indubitably, calls for a five-year plan to ensure all that reasonably can be, is achieved—for the Mahurangi, global climate and everything—before the organisation hits its half-centennial. Aside from its inaugural meeting…
stv bicentennial morphs into march-stealing breakfast
Unless it is Christmas, and it’s on the 25th, there is not good time in December to hold an event. Having said that, Mahurangi Action is in the sublimely salubrious company of the Birmingham Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement in having…
Buffalo off spar station misses festival but makes history
Pictorially, at least, hmss Buffalo and Gordon Davis Browne’s spar station will make a fashionably late arrival to Auckland Heritage Festival 2019, which concludes at the end of Labour Weekend. Given that Browne’s Mahurangi spar station was the first European…
stv-elect first Mayor of Mahurangi
Vote early and often to elect the first mayor of Mahurangi. Of course, only the latest vote an individual casts will count. Because somebody votes early, they shouldn’t later be penalised when some late-breaking information causes them to revise their preferences…
Holy grails and silver bullets and day-and-half to vote
It’s long since time to jettison the obligatory if-we-don’t-act-on-climate-within-so-many-years exhortation. The truth is that, since 1988, when not only Dr James Hansen but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called for climate action, it has never been certain…
Nominate someone as 2020 Mayor of Mahurangi
Mayors, to be legitimate, need to be elected by preference voting—known as stv in Aotearoa, and as rcv in the United States, where Barry resided until retiring to his country of birth. The need for a useful demonstration of stv to appropriately mark…
stv-electing first Mayor of Mahurangi
Some dots can take longer to connect. And the more obvious the dot, the longer it seems to take for it to be connected. Since the announcement of the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, the Mahurangi Magazine has…
stv bicentennial extraordinary town-hall talk
Ideally, the bicentennial of stv should be held where the Birmingham Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement held the world’s first election with it. But even if that ultimate location was the epicentre of a global celebration, two other, antipodean, countries…
Crude reminder of royally half-cocked commission
First-past-the-post, 200 years after the first single transferable vote election, deserves to be a very distant memory. But, thanks to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance stvsingle-transferable-vote-ignoramuses, the region is about to elect its fourth mayor with the…
Bay where no ships has been 60 years with no name
It was almost certainly a good thing, that 60 years ago the name of the Auckland region’s first European settlement slid unnoticed into the next bay north. Had the bay been known by a descriptive name, such as Spar Station Cove, or by any name…
hmss Buffalo arrives at Mr Browne’s establishment
His putative youngest brother was Charles Dickens’ friend and illustrator, Hablot Knight Browne, aka Phiz. Putative, because Hablot was in fact the nephew of the founder of the Auckland region’s first European settlement, Gordon Davis Browne…
Fourth Thursdays 3rd time lucky after 20 June
The clash wasn’t discovered until after 20 June was locked in for the Mahurangi Coastal Trail Taking Shapely town-hall talk. Having cheerfully ceded their second-Wednesdays slot to bpw Warkworth, the town-hall talks have found that…
Mahurangi Coastal Path taking shapely
Most of the Mahurangi Coastal Path is already in use, and has been for decades. This, thanks to the entire coastline from Waiwera to the Mahurangi Harbour becoming regional park between 1965 and 1973. Within that time, built by park staff…
ipcc-understates-threat understatement
Bulletins proclaiming that the ipcc 1.5° report understates climate threat are literally understatements of epochal proportions. Self-reinforcing climate feedbacks already irreversibly underway signal civilization’s ever-growing greenhouse gas…
On the unspeakable ephemerality of beaches
Relying on economics to salvage a survivable climate is the 21st century equivalent of a standing down an army and leaving defence of the realm to wizardry. With the United States Senate summarily scuttling the Green New Deal, it might seem…
Ceding second-Wednesdays for fourth-Thursdays
As of midnight last Monday, dredging the town basin and river downstream became the most urgent Mahurangi project. Up until that deadline, feedback on the structure plan that will shape development of Mahurangi’s tidehead town for…
Strikingly unfit for fossil-fuel-free future
Anthropogenic climate disruption is not just another issue. It is the issue that will bedevil generation after generation for at least hundreds of years. Just how hard and how fast global warming will impact cannot be accurately quantified, given that…
Seriously steeling the green network backbone
Whether the green network proposed in the Draft Warkworth Structure Plan is fit-for-purpose for this week’s climate-striking school students, for their next 30 years, must be the question. And given that streets, once surveyed, tend to endure, the…
Seriously serial structure plan submission
There is much to applaud and support in Warkworth’s draft structure plan. Submissions are invited, as is statutorily required, prior to the final stages, labelled “Changes to Structure Plan and Adoption” or, as the text explains, “Following consultation…
Warkworth watermills millraces and weirs
A more apposite topic for the next town-hall talk could scarcely be conceived. The fact that such a topic has already been conceived, is another story, hopefully for the following Warkworth Town Hall Talk. On Wednesday 13 March, the historian…