Mahurangi magazine
Dedicated to democratic climate-action mobilisation and the Mahurangi
J Barry Ferguson – two-decade Mahurangi son
J Barry Ferguson (1931–2023) became a Mahurangi son even before he left Long Island. For his two, too-brief decades here, Barry lived in the Mahurangi, not in his illustrious New York past, as proud and as grateful as he was to have been unambiguously embraced by…
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…
It’s a barge! It’s a boat! It’s the J Barry Ferguson
By any reasonable criteria, the J Barry Ferguson can be described as a landing barge. Clearly not in the assault-troop-landing sense, not least of all because of its diminutive size. In one very important respect, however, the J Barry Ferguson is not a typical…
Giselles and Gabrielles of their grandchildren
That, in modern meteorological history, Aotearoa has never been hit by a tropical cyclone, is no fluke. The clue, of course, is “tropical”. Not that a tropical cyclone can’t survive beyond the tropics, or even beyond the subtopics—Gabrielle was in the subtropics within a couple of…
Climate-powered atmospheric river alters algorithm
Mahurangi Regatta 2023, or rather its cancellation, has added an important loop to the loose algorithm that has been run 46 times since Mahurangi Action revived a regatta for which only scant clues remained as to how it was run. Initially, the sailing and shoreside events were…
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…
Hungry-Creek-Road-first policy right for the wrong reasons
Prioritising private-light-vehicle access via Hungry Creek Road, ahead of a footbridge across Te Muri Estuary, is counter-productive policy making, fundamentally incompatible with Auckland Council’s own declared climate emergency. Fortunately, the tens of millions that would be…
Thinking outside the three-bedroom breeding box
Good for absolutely nothing, war is now preoccupying the every waking moment that should be fiercely focussed on the climate emergency. For those born into the post-war optimism of the United Nations, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sharply increased the struggle to…
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…
Seeing coastal path for the trails, great regional park for the parks
Waiwera to Mullet Point, is a coastline mostly of regional parkland—all but about 3.5 of the 13 kilometres from Mahurangi Island to Mullet Point already is. Yet, that all-but contiguous 1000 hectares of regional parkland is officially five separate parks—six, unless a major, joint…
Coastal path and the greater Mahurangi regional park
Wenderholm, objectively, was where it started. While the 1729-hectare Centennial Memorial Park established in 1940 is recorded as Auckland’s first regional park, Wenderholm was the first of a half-century of regional parkland acquisitions that resulted in today’s 41 000-hectare…
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…
Te Muri, the Mahurangi Coastal Trail, and previous trials
From day one, preserving the sense of splendid isolation that is Te Muri, was the mission of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail. Since its 1973 purchase as regional parkland, Mahurangi West locals had the run of Te Muri, or at least the coastal margin of Te Muri that was compulsorily…
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…
Honest cop preferable to climate Pearl Harbor
Globally, writers are giving their best shot to the imperative of persuading the Glasgow conference parties that, this time, they must mobilise meaningful climate action. One such writer, the Guardian ’s re-wilding guru, George Monbiot, in his masterly eve-of-cop 26 article…
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…
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…
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…
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…