Mahurangi magazine
Dedicated to democratic climate-action mobilisation and the MahurangiSign 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…
Sweet Summer Fest marquee serendipity
Serendipitously, the Mahurangi Harbour community’s own marquee, commissioned for Saturday’s regatta, has arrived in the nick of time to also go up for a second not-for-profit event: The first Mahu West Summer Fest, on 17 February. A community marquee was part of…
Grand future for good-old-fashioned picnic regatta
Pointedly billed as a good old-fashioned, leave-your-wallet-at-home picnic regatta since its 1977 revival by Mahurangi Action, the organisation has very determinedly kept it that way ever since. Although the beach had been in public ownership for seven or so years when…
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…
J Barry Ferguson – ebullient friend of the Mahurangi
J Barry Ferguson (1931–2023) became a friend of the MahurangiFriends of the Mahurangi was name of Mahurangi Action Incorporated when established, in 1974 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…
Buy the ultimate Mahurangi Regatta marquee, now !
In the wholly unlikely event that Mahurangi had served a period as New Zealand’s capital, after its potential suitability had been assessed for that purpose, the harbourscape of Auckland’s best kept secret would, today, be predominantly urban. In glorious…
Buy Waiwera plan b or End child poverty in Aotearoa, now !
Myriad reasons make it preferable, for Buy Waiwera plan b, to instead be: Buy Waiwera – phase 2. That said, should the Buy Waiwera moonshot fail to make it to the launch pad, an end-to-end Mahurangi Coastal Path would make for a stunningly salubrious plan b. Buy Waiwera, in this…
Buy these brand-new old Waiwera pools
Demolition of the derelict Waiwera pools infrastructure was inevitable. However, the fate of the revered hot mineral pools is potentially far more miserable for the memories of the millions of Aucklanders who had ever made it their mecca. For what now feels an eternity…
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 Path, and previous trials
From day one, preserving the sense of splendid isolation that is Te Muri, was the mission of the Mahurangi Coastal Path. 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…