Mahurangi magazine
Dedicated to democratic climate-action mobilisation and the Mahurangi
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…