Mahurangi magazine
Dedicated to democratic climate-action mobilisation and the Mahurangi
agm tagged to 14 November town-hall talk
To save dragging some of the same folk out twice in one month, Mahurangi Action is tagging its annual general meeting to next month’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk. This is not to suggest that the society is permanently abandoning its salubrious tradition of meeting at…
Town-hall talks back with Professor Bill McKay
As befits the stellar success of the last town-hall talk, before finances forced a two-month hiatus, the series is back to stay. August’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk, by Dr Andrew Jeffs, has spawned a five-year, potentially $1 million, research project aimed at…
Mahurangi Cruising Club website refit
Mahurangi Cruising Club’s website is offline, pending reconstruction. Meantime, the Mahurangi Magazine, as it has since 2007, has available the programme for the upcoming Mahurangi Regatta: 2019 Mahurangi Regatta Programme
Wasting storms of the grandparents
When Dr James Hansen published Storms of My Grandchildren nine years ago this December, he lambasted governments for greenwashing while doing nothing meaningful to curtail fossil-fuel use. But despite, by that time, having already seen his…
With every fibre and electrified-transit solution
Aucklanders once took an average of more than 400 public-transport trips per year. In 1945, with a sixth of the population, Aucklanders were taking nearly 120 million trips, compared to today’s paltry 90 million boardings. Not that all Aucklanders should be…
Future Mahurangi transport network feedback
Mahurangi Action’s feedback pro forma on Warkworth’s future transport network is good to go. Members, and readers generally, are warmly encouraged to use the pro forma as-is or as a starting point for their own feedback, and to put their oars in…
This might have been one more for the roads
September’s town-hall talk is now cancelled, and possibly the balance of this year’s. The September slot was pencilled in for the topic of paedophilia awareness—apparently paedophile networks operate locally—but no subsequent response was…
One billion trees and bugger the science
In 2004, $3 million over 5 years sounded like all Mahurangi’s Christmases had come at once. But a back-of-a-seed-packet calculation strongly suggested that the $3 million the former Auckland Regional Council had budgeted would barely touch the sides, when it…
Second time science mussels into the Mahurangi
The first time science brought its muscle to bear was in 2004. After ten years of studies aimed at baselining selected catchments ahead of urban development impacts, the scientists involved persuaded the former Auckland Regional Council that…
World-famous weekends in Warkworth
Weekend number one, would be the all-important, we’ve-only-got-one-shot-at-this, World-Famous Weekend in Warkworth. Ideally, the inaugural weekend would feature three world-famous names. Say, Angela Lansbury, Sir Bob Geldof, and, for the Sunday…
Faith in the 1% and fighting the 80
Photovoltaics have a huge future and have grown enormously, to about 1% of global energy use. Banking heavily upon it, Germany has plunged it’s poor into energy poverty, by shuttering nuclear, not because of the risk or impact on health, but to pander…
Forlorn futility of faith-based climate action
One person’s demagogue is another person’s saviour, and, for many, the Elon Musk credibility needle will have finally flicked from where it has been firmly stuck on f, to e. For most students, in this age of social-media-supercharged celebrity, learning…
Proposed zero-carbon bill submission
Comment on the proposed zero-carbon bill closes at 5 pm on 19 July. The following pro forma is provided by the Mahurangi Magazine in the earnest hope that the resultant legislation is exponentially more substantive than a zero-carbon-by-2050-target…
Proposed carbon bill zero-action
Generation Zero is ecstatic. But over a proposed zero-carbon bill that clings cravenly to the ineffectual, at best, emissions-trading-scheme approach. To be fair, Generation Zero’s enthusiasm is primarily for having succeeded in selling, to the new…
Thirty years later, what needs to change
Thirty years ago, while the Midwest withered in massive drought and East Coast temperatures exceeded 100°F, I testified to the Senate as a senior nasa scientist about climate change. I said that ongoing global warming was outside the range of natural…
stv supercity shake-up, then Wellington
Mayor Goff was elected by barely 18% of registered voters. Len Brown at least, won 47.8% of votes cast, but only because voters were then still in the dark about his grubby use of Auckland Council property. But the bigger crime of both men, and of the Royal…
Visiting Aotearoa for all the right reasons
Neither of New Zealand’s two main industries is currently sustainable. Its once-vaunted agricultural industry, a proud part of the green revolution, is now a climate delinquent, due to the white gold-rush. Tourism, which continues to outdistance dairy as…
You say you want a constitution and less democracy
What’s good for doctors of medicine, it would appear, doesn’t apply to doctors of law. The imperative to first do no harm is being violated in the latest proposal by Dr Andrew Butler and Sir Geoffrey Palmer qc, for a codified constitution for Aotearoa. In their second book together…
Last rangatira of Mahurangi and his hapū
The death of the rangatira Te Hemara Tauhia in 1891 marked the end of the tribal history of Mahurangi. His birth date is unknown, but it seems likely that he was born in about 1815, and that he would have been just a lad in 1821, when Hongi Hika made…
Hobsonville-pointing satellite growth centre
While it was all about density, it said more about the limitations of developer-led planning. Presenting this month’s Warkworth Town Hall Talk, Mark Fraser, precinct manager for hlc, detailed the lengths necessary to dissuade builders from building…
Nothing stopping Labour unequivocally claiming climate
His frustration was palpable. Following his party’s first electoral foray, when more than 98% of the populace proved to be impervious, the Rodney candidate declared: “What we need is a decent nuclear accident, then they’ll vote Values.” Sadly, the statement…
Reimagining the roads of Mahurangi
Roads, historically, were not about cars. They were not even about private vehicles, until the last 100 of human civilisation’s 5500-year existence. So perhaps the Labour Party’s pandering to Penlink is understandable, as it seeks to wrest more of the...
Topic-paper feedback as submitted
With the input of members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, Mahurangi Action has submitted feedback on the structure plan topic papers to Auckland Council. In order that the preparation of the be totally transparent…
Topic-paper feedback closes – Keep calm and carry on
Mahurangi Action has frantically prepared feedback to enable members, and other readers of the Mahurangi Magazine, to quickly email a comprehensive submission to Auckland Council. This is a work in progress, but the target was to…
Structure plan topic-paper switchboard
In an ideal world, everybody interested would have time to read the Warkworth Structure Plan consultation documents. But those just issued run to a total of 623 topic pages and maps. Between the first call for feedback and the 23 April deadline…
Boatbuilding begins in the Mahurangi
Some of the first vessels to be built in the Mahurangi may well have gone unrecorded, since registration was a little haphazard in those times. But it is clear that the first shipwrights established themselves after the Mahurangi Purchase of 1841 and…
Climate-reaction rubber meets the road
New Zealanders have just demonstrated the perfect problem, perfectly. After three decades of denial and procrastination, including nine years of Clark-led Labour government inaction, Jacinda Ardern has announced transport policy timidly…
Canadian Maritimers to New Zealanders
Sheltered coves and good timber were prerequisites for shipbuilding. These the Mahurangi coast had in abundance, but the third ingredient was shipwrights. Outstanding among the pioneers of the industry here were the Scottish immigrants from the Maritimes…
Art of the chartmakers Cudlip Pudsey-Dawson et al
During his voyages of 1833, Henry Williams records scrambling to the south end of Kawau “to take bearings of the various islands points etc. around us…” and climbing Motutapu to take similar bearings around the Waitematā. We are reminded that the charts we…
Cutter calm before the storming scow
Although Mahurangi settlers were not far from Auckland, the journey overland was arduous and to be avoided. By water, it is only 26 nautical miles to the Waitematā, via the semi-sheltered waters of the Hauraki Gulf. From the 1850s till the 1930s, sail was the settlers’…
Extraordinary Mahurangi rowers
Importance of good rowing boats to the settlers is emphasised in the previous chapter. A number of rowing stories survive which deserve inclusion here. In these days when most boatmen appear to need an outboard to get from the beach to their…
As mate of the Jane Gifford
When I was on Jane Gifford with my brother Reg, we would leave Warkworth if the tide was favourable at 3.30 am. Reg would go down to the Collins’ home by the Masonic Hall, bang on the door to waken me, then return to the boat and heat up…
Kauri logger to back aboard
Tudor’s apprenticeship on the Kasper scows came to an end during the First World War. He went into camp at Trentham and had sailed for the front when the troopship was turned around by the armistice. Tudor went back to the family home in…