Mahurangi magazine
Dedicated to democratic climate-action mobilisation and the Mahurangi
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…
Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice
As if its bureaucrats needed any encouragement. Trump’s America now has its Environmental Protection Authority peddling the equivalent of Lisa Simpson’s Ignorital©. The agency requires its officials to lace their public utterances with phrases contrived to…
Strategic significance of river restoration
As submitted by Mahurangi Action Incorporated 28 March 2018: Mahurangi Action supports the urgent funding of the consented dredging of sediment from the Mahurangi River, to restore the navigability of the river up to and including the Warkworth…
Life aboard the Kasper scows
I left school at 14, having passed standard sixthe ‘proficiency exam’, then the culmination of schooling at year eight, and went to work for Warnock Brothers, the big soap people at Grey Lynn, wrapping up sandsoap. I stuck it out for about four months and then joined my brother Jim at Donald Brothers fellmongery. This meant…
Memoirs of a scowman
New Zealand’s scows are a colourful part of the history of the Auckland Province, and have an enduring fascination for latter-day sailors. The hardy scowmen were seldom given to literary expression, and most of their stories died with them. We must be grateful to the few…
Now the commission wants to explore
At least Ōrewa is equally inconvenient for all Rodney residents. In its case for twin local board areas, the Mahurangi Magazine pointed out: So disparate are the areas, that meetings of the Rodney Local Board are held in Ōrewa, which is in neither half. Now…
Exploring a plan-b Pūhoi Rivermouth ferry
With a long-term solution calculated to cost $2 million, it is time to consider a plan b. This not to suggest that $2 million is too rich to realise the magnificent potential of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail. It is too much, however, given the…
Triggering automatic change to green
Most Warkworthians are unhappy that their town is now a satellite growth centre. Had a concerted campaign been waged against it, and unlimited funds spent fighting it, Auckland Council may have been forced to rethink. But that would not have…
On the coastal trail to the Mahurangi Regatta
For 45 years, the Mahurangi coastline between Waiwera and Ōpahi has been in public ownership, begging to host a nine-kilometre coastal trail, linking 900-hectares of regional parkland. But while the potential of the trail has existed since the 1973…
Mahurangi Regatta 2018 gallery
Just some of the fine photographs kindly provided by Lyn Bergquist and Bryce Taylor. a rich collection of regatta images is also available in the internationally admired Mahurangi Cruising Club Yearbook, of which Lyn Bergquist, since 2008, has been the…
Mahurangi Regatta 2018 results
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 is appended below the division placings…
Prize-giving dance salvaged by stonemason
Since the Mahurangi Regatta Ball, in 2004, it has been the dream to have salubrious toilets. To be unabashedly sexist, where the women can chat and check their makeup, amidst nicely arranged cut flowers, and the men can patronise a collegial and sanitary…
Short-handed shuttle and last Scotts ferry
As regular readers of the Mahurangi Magazine well know, this writer won’t be content until a cross-harbour ferry is instituted. This would benefit locals, Mahurangi Coastal Trail walkers, and be an absolute boon and delight generally, but particularly…
2019 Mahurangi Regatta programme
Celebrating the 42nd anniversary of the regatta revival by Mahurangi Action, the 29th with the Mahurangi Cruising Club as race organiser, and the 4th with Teak Construction as principal sponsor. It will also celebrate the commencement of two…
Morning-after no-dogs breakfast
Incredibly, only two do it: Panmure Yacht and Boating Club, and Richmond. Even the race organiser, the Mahurangi Cruising Club, misses out on the best thing after the Mahurangi Regatta. It started small, with the organising clubs sharing…
Signs of great and sustainable regatta
The Mahurangi Regatta is the wondrous, joyous outcome of many, occasionally disparate, plans and agendas of volunteer, council, and commercial entities, of which the most prominent, after this year’s event, will probably be Boating New Zealand…
Commodore Penchev’s charming regatta newsletter
Dear secret admirers, friends and members of the Mahurangi Cruising Club, best wishes for a happy New Year on the water and elsewhere. Many of you provided positive and constructive, and also critical, feedback from the 2017 Mahurangi Regatta…
Tidal-river power and grid electricity
Most public transport in Aotearoa is fossil-fuel powered. But that would not excuse the key component of the Mahurangi Coastal Trail, the ferry, being fossil-fuelled. Fortuitously, as described in Minimum Impact 100% River-Powered, a fossil-fuel-free…
Mahurangi Action president’s report
The planned fivefold increase in population of its tidehead town is critical to the future of the Mahurangi watershed. If, within a couple of decades, a town of more than 20 000 has an attractive, swimmable river as the hero element of a broad linear…
Minimum impact 100% river-powered
In one respect, it could not be easier. Build a coastal trail linking three regional parks, all on publicly owned land. However, if it had in fact been easy, it would have happened soon after Mahurangi Action first suggested it, three decades ago. The first big hurdle—convincing senior…
Region survives serial secessionism
Serial attempts to turn the clock back six decades have failed, and deservedly. For without regional governance, Aucklanders would be much the poorer, for example, 27 sublime regional parks poorer. It would also lack a cohesive planning mechanism to cope with…
Founder of Mahurangi tidehead town
Warkworth, Aotearoa, had its beginnings in a water-powered sawmill, the first in the Mahurangi. Its proprietor, John Anderson Brown, thus became successor in the local timber industry to his near namesake, Gordon Browne. Unlike his predecessor he was no transient; there…
Democratise coalitions and lists now
Half voted for change, and half for the status quo. The 44.4% who voted for the New Zealand National Party, and the 0.5% who voted for what remains of ex-Labour-finance-minister Roger Douglas’ rebel act party, are now represented by 57 opposition…
Single super-coalition shot for democracy
If New Zealanders elected their prime minister, there would now be a clear winner. And, unless it was under the old deeply undemocratic first-past-the-post system, that winner would be Winston Peters. Because, while Jacinda Ardern and Bill…
Warkworth, the watershed, and the whitebait
Mahurangi was always going to need all the help it could get. When, in 2004, the then Auckland Regional Council announced a $3 million, 5-year kickstart to address the harbour’s elevated sediment accumulation rate, Mahurangi Action was advised…
Let’s do this, and deliver unperverted democracy
It would be hard to contrive a more effective means of turning youth off. After being lectured for months on the importance of enrolling and voting, young people are now told nothing. Not only are they not told how young people voted, they are not even told…
Just when Jacinda needed Germany most
When Jacinda Ardern stepped up, Labour was on 24% and National was at 47%. Once the special votes are counted, which include whatever youthquake or youth-tremor has occurred, the New Zealand National Party share will be lucky to be 45%…
Mahu youth has National munted
If the local Kids Voting result is any indication, New Zealand’s youthquake is going to visit most damage on National. Mahurangi College students, their Kids Voting coordinator has reported, gave the Labour Party a clear majority: 35% versus the National…
Failure to fix mmp could cost Labour
Gareth Morgan’s failure to crash last Friday’s leaders debate drew attention to the inescapable. His briefly promising political initiative hasn’t come close to breaking the 5%-threshold barrier to tyro parties, and will not make it into Parliament…
Unlocking the magic of Warkworth
Warkworth’s population of 4000 is estimated to reach 27 000 in the next 30 years. Without relentless optimism, on the strength of international experience Warkworth-as-a-satellite-growth-centre is a recipe for a sprawling, Geography of Nowhere…
Jacindaquake and Kids Voting curtain-raiser
There’s no reason to imagine Aotearoa will be spared its youthquake. In the United Kingdom, it was a 68-year-old Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who triggered the tremor. The quake unleashed by the youth-adjacent Jacinda Ardern, who has just rocked…
No Dunne deal – directly elect coalitions
As with the America’s Cup, coming second place in party politics generally equates with losing. Until recently, it had been looking as though the hospital pass Bill English received from the charismatic, if unchivalrous, Sir John Key might not prove fatal…
Courage for more than a cuppa
It’s 30 years since David Lange belatedly called taihoa. His Labour Party caucus cohorts had unleashed the neoliberal onslaught that, amongst other tragedies, precipitated New Zealand’s ongoing youth suicide epidemic. Throughout the…