Everything about Manukau Harbour totally explained
Manukau Harbour is the second largest natural harbour in
New Zealand and the sixth largest in the world by area. It is located to the southwest of the
Auckland isthmus, and is an arm of the
Tasman Sea.
Geography
The harbour mouth is between the northern head ("Burnett Head" / "Ohaka Head") located at the southern end of the
Waitakere Ranges and South Head at the end of the long
Awhitu Peninsula reaching up from close to the mouth of the
Waikato River. The mouth is only 1800 metres wide, but after a nine kilometre channel it opens up into a roughly square basin 20 kilometres in width. The harbour has a water surface area of 394 square kilometres. There is a tidal variation in depth of up to 4 metres, a very substantial change, especially since the harbour, being silted up with almost 10 million years of sedimentation, is rather shallow itself.
European settlement of the area was almost totally an outgrowth of the
Waitemata Harbour-centred settlement, as these settlers spread south and west through the Isthmus and reached the Manukau Harbour. One of the few early settlements was
Onehunga, from were some raiding of enemy settlements occurred during the Māori Wars, and which later became a landing point for Kauri and other products landed here by ship and canoe from the south. However, the combination of the difficult entry into the harbour, as well as the extension of the railway to Onehunga in 1873 made naval traffic on the harbour less important again, though the Port of Onehunga can trace its origins to this time.
Recreation
The harbour is popular for fishing, though entry to the water is difficult with few all-tide boat ramps; often local beaches are used. Cornwallis, beside the Puponga Peninsula, was the first site for the future city of Auckland. However because of fraudulent land sales and rugged conditions, the settlement was abandoned in the
1840s. The surrounding bush clad hills had vast amounts of
kauri removed for milling and was shipped from a wharf on Paratutai to either the other end of the Manukau Harbour at Onehunga for use in house building in the new city of Auckland, or along the coast to other New Zealand settlements. The last mills were abandoned in the early
1920s.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Manukau Harbour'.
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