Manukau Harbour

The Manukau Harbour opens out into the Tasman Sea.

The Manukau Harbour Heads in 1960. The area in the foreground has since naturally filled with sand past the rock to the right of the photo.

Manukau Harbour is the second largest natural harbour in New Zealand by area.^[1] It is located to the southwest of the Auckland isthmus, and opens out into the Tasman Sea.

Geography[link]

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 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.^[2]

Because of the large harbour area and narrow mouth between the Manukau Heads, tidal flow is rapid and a bar at the mouth makes navigating in or out of the harbour dangerous. New Zealand's most tragic shipwreck occurred on the bar in 1863 when HMS Orpheus ran aground in clear weather with a loss of 189 lives. For this reason, along with the harbour's shallowness, it is not Auckland's favoured port, and the facilities at Onehunga are not very large compared to the other Ports of Auckland facilities on the Waitemata Harbour on the northeast of the isthmus.

The harbour has three main arms. The Mangere Inlet at the northeast lies close to Auckland's central city area, with the inner suburbs of Onehunga and Te Papapa situated close to its northern shore. The Otahuhu and Mangere urban areas lie south of this arm, which is crossed by the Mangere Bridge. In the southeast is the Papakura Channel, which extends into the urban area of Papakura. In the southwest a further inlet known as the Waiuku River reaches south to the town of Waiuku. The harbour reaches into Mangere Lagoon, which occupies a volcanic crater. Auckland Airport is located close to the harbour's eastern shore.

History[link]

The harbour was an important historical waterway for the Māori. It had several portages to the Pacific Ocean and to the Waikato River, and various villages and pā (hill forts) clustered around it. Snapper, flounder, mullet, scallops, cockles and pipi provided food in plentiful amounts.^[3]

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 shipped from a wharf on Paratutai to either the other end of the 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.^{[citation needed]}

European settlement of the area was thus almost often 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 separate earlier European settlements was Onehunga, from where some raiding of enemy settlements occurred during the New Zealand wars, and which later became a landing point for kauri and other products landed by ship and canoe from the south, the shipping route being shorter than the one along the east coast to the Waitemata Harbour.^[4] However, the combination of the difficult entry into the harbour, which limited ships to about 1,000 tons maximum,^[4] and 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.^[5]

Construction of a canal between the Manukau and the Waitemata was considered in the early 1900s, and the Auckland and Manukau Canal Act 1908 was passed to allow authorities to take privately owned land for this purpose. However, no serious work (or land take) was undertaken. The act is technically still in force as of 2008.^[6]

Recreation[link]

The harbour is popular for fishing, though entry to the water is difficult with few all-tide boat ramps; often local beaches are used.

The harbour also houses five active sailing clubs, three on the southern side, one near Mangere Bridge, and one on the northern side. Since 1988, there has been an annual interclub competition, hosted by each club in rotation.

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Manukau Harbour

Coordinates: 37°00′S 174°40′E / 37°S 174.667°E / -37; 174.667

Manukau is an industrial suburb of the city of Auckland, New Zealand. The suburb is located 23 kilometres south of Auckland CBD, and is in the Manukau ward, one of the thirteen electoral divisions of the Auckland Council.

The name Manukau, from the Manukau Harbour west of the city, is of Māori origin, and means 'wading birds',^{[citation needed]} although it has been suggested that the name of the harbour was also sometimes rendered as Mānuka, meaning a marker post with which an early chief is said to have claimed the area.^[1]

Manukau was governed by the Manukau City Council until November 2010, when the entire Auckland region was amalgamated into a single Auckland city. The area still has a strong economic central business district, but is no longer an independent city. The area is now governed by the Auckland Council. The area immediately to the south of the Otahuhu isthmus, as far east as Maraetai and Kawakawa Bay including Howick and Clevedon, and as far south as Manurewa, was previously known as Manukau City, however it should not be confused with the suburb of Manukau. All former suburbs of Manukau City are now governed by the Auckland Council.

South Auckland Research Center[link]

Those who are interested in the materials relating to Manukau's heritage and culture can visit the South Auckland Research Center, which houses heritage collections. Through Manukau's History,which is accessible through the legacy Manukau City Libraries website, now amalgamated as part of the Auckland Libraries website, one may also view digitized heritage materials.

Sport and recreation[link]

The Manukau Magpies rugby league club has been based in Manukau since 1910.

References[link]

Coordinates: 36°59′S 174°53′E / 36.983°S 174.883°E / -36.983; 174.883

Bruce Cathie (born 1930) is a retired New Zealand airline pilot who has written seven books related to flying saucers and a "World energy grid".

His central thesis is that the laws of mathematics describe a grid-like pattern on the earth that powers flying saucers and controls the dates and places where nuclear bombs can function.^{[citation needed]} He claims to have successfully predicted^{[citation needed]} the detonation time of an early French nuclear test using his harmonic "mathematics", which is based around trigonometry and geophysical latitude/longitude coordinates.

His discoveries are in the same vein of research as Einstein's "unified field theory", where gravity, time and space and their relation therein can all be expressed in one equation.^{[citation needed]} It is said^{[by whom?]} that the US military attempted on more than one occasion to silence him using bribes in the millions.^{[citation needed]}

Cathie claimed that he first saw a flying saucer over the Manukau Harbour, Auckland in 1952 and in discussions with other airline pilots discovered this wasn't uncommon.^[1]

His first book Harmonic 33, published in New Zealand in 1968^[2] and reprinted in the United Kingdom by Sphere Books in 1980.^[3]

New Zealand millennial author Barry Smith claimed to have received his information on restrictions on nuclear weapons from Cathie.

An interview with him was played in the fourth episode of the fourth series of the US television program In Search of....

Books[link]

• Harmonic 33 (1968)
• Harmonic 695 - The UFO and Anti-Gravity (1971)
• Harmonic 288 - The Pulse of the Universe (1977)
• Harmonic 371244 - The Bridge to Infinity
• The Energy Grid
• The Harmonic Conquest of Space

See also[link]

• UFO sightings in New Zealand

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site (broken as at 2011-01-14, archived version as of February 2009)