Manukau Harbour

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

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 along the northeast of the isthmus.

Manukau

Manukau (/ˈmɑːnᵿˌkaʊ/) or Manukau Central is a suburb of south Auckland, New Zealand, centred on the Manukau City Centre business district. It is located 23 kilometres south of the Auckland CBD, west of the Southern Motorway, south of Papatoetoe and north of Manurewa. The industrial and commercial suburb of Wiri lies to the east and south.

The headquarters of Manukau City Council were in Manukau Central until the council was merged into Auckland Council in November 2010. Manukau Central should not be confused with the much larger Manukau City, which was the entire area administered by the city council.

History

The Manukau Central area was part of the largely rural area of Wiri in the early 20th century. Its transition from farmland was driven by Manukau City Council, which formed in 1965 and purchased land there in 1966 for the development of an administrative and commercial centre. The Manukau City Centre mall, now Westfield Manukau City, opened in October 1976, and the Manukau City Council administration building in 1977. Several government departments established offices in the late 1970s.

Harbor

A harbor or harbour (see spelling differences), or haven, is a body of water where ships, boats and barges seek shelter from stormy weather, or are stored for future use. Harbors and ports are often confused with each other. A port is a facility for loading and unloading vessels; ports are often located in harbors.

Harbors can be natural or artificial. An artificial harbor can have deliberately constructed breakwaters, sea walls, or jettys, or they can be constructed by dredging, which requires maintenance by further periodic dredging. An example of an artificial harbor is Long Beach Harbor, California, which was an array of salt marshes and tidal flats too shallow for modern merchant ships before it was first dredged in the early 20th century.

In contrast, a natural harbor is surrounded on several sides by prominences of land. Examples of natural harbors include Sydney Harbour, Australia and San Francisco Bay, California.

Artificial harbors

Artificial harbors are frequently built for use as ports. The oldest artificial harbor known is the Ancient Egyptian site at Wadi al-Jarf, on the Red Sea coast, which is at least 4500 years old (ca. 2600-2550 BC, reign of King Khufu). The largest artificially created harbor is Jebel Ali in Dubai. Other large and busy artificial harbors include: