WHANGAREI: FOLLOWING CAPTAIN JAMES COOK'S STEPS

Remembering James Cook in Whangarei Harbour

The Grandma is a great fan of volcanoes. She wants to visit Mount Parihaka in Whangarei.

During the travel, The Grandma has read another chapter of Rosemary Border's Ghost Stories and she has studied a new lesson of her First Certificate Language Practice manual (Grammar 4).

John de Ca'th Lon is a great fan of Captain James Cook and this is a special travel for him, too, because he's going to discover what Cook and the crew of the Endeavour first saw when they arrived to the coast of Whangarei.

More information: Present Time

Whangarei is the northernmost city in New Zealand and the regional capital of Northland Region.

The Māori iwi Ngāpuhi occupied Whangarei from the early 19th century, and the Te Parawhau hapū lived at the head of the harbour. Captain James Cook and the crew of the Endeavour were the first Europeans to sight the Whangarei Harbour entrance. 

Claire Fontaine at Parihaka Scenic Reserve

On 15 November 1769 in the harbour they caught about 100 fish there which they classified as bream, probably snapper, prompting Cook to name the area Bream Bay.

In the 1820s the area was repeatedly attacked by Waikato and Ngāti Paoa raiders during the Musket Wars. The first European settler was William Carruth, a Scotsman and trader who arrived in 1839 and was joined six years later by Gilbert Mair and his family. Relations between the settlers and local Māori were generally friendly, but in February 1842, all settler farms were plundered in revenge for transgressions of tapu. 

In April 1845, during the Flagstaff War, all settlers fled from Whangarei. Most of the original settlers never returned, but by the mid-1850s there were a number of farmers and orchardists in the area. From 1855, a small town developed, driven by the kauri gum trade.

More information: Whangarei-New Zealand

Today's Town Basin on the Hatea River was the original port and early exports included kauri gum and native timber followed later by coal from Whau Valley, Kamo, and Hikurangi. Coal from the Kiripaka field was exported via the Ngunguru River. By 1864, the nucleus of the present city was established.

Tina Picotes at Whangarei Falls Holiday Park

Fire bricks made from fire clay deposits near the Kamo mines supported a brick works over several decades. Good quality limestone was quarried at Hikurangi, Portland and Limestone Island, and initially sold as agricultural lime and later combined with local coal to produce Portland cement at the settlement of Portland on the south side of the harbour. Local limestone is still used in cement manufacture but the coal is now imported from the West Coast of the South Island.

More information: New Zealand

Whangarei was the most urbanised area in Northland towards the end of the 19th century. The district slowly exhausted most of its natural resources but was sustained by agriculture, especially dairying.

Shipping was the main transport link until the North Auckland railway line reached the town in 1925, and the road from Auckland was not suitable for travel in poor weather until 1934.

Christine Roke, Mt Manaia, Whangarei Heads

These terrestrial travel routes forced a rapid decline in coastal shipping but stimulated Whangarei to become the service centre for Northland.

The second half of the twentieth century brought the establishment and expansion of the oil refinery at Marsden Point on Bream Bay, the adjacent development of timber processing and the establishment of Northland Port, which is mainly focused on timber exporting.

Whangarei has a oceanic climate. Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows. Summer days occasionally exceed 30 °C, and there is plentiful rainfall spread relatively evenly throughout the year. Whangarei is firmly a maritime subtropical climate due to its absence of winter cold. 

Mount Parihaka is a volcanic dome rising 241 m to the northeast of the city centre. It is about 20 million years old, and part of the Harbour Fault which also includes Parakiore near Kamo, and Hikurangi near the town of the same name. The dome is surrounded by the Parihaka Scenic Reserve. There is road access to the summit of Parihaka and walking tracks through the reserve.

More information: Instagram-Parihaka Scenic Reserve

Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been 

before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go. 

James Cook