Blockhouse Bay, New Zealand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Suburb: | Blockhouse Bay |
| City: | Auckland City |
| Island: | North Island |
| Surrounded by - to the north |
New Windsor, Avondale |
Blockhouse Bay is a residential suburb of Auckland, in New Zealand's North Island. It is sited on the northern coast of the Manukau Harbour, and is also close to the administrative boundary between the cities of Auckland and Waitakere, two of the four cities of the Auckland conurbation.
The suburb is located 11 kilometres to the southwest of the city centre, and is surrounded by the suburbs of Lynfield and New Windsor, and the Waitakere suburbs of New Lynn and Green Bay.
According to the 2001 census, Blockhouse Bay has a population of 5454.
[edit] History
Portage Road is the location of one of the overland routes between the two harbours (and thus the Pacific ocean and the Tasman Sea), where the Maori would beach their waka (canoes) and drag them overland to the other coast, thus avoiding having to paddle around North Cape. This made the area of immense strategic importance in both pre-European times and during the early years of European occupation.
The earliest European known to have trekked through, and followed the coastline of the Manukau Harbour in an endeavour to find if there was a waterway connecting the two harbours, was the Rev. Samuel Marsden in 1820.
Two missionaries who had arrived in New Zealand on the 30th December 1834, William Colenso and R. Wade, walked through the Whau South area in 1838 hoping to find a Māori settlement, but the Pa site on Te Whau point had been abandoned some time before. They remarked that the area was "open and barren heaths, dreary, sterile and wild."
The area was a popular holiday resort in the 1920s for Aucklanders, with city families making the long journey over rough roads to spend the summer in their holiday cottages or camping on the beach.
The earliest industry, in 1884, was the Gittos Tannery. The early 1900s saw other industries such as poultry, orchards, potteries, strawberries, flowers, loganberries and small farm holdings.
A blockhouse site at the Whau South was chosen for two reasons:
- The elevated cleared twelve acre site provided an unobstructed view towards the Manukau Heads, the source of possible attack from southern Māori tribes.
- It was close to the Whau Portage which was the route favoured by northern Māori tribes.
From "Why Blockhouse Bay?" Compiled by Ketih G. Rusden for the Blockhouse Bay Historical Society Inc.
