Southdown, New Zealand

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Southdown is an Auckland suburb.

This was once the site of the Southdown Freezing Works, part of a large industrial zone located near the main trunk railway at this point. The buildings were decommissioned during the 1980s & 1990s releasing large areas of land to be redeveloped as office parks.

For many years the Abattoirs located here were discharging large amounts of untreated waste into the Manukau Harbour. This had had a detrimential effect on the ecology of the harbour which at the turn of the 20th century had been a popular and attractive place to swim, sail, fish and gather shell fish. For most of the middle of the 20th century it was a health hazard and its shell-fish a probable source of food poisoning. Since the Freezing works have disappeared the water quality has improved greatly.

Portage Road is the location of one of the overland routes between the two harbours (and thus the Pacific ocean and the Tasman Sea), here 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.