History

History of Whangaparāoa

Dive into the rich history of the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, from its Māori roots to its more recent past. Browse by section at your own pace. For details about the trail itself - the artworks and checkpoints - visit the Trail Story page.

The First People of Whangaparāoa - Polynesian Settlement

New Zealand was discovered and settled by Polynesian people sometime before 800 AD. The descendants of an ancient culture that had originated in South East Asia some four thousand years earlier, these great voyagers navigated by the stars and ocean swells across thousands of kilometres of open Pacific to reach Aotearoa.

Systematic migration and colonisation of the new land took place over many generations, continuing until around the 14th century. The peninsula at Whangaparāoa was of significant strategic importance during this entire period, lying directly on the waka route between Northland and Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) — two regions that became among the most heavily settled in the country.

The abundant fish, shark fishing grounds, and sheltered bays of the peninsula made it a place of real value to those who passed through or settled here. Its headlands and narrowing isthmus were natural sites for fortification, and the fertile soils of its southern bays were well suited to cultivation.

Ngāti Kahu - The People of the Peninsula

Nga Oho was one of the earliest tribal names used by the Tāmaki Māori people, descendants of the legendary Tainui navigator Rakataura (also known as Hape). Their rohe (tribal boundary) once stretched from Cape Rodney near Leigh to Tauranga, and they resided primarily around the North Shore region.

Close relations of Nga Oho were Te Kawerau a Maki, who became the tangata whenua of Waitakere City. In the early 1600s, Maki, a chief of Ngāti Awa origins from Taranaki, led a large group northward to the Auckland isthmus and ultimately conquered a wide swathe of land as far north as the Kaipara Harbour. As Maki and his brothers Mataahu and Maeaeariki spread their influence, one of the many battles fought was at Whangaparāoa Peninsula, where the Nga Oho people were defeated and absorbed into the expanding tribal network through intermarriage.

Maeaeariki eventually settled at Orewa, and his children Te Utu and Kahu made their home at Whangaparāoa, residing in what is now Shakespear Regional Park. It is from Kahu that the sub-tribe known as Ngāti Kahu took their name. The people who would occupy the Whangaparāoa district for the next two centuries.

Intertribal relationships, peace settlements, and marriages with Ngāti Whatua, a tribe from the southern Kaipara, enabled Ngāti Kahu to live in peace on their lands at Orewa, Whangaparāoa, and Okura for over a century. They maintained a seasonal rhythm of fishing, gathering, cultivating and harvesting, with their settlements concentrated around the sheltered southern bays of the peninsula and particularly at Te Haruhi Bay, which offered the best cultivation land in the district.

The Pā Sites of Whangaparāoa

Ngāti Kahu established a network of five defended settlements - pā - along the peninsula for protection and strategic control. Their remains can still be identified today:

Te Haruhi Bay Kāinga - The bay's Māori name, Te Ha-ruhi, means 'weak breath', referring to its sheltered nature. The local Ngāti Kahu cultivated kumara, gourd, yams and taro in the fertile fields here. Their settlement stretched across the peninsula to Army Bay, and middens, cultivation terraces and kumara storage pits are found throughout this section of Shakespear Regional Park. A burial site containing hāngi stones is now protected near the campsite. Five pā defended these settlements, the best preserved being Shakespear Homestead Pā.

Rakauananga Pā: A hillfort located on a promontory above Hobbs Bay at Gulf Harbour, positioned at the eastern headland. The site commands good views west towards the major settlement at Rarowhara Pā at Arkles Bay, and served as the main defensive position west of the Te Haruhi Bay kāinga.
Coalminers Bay Headland Pā: Located above Coal Mine Bay on the north side of the peninsula. The site has commanding views of the coastline, with clear sightlines down to the sandy beach below.
Matakatia Pā: Positioned above a narrow section of the peninsula where Māori historically operated a waka portage between Matakatia Bay and Tindalls Beach. This allowed vessels to bypass the long journey around the peninsula's tip, and the pā guarded this vital crossing point.
Little Manly East Point Pā: Located at the north-eastern end of Little Manly Beach, with extensive views south towards Rangitoto Island and Auckland city, and west towards the Weiti River.
West Pā Manly: A headland pā above the west end of Big Manly Beach, commanding views of the coast in all directions from which hostile canoes might approach.
Rarowhara Pā: The most significant fortification, located at the heel of the peninsula to the east of the Weiti River in what is now Arkles Bay. Rarowhara was the major defensive stronghold and the site of several key historical events, particularly related to the shark fishing conflicts and the Ngāpuhi raids of the early 19th century.

The Shark Wars - Conflict Over the Fishing Grounds

From the mid 1700s, Ngāti Kahu came under growing pressure from the powerful Marutuahu Confederation, the Hauraki tribes from the east, who coveted the famed tauranga mango, the shark fishing grounds off the northern coast of the peninsula. From these grounds, thousands of sharks could be caught and dried in summer, then transported to the Hauraki Gulf as a vital winter food source. Control of this resource was deeply valuable.

The Ngāti Paoa iwi had already established their presence by building a small pā on the adjacent island of Tiritiri Matangi to use as a base during fishing expeditions. Fighting between the Marutuahu tribes and the Kawerau iwi continued sporadically throughout the 18th century.

By the 1780s, the Hauraki tribes were in the ascendancy. Ngāti Kahu still held the Whangaparāoa district but the pressure was relentless. Their own pā at Rarowhara, and the associated camping and fishing grounds at the northern mouth of the Weiti River, remained important strongholds. Ngāti Kahu and Kawerau had defeated Ngāpuhi at Waiwhariki in the 1790s, demonstrating their continued fighting strength.

A major peace-making meeting was held at Mihirau in what is now Wenderholm Regional Park, but this fragile peace was short-lived. The Marutuahu iwi inflicted a major defeat on the Kawerau people at Whangateau near Omaha. In the words of Mereri, a Kawerau elder recorded in the early 1900s: 'The Ngāti Paoa ultimately attacked our people in the pā at Rarowhara, near Matakatia — but we surprised and defeated them on the beach in open battle. Thereafter we held those places at Whangaparāoa peninsula and Te Weiti river until Nga Puhi attacked us.' That attack came in 1821.

The Ngāpuhi Attack and the Years of Exile (1821)

In September 1821, a large Ngāpuhi taua (war party) moved south under the leadership of Hongi Hika, armed with muskets acquired through trade with Europeans, weapons that the southern tribes had not yet encountered. Hongi Hika was conducting a sweeping campaign through the region, targeting enemies at Mauinaina pā on the Tāmaki isthmus and Ngāti Maru at Te Tōtara near Thames.

Ngāti Kahu, along with the surrounding Kawerau iwi, had gathered at Rarowhara Pā, but against the new weapons, they were heavily defeated. The survivors fled inland to the Ararimu Valley near Riverhead Forest, where they sheltered for a time. Further defeats followed and when Ngāpuhi overcame a combined Ngāti Whatua force at Te Ika a Ranganui near Kaiwaka, the remaining Ngāti Kahu fled south to the Waikato, where they lived in exile for nearly a decade between approximately 1820 and 1830.

Their gradual return began as the musket wars subsided. Through the mid 19th century, Ngāti Kahu migrated across their ancestral domain between Orewa and Okura in a seasonal cycle of fishing, hunting, gathering and harvesting. Settlement slowly reconcentrated around the southern bays of the peninsula, particularly Te Haruhi Bay.

In 1876, Paora Tuhaere, the paramount chief of Ngāti Whatua, who was also of Ngāti Kahu descent, attempted to lease land at Te Haruhi 'as a place where we may cultivate and near a fishing ground for sharks'. The old kāinga is now part of Shakespear Regional Park. After this, the region was largely deserted of permanent Māori habitation for an extended period.

European Arrival - From Abel Tasman to the Treaty of Waitangi

The first European to reach New Zealand was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who arrived in 1642. The name New Zealand itself derives from the Dutch 'Nieuw Zeeland', coined by a Dutch mapmaker. A surprisingly long interval - 127 years - passed before the next European contact, when the English captain James Cook arrived in 1769 on the first of his three voyages to Aotearoa.

European whalers and sealers began visiting regularly in the years that followed, and traders were not far behind. By the 1830s, the British government faced mounting pressure to establish formal authority in New Zealand, both to curb lawlessness and to pre-empt the French, who were actively considering the country as a potential colony.

On 6 February 1840 at Waitangi, William Hobson, New Zealand's first Governor, invited assembled Māori chiefs to sign a treaty with the British Crown. The Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was then carried around the country for signing by local chiefs, as far south as Foveaux Strait. More than 500 chiefs ultimately signed. The treaty established the framework for British sovereignty while acknowledging Māori land rights, though its interpretation and implementation would become the subject of conflict and debate for generations.

Māori came under increasing pressure from European settlers to sell their land, contributing to the tensions that led to the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s.

The Mahurangi Purchase and the First European Settlers

The Whangaparāoa Peninsula was included in a Crown land purchase known as the Mahurangi Purchase. Negotiations began in 1841 and the final sale was not completed until 1854. In this settlement, the Crown gave various tribal groups cash and goods to the value of approximately £1,500 for land that extended from Te Arai to Takapuna and covered some 100,000 acres - a vast area obtained for what we now recognise as a fraction of its true value.

The name Mahurangi itself carries an ancient story. A Māori ancestress named Mahurangi - a tohunga (priestess) from Hawaiiki whose powers are said to have enabled the construction of the great voyaging waka Tainui, is believed to have given her name to a small island near the Maungatauhoro headland. That island gave its name to the harbour in which it sits, and eventually to the wider district and the Crown's land purchase.

Among the earliest European settlers on the peninsula were William Thorburn, who purchased land at Arkles Bay in 1854, and the Glanville family, who arrived from New South Wales in 1857 to farm Stanmore Bay. The Glanvilles' story is told in detail at Checkpoint 2 on the Treasure Hunt trail.

George Arkle purchased Thorburn's original homestead in 1878, and together with his brother Andrew, the family divided what became known as Arkles Bay. George built a high-tide wharf at the north-eastern end of the bay. When Andrew built a guest house at his end of the bay, the brothers fell out, and a second wharf was built at Andrew's southern end in 1923,twelve years after Andrew's death. In the 1920s, Whangaparāoa became a popular holiday destination, with ferries arriving regularly at Arkles Bay.

The Pioneer Families of the Peninsula

The Polkinghorne Family: William Polkinghorne and his family took up a Crown Grant at the Wade in 1856 and moved in 1877 to the beach now known as Manly, which was then called Polkinghorne's Bay. In 1916, William's youngest son — William the younger, born 1859 — built both a cheese factory and a Post Office store on the hill between Arkles and Manly. The cheese factory was not a success and closed within two years, but the store became an important community hub. The name 'Manly' was adopted in the 1920s when two developers, Laurie Taylor and Bill Brown, began subdividing the land and borrowed the name from the bay in Sydney. After an objection in the 1970s by a member of the Polkinghorne family, the name Polkinghorne Bay was retained for the wider Waiau area covering Big Manly and Swann Beach. Swann Beach itself takes its name from another early landowner, Percy Swann.

The Bayes Family: In 1882, Joseph Bayes, a master bricklayer from Irchester, Northamptonshire, set sail with his family aboard the sailing vessel Famenoth, arriving in Auckland 112 days later. In 1886 he walked north from Auckland and purchased 700 acres of virgin forest at Red Beach for the remarkable sum of £13.

His son William remained to farm the land while Joseph moved to Takapuna, and the family's roots on the Hibiscus Coast deepened through six generations. Today that legacy lives on in Bayes Coachlines, a local institution founded in 1972, now operating over 80 buses and carrying generations of Peninsula children to and from school. Read the Bayes Family Story here ...

The Shakespear Family: One of the most prominent founding families of the eastern peninsula, the Shakespears' purchased the land in the 1880s that is now Shakespear Regional Park. For many decades they farmed it as cattle, sheep and produce farm, and were known in Auckland city for their watermelons. Their workboat, the ketch Frances - later nicknamed the 'watermelon boat' - transported farm produce to Auckland's busy downtown market from 1908 to 1991, a sailing trip of some three and a half hours that was considered far preferable to the slow and difficult road route. The Frances is now owned by The Classic Yacht Charitable Trust.

The land had originally been purchased from Ranulph Dacre by Robert Shakespear's grandfather, Sir Robert North Collie Hamilton, Baronet of Stratford on Avon. The 1,333-acre property passed to Blanche Shakespear after Sir Robert's death, and the farm was run by their children: Bob managed the operation with eldest daughter Frances (Cis), while Ivy, Ruby, and Ethel worked on the land. The Shakespear homestead was built on the site of a former Māori pā overlooking Te Haruhi Bay, and remains of the pā, including a kumara pit, can still be seen in front of the house today. The YMCA took over the lease in 1983 and now runs the property as a lodge for youth outdoor education.

The Hopper Family: Ken and Edith Hopper came to Whangaparāoa in 1927 and took over the store originally built by William Polkinghorne on the hill between Manly and Arkles Bay.

What began with a country store and dairy farm grew, through four generations, into one of New Zealand's most recognised coastal development companies, responsible for Pauanui, Whitianga Waterways, Marsden Cove, and projects from Northland to the Coromandel. Their head office remains on the Hibiscus Coast today. Read the Hopper family story here ...

Place Names of Note: The area known as Waiau covers the combination of Swann Beach, Big Manly, and Tindalls Bay, and the names Big Manly and Little Manly came into common use as these areas began attracting visitors in the 1920s. Matakatia was originally the name of a pā above the bay; the bay itself was known as Tindalls Bay until the 1940s, when the Māori name was restored. The small island offshore, described by Māori as a kota nui (big cockleshell), was known to Pākehā settlers as Frenchman's Cap, possibly reflecting the nationality of an early settler in the area. Today many people know it simply as Shark Fin Island.

From Holiday Haven to the Modern Peninsula

By the 1920s, Whangaparāoa had established itself as a popular summer holiday destination. Ferries crossed regularly to Arkles Bay, opening the peninsula to a new wave of visitors and land investors.

Sales of land were slow through the 1920s and were further dampened by the Depression of the 1930s, though many peninsula locals were better placed than their Auckland counterparts. The availability of fish from the sea and food from the land provided real resilience. Not everyone shared this relative comfort: riots occurred on Queen Street in 1932 as the worst effects of the Depression hit urban New Zealand hard.

The post-war years brought the bach bonanza of the 1950s. Sections in places like Stanmore Bay sold for the remarkable sum of £30, and hundreds of do-it-yourself New Zealanders staked their claim, building family baches from whatever materials they could find in the years following the war. By the end of the 1960s, around 2,000 people lived permanently on Whangaparāoa, but this number swelled to over 25,000 in summer as holidaymakers packed into baches and spare sections along the peninsula.

The 1970s saw the Waitemata County Council struggling to manage the influx of residents into what officials called the 'Northern Beaches', with basic sewerage schemes fiercely rejected by locals. The 1980s brought what many described as the 'Californication' of Whangaparāoa - cross-leasing, large-scale development, and calls from some residents for political independence. The 1990s brought another surge of development and a corresponding rise in community discontent; the Rodney District Council was memorably described by one community leader as an 'incompetent, spendthrift bureaucracy, totally discredited and beyond recall.'

Despite these pressures, what is remarkable is that the essential character and beauty of the peninsula has endured. Some parts of the Whangaparāoa coast remain relatively unchanged from the last century, preserved by a combination of geographic constraint and historically generous reserve acquisitions. In the face of continued intensification and population growth, these places are now invaluable legacies, a reminder of what defines the uniqueness of this very special place.

The Businesses Behind the Trail

The Whangaparaoa Treasure Hunt exists because of the generosity of local businesses who believe in this Peninsula and its community. Each of our four major sponsors has their own deep connection to this place and their stories are as much a part of Whangaparaoa's fabric as the history you have been reading.

Two of those connections stretch back over a century — the Bayes family, who arrived in 1883 and whose roots now span six generations from Joseph the bricklayer to the familiar Bayes Coachlines buses, and the Hopper family, who came to Whangaparaoa in 1927 and grew into one of New Zealand's most respected coastal development companies.

Alongside them, New World Whangaparāoa opened in 2015 as the Peninsula's first supermarket and was the very first business to back this trail, while Ze Build - a local construction company built through hard work, strong community ties, and the belief that good business always puts people first - are proud ongoing supporters of the trail and everything it stands for.

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