View from Mangere Mountain "Te Pani o te Mataoho"...

View from Mangere Mt of what used to be Mangere sewage pond (crater)

My research journey with my class in Indigenous Research this year has been very interesting and I am painfully aware of the many decisions that were made by past local government and businesses to disrupt the beautiful landscape in Mangere to make way for modernisation as Auckland grew from the 1950s onwards.

I also found out that the name of the mountain for local Maori is "Te Pani o te mataoho" in which there is a story behind the name Maori name of the mountain and I have encouraged some local Maori from the iwi (tribe) to write about it as few know the incredible story behind the name but that is story is for them to tell.

One painful decision to the land was choosing a dormant crater which used to hold Maori canoes before European settlement to become an open sewage system for Auckland. You can see the crater in the pic above viewed from Mangere Mt and Ihumatao in the far distance. I remember it used to be sectioned off and there would be different colours to the sewage that was contained within the crater.

I remember as a child and into my 20s driving past the area and it would smell from the sewage and we would try to hold our noses or breath as we drove past. I wrote a poem about Mangere Mt which is in my first poetry collection in paying homage to this beautiful landscape that was mistreated and still being used as a sewage treatment plant although now using treatment tanks for the sewage waste etc.

Since the early 2000s modern treatment of sewage is doing away with the open sewage system and now there is a drive to restore the waterways back to it's former glory but that will take years and hopefully within our lifetime to see people swim, eat fish and seafood from there.

Presently, it's just nice to look at and have heard that there are plans afoot to change it into an aquicentre of some sort that will allow people to enjoy the area as a aquatic sports centre but not so sure how that will pan out.

Still, to see how the seabed is starting to restore itself with birds slowly returning and sealife hopefully sometime in the future, the landscape will one day return back to it's former glory, if left quietly alone ...