Maungarei and the Stonefields...

Pic credits: D Benioni

Today I took my class out on a fieldtrip to Maungarei (Mt Wellington) and to have a look at the Stonefields residential area. Last night one of our activities was to look into the history of the area and found that the mountain was at one time a fortified pa (Maori settlement) and that there were some 20 villages surrounding in the 1870s.

Upon visiting the maunga (mountain) and walking onto the summit and surrounding areas, we were able to see evidence of storage pits i.e. indents on the landscape that many would miss if they didn't already know as we had learned from our early visit to a mountain.

We also saw how the lava flow that used to be a huge mound (which I mistakenly thought was another mountain) had been quarried over many years to make the Auckland roads and had now been flattened so as to make way for the now residential area called 'Stonefields' from what was once was hilly terrain.

For us as indigenous researchers, it's quite sad to see how progress has endangered lands with the disappearance of natural hills and the landscape has been transformed to now what it is. I guess this would be true of most areas in the world but the difference is that this is happening in our own back yard...