Puhinui Reserve

This Reserve, within a few minutes of Auckland International Airport, is well worth a visit if you want to walk through some beautiful countryside, breath some good air, meet native birds, and enjoy vistas of the Manukau Harbour , in its blue magnificence.

You can find the reserve at the end of Prices Rd., which is off Puhinui Rd., one of the main routes from Manukau City out to Auckland Airport.

My wife and I went for a walk there today. The sky was as blue as the Manukau when we parked our car at the end of Prices Road and realised that we had found a reserve that we didn't know existed. A sign told us it was about 190 acres, which promised more than the word "reserve". We used the flash, almost vandal-proof loos and headed off through the gates. There was a road which we'd seen marked on the sign, but we took a footpath heading off to the left. It took us through some farm land, a slow, eel-friendly creek, and past patches of bush planted three years ago by volunteers. Swallows dive bombed us in a friendly way; piiwakawaka (fantails) followed us along past a patch of manuka, and a kootare (kingfisher) gazed at us as she gazed at everything else. Y said, "Look! There's a hawk!" but looked again and saw it was a small plane taking off from the airport.

There were some jumps for horses which looked like sculptures, and some sculptures which looked like jumps for horses: rustic and solid enough to kill anything that failed to make the height.

We passed a pedestrian version of a cattle stop and went from the farm land into an area that seemed more parklike. Off to the left, the bruised remants of Matukurua (McLaughlin's Mountain) and, between us and the mountain, a quarry, which may have once been its twin mountain, Matukureia (?) (Wiri Mountain. A bird, (a bittern?), rose from the bush beside the ghost of Matukureia.


The wind was biting, so we went no further than some wood sculptures reminiscent of a whare nui (Maori meeting house), a paataka (store for valuables). There were no words, of course.
The sign at the entrance had told us that Maaori had been living here for a thousand years. We met no people at all, anywhere during our walk.

"Maa wai raa e taurima, te marae i waho nei,
Maa te tika, maa te pono, me te aroha ee?"

/Who will speak here, on this marae, for right, truth, and for love too?"