The Arataki Visitor Centre is on Scenic Drive between Titirangi and Waiatarua. It is an iconic building, designed by architect Harry Turbott, and opened in the 1990s. The most  [ Read More ]

Taitomo island is the only land on the West Coast still owned by the iwi, Te Kawerau a Maki. The name the iwi gave references the passage or tomo through  [ Read More ]

The Kitekite Falls are one of the most famous waterfalls in the Waitakere Ranges with six drops into a large lake-like pool at the bottom. The falls are reached by  [ Read More ]

Green Rock, January 2011   At low tide, take a walk from the south end of Piha beach to The Gap and you go past the Green Rock. You walk  [ Read More ]

Back in the 1940s, Dr Colin Finlay, an Auckland dentist, built a brick house at the extreme southern end of Marine Parade South. He was not a good sailor, but  [ Read More ]

In August 2007 a huge storm swept a torrent of water down the Piha and Kitekite Streams, overflowing their banks, and the winds howled. An old puriri, which for hundreds of years  [ Read More ]

The distinctive tunnel through Camel Rock is called the Keyhole, although the Maori name for the island itself – Taitomo – means a cave through a rock. The Keyhole surges with  [ Read More ]

This large pohutukawa grows out of the top of a large rock and has sent soots down into the soil beneath to sustain it. To Te Kawerau a Maki the rock  [ Read More ]

  There was consternation when Waitakere City Council announced it was about to fell one of the two remaining ” of an original three ” macrocarpas near the Bowling Club,  [ Read More ]

Te Piha talk   Graeme Murdoch held his audience spellbound when he shared his immense knowledge of the Maori history of Piha at Barnett Hall in November 2008. Emulating the  [ Read More ]