UP THE CREEK A JOURNEY UP THE MAHURANGI CREEK TO WARKWORTH
Our days on the Mahurangi River and a trip to nearby Warkworth gave us a fresh perspective of this previously un-prepossessing (to us) town. We would dinghy-commute to the supermarket and the sushi place for lunch, tie up at the dock and enjoy the shaded riverbank park. And at the end of each day, we’d take off for the same short distance downriver, for a refreshing dip in possibly the world’s best swimming hole.
There’s much to see and learn up the Mahurangi inlet – it’s full of history and intrigue. For a start, it might have been New Zealand’s capital. In 1840 Governor Hobson sent one Felton Mathew and his wife to check it out, as part of his search for a new capital for the fledgling colony. Mathew reported fulsomely on the sheltered nature of the Mahurangi Harbour, and the ‘profusion’ of kauri on both shores. He thought it was ‘admirably adapted for the site of a town’.
He added, with typical colonial naivete: “Several Europeans lay claim … to this portion of the country, but their titles,
