Manukau Harbour

Manukau Harbour is the second largest natural harbor in New Zealand and the smallest continent, the largest in the world. It is located southwest of the Isthmus of Auckland and is an inlet of the Tasman Sea.

Geography

The harbor entrance is located between Burnett Head / Ohaka Head to the north, the southern end of the Waitakere Ranges and the end of the long Awhitu Peninsula in the south. This starts near the mouth of the Waikato River. The driveway is only 1800 m away, a 9 km long channel opens an approximately rectangular, 20 km wide basin. The harbor has a water surface of 394 km ². The tidal range here is up to 4 m.

Because of the large water surface of the pelvis and narrow mouth between the Manukau Heads, the tidal current is strong and a shoal at the entrance makes navigation dangerous. The worst maritime disaster in New Zealand took place here in 1863, when the HMS Orpheus on a clear day ran aground and 189 human lives. For this reason and because of the low water depth is the Manukau Harbour not the preferred Auckland harbor, the port facilities in Onehunga are not very large compared to the other ports of Auckland on the Waitemata Harbour on the northeast side of the isthmus.

The port has three main arms - Mangere inlet in the Northeast is near the city center of Auckland, the suburbs of Onehunga and Te Papapa lie near its northern coast. To the south lie Otahuhu and Mangere. This arm is spanned by the Mangere Bridge, another parallel bridge is under construction.

In the southeast of the Papakura Channel, which extends into the urban area of ​​Papakura is. In the southwest, there is another, as Waiuku River known arm, which extends southward to the town of Waiuku. Auckland Airport is near the east coast of the port.

The Manukau Harbour is the volcanic island of Iceland Puketutu.

Recovery

The harbor is a popular fishing area, although access to water over the few usable at all tides boat ramps is difficult, often the beaches for this purpose are therefore used. Cornwallis was next to the Puponga Peninsula, the area in which the present-day Auckland should arise. Due to fraudulent land sales and the fragmented landscape of this project was abandoned already in the 1840s. The bush on the surrounding hills was once consisted of many kauri trees. However, they were like, processed in sawmills and lumber shipped as of Paratutai from the other end of the Manukau Harbour at Onehunga for the houses of the new city of Auckland. Another part of the wood was shipped along the coast to other New Zealand settlements. The last sawmills were abandoned in the early 1920s.