Trust making overtures for Musick Pt

Overgrown Musick Pt (pictured left) could become the beauty spot it once was - if Shirley Warren gets her way.
The Musick Pt Trust chairwoman has been drawing up a conservation plan for the historic long-range radio base at Bucklands Beach, trying to get a lease from the Crown. The area is administered by Land Information NZ, a Crown authority, which also owns 12 state houses at the southern end of the golf course.
The building and mast area is leased to Telecom for 99 years.
The trust, made up of iwi, residents, Howick Golf Club and Manukau City Council, needs a lease so it can receive funds to spruce up the site.
``It's getting really sad-looking up there,' Warren says. ``It just doesn't look like the nice front of a park.'
Plants such as the prickly shrub rhamnus, commonly known as buckthorn, and agapanthus have become a nuisance on the peninsula, and the trust's two working bees a year are not enough to eliminate them. Shirley wants funds to hire a contractor to do the job properly, and also to put new plants along the stream.
In its heyday in the 1940s, eight gardeners kept Musick Pt neat, but with its owners mostly in Wellington now, Shirley says no one is taking care of the park.
Manukau City Council agrees the point should be locally administered. It aims to improve the access road and parking if the lease is granted, so the park on the sea could become one of the most popular in Auckland.
``In the future I'm sure it will be recognised as a fantastic park, and people will pour up there,' says parks planner Malcolm Page.
Musick Pt is the subject of nine land claims lodged with the Waitangi Tribunal by local iwi.
However, Page says allowing the trust control would be a good interim solution before final ownership is granted. Ultimately, he believes that whoever is granted the land will keep it open for all future generations, just as has happened at Bastion Pt and Hamlins Hill.
Land Information NZ agrees locals should manage the point, but it is considering details. Telecom is also willing to talk.
- by Andrea Jutson