Hidden green oasis awaits discovery by city dwellers

By STAFF REPORTER

Auckland's newest large urban park wants visitors - joggers, mountain bikers, kite-flyers, walkers and picnickers.

After years of battles between Auckland local authorities and lawmakers in Wellington, the green open space of Hamlins Hill in industrial Penrose finally has its own management plan, setting out its future as a One Tree Hill-style park.

However, the 48ha park is unlike other nearby open space around Auckland's volcanoes.

Hamlins Hill, or Mutukaroa, is not volcanic, despite being surrounded by much younger and fertile volcanic soils.

The hill, which lies next to the noisy Southern Motorway and can be subject to odours blowing from nearby industries, has a long history of settlement over several centuries by Maori who took advantage of its strategic location close to Manukau Harbour and Tamaki Estuary shellfish beds and freshwater springs surrounding the hill itself.

They left still-visible evidence of dwellings, pits and terraces. Early European farmers also occupied the site, leaving, among other things, a stone wall and a hawthorn hedgerow.

The park management plan sets out proposals to protect the hill's archaeological features and to plant native trees and exotics on its lower slopes and gullies. Already, over the past two years, hundreds of volunteers have planted more than 20,000 native trees and shrubs.

Cattle will continue to be grazed on the slopes and planting will also extend to the environmentally degraded Anne's Creek, along the park's western boundary.

The policies and objectives in the management plan have been approved by the Auckland Regional Council and Auckland City Council, who will oversee the park.

This complicated arrangement is a legacy of battles to save Hamlins Hill.

It had already survived a 1960 proposal to bulldoze it into the Manukau Harbour for a reclamation, despite its archaeological importance.

Then, in the 1990s, Auckland councils had to campaign against a plan to sell the Crown's 24ha share.

By 1996 the Government had decided against a sale but would not give the land to the people of Auckland.

As insurance against possible Treaty of Waitangi claims the Government decided not to hand it over but to lease the 25ha to the Mutukaroa Management Trust for $1 a year for 10 years.

The chairman of the city council parks and reserves committee, Bill Christian, said that at the end of the 10 years there would not be much else that could be done with the land other than keep it as a park.

"I am very conscious that with intensified development, especially in the central parts of Auckland City like Mt Eden, Epsom, Mt Albert, Penrose and Onehunga, we are short of green, open space," he said.

"We really need to hold on to and manage very carefully the open space we have because it will come under tremendous pressure when the region over the next 50 years has to cope with another million people."

The chairman of the regional council's parks committee, Bill Burrill, said the sad thing about the park was that it seemed Aucklanders were not using it because it looked like private farm land.

"I would be absolutely delighted to see people on the park on a regular basis. It is there for people to use."

He said the top of the hill would not be planted because of the views it offered.

There are also two unused water reservoirs, owned by Watercare Services, on the summit.

There are three entrances to Mutukaroa-Hamlins Hill.

The best is from a car park off Great South Rd. An old farm track extends a short distance up the hill but there are no defined pedestrian paths in the park.