KEY POINTS:
Turn westwards en route to Auckland Airport and head for the Manukau coast. Out beyond the big box warehouses, you arrive at one of the forgotten gems of Auckland.
The areas known as Ihumatao and Oruarangi slope down to the Manukau Harbour, with terrific views of Puketutu Island, the bush-clad northern shoreline and the distant harbour entrance.
The installation of the sewerage ponds back in the 1950s meant that Aucklanders turned their backs on this area.
In a curious way, this has protected it from going the same way as other parts of Auckland. It has survived as if the clock stopped. But its future is uncertain.
The planned second runway for Auckland Airport will consume a large area of the rich horticultural land to the south of Ihumatao Rd. And there are other changes afoot.
The Ihumatao-Oruarangi area is currently outside the metropolitan urban limit. Now, despite Manukau City Council's Mangere Gateway Heritage Project that recognises the heritage values of this quiet corner of Auckland, and despite the fact that the district plan classes this as Mangere-Puhinui Heritage Zone, that council is seeking to enable development that would severely compromise the future of Ihumatao-Oruarangi.
Late last year it was advocating that much of the land north of the line of Oruarangi Rd, in some places right down to the Manukau Harbour, as well as land to the south of Oruarangi Stream, would be zoned for business development, thus reducing the area drastically in scale.
These zone changes could undermine the potential for this to become one of the most significant open space, cultural heritage and visitor assets that Auckland possesses.
This sublime rural landscape is as old as any human habitation in New Zealand. Recent testing at Puketutu Island suggests Maori may have been resident here as early as the 12th century, which is very early by New Zealand standards.
The Auckland Regional Council's cultural heritage inventory map of the area shows it is littered with historic sites, although much of it, for example, the area south of the stonefields, has not been evaluated in detail.
The land is visibly patterned with layers of human occupation. The area was once covered in small volcanic cones and craters, part of the 8000ha Tamaki isthmus volcanic field in Auckland that is now tragically reduced by urbanisation to 150ha.
Maori cultivated these stonefields and Otuataua at Ihumatao is the richest example of an entire stonefield system.
You can visit Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve, a 100ha reserve purchased by Manukau City Council (with support from Auckland Regional Council, Department of Conservation and NZ Lotteries) in 1999, and see on a large scale how Maori lived and worked here.
They built special garden mounds, using the stone's heat-absorbing properties to warm the earth and retain moisture.
As you walk around the reserve, you can feel the presence of these people who marked out plots with stone boundary walls, used sophisticated gardening techniques and built the bases of their houses out of stone.
Descendants of the Wai o Hua and Waikato iwi who gardened here, continue to live at Makaurau Marae, just down the road on the Oruarangi estuary.
This is one of the only continuously occupied papakainga in urban Auckland. Manukau City Council's plan would bring business development hard on its boundaries, challenging the spatial and social integrity of this unique village.
On the stonefields and on the surrounding rolling farmland still grazed by cattle you can see the network of dry stone walls and barberry hedges Pakeha farmers used to fence their properties when they settled here from the early 1800s.
The story of the early Pakeha occupation of the area has only recently received attention, yet the Ellett, Rennie, Wallace and Mendelsshon families who farmed here made a significant contribution to the development of New Zealand agriculture at this location, beginning one of the first skimming stations, creameries, and milk treatment and butter-making plants.
A recent project by the ARC recorded oral histories of early settlement and identified further historic sites on the land.
Some of these families still live here, and some of their magnificent colonial homesteads and buildings are under threat. Four of these are scheduled in the Manukau District Plan and one has Category II Historic Places Trust registration (the heart kauri Rennie-Jones homestead).
Recent travellers to the airport will have seen the 1856 Westney Rd Methodist Church on George Bolt Memorial Dr in the process of removal, its graves already taken elsewhere.
Good things are happening in this area though. Watercare has decommissioned its ponds, and restored the coastline and the Mangere Lagoon (explosion crater).
There are seven beaches with vast flocks of shore birds, including internationally important migratory birds.
Watercare has returned the tide to Oruarangi Creek next to Makaurau Marae and developed a coastal walkway that joins the stonefields to the Auckland Regional Council's Ambury Farm Park.
Nearby is Mangere Mountain, considered to offer one of the most intact pa in the region.
An education trust hosts hundreds of school visits and there is an interpretation trail for walkers. All these areas are inter-connected geographically and through their human histories.
A newer addition to this complex of visitor attractions is the Villa Maria Cellar, a 40ha vineyard.
Uniquely in the Auckland metropolitan area, at Ihumatao you can experience a rural historic landscape still lived in by its original families that so far has undergone little change.
It is a gem sitting at our back doorstep.
Its value depends on the whole area surviving as rural open space. It won't do to cherry pick parts for protection and then hem them in with built development.
The changes proposed by Manukau City Council are very short-sighted. Once land becomes urban there is no going back.
Big boxes can go anywhere. Manukau's precious cultural heritage can only survive where it stands.
* Sandra Coney is Chair of the Parks and Heritage Committee of the Auckland Regional Council.
