Viewpoint – Coast boom times

As the tsunami of growth continues across the Hibiscus Coast and wider Auckland, the sheer scale of this development is becoming increasingly apparent on the landscape. While it may appear unparalleled it is not without precedent as the history of Whangaparaoa duly attests.

By the mid-1880s there were just nine main families living on Whangaparaoa Peninsula including the Shakespear, Hobbs, Vipond and Polkinghorne families.

The first developers made an appearance on the scene in the 1920s. Ted Brown and Laurie Taylor opened up Manly, constructing a long pier off Little Manly Beach to ferry holidaymakers and potential customers up from Auckland on steamers.

Over on the Wade Heads, Bruce Scott purchased 380 acres of land off a female client largely to put an end to the woman’s badgering for a loan. Bruce was a lawyer and a man of strong Christian principle who used to open up his home to Auckland’s homeless.

Sales of land were slow and not helped by the Depression of the 1930s even though the availability of food from the land and fish from the sea meant locals were often better off than their Auckland counterparts where riots occurred on Queen Street in 1932.

The post-war years saw the bach bonanza of the 1950s when sections were sold in places like Stanmore Bay for the princely sum of £30 a pop (cheap even by the standards of the day). Hundreds of do-it-yourself Kiwis staked their claim and worked from dawn to dusk with whatever materials they could lay their hands on after the war to build the family bach.

By the end of the 60s there were about 2000 people living permanently on Whangaparaoa. This number would swell to over 25,000 in the summer as holidaymakers packed into baches and spare sections along the peninsula.

In the 1970s ad hoc development caught up with the Waitemata County Council. They tried to deal with an influx of people into the “Northern Beaches’ as they called this area with very basic sewerage ‘systems’ but these moves were fiercely rejected by locals and building was limited.

What followed in the 80s was coined the ‘Californication’ of Whangaparaoa as cross leasing and large scale developments hit the peninsula. There were calls for political independence as residents asked if this was the sort of progress they really wanted. In the 1990s development clicked into another gear with a corresponding surge of discontent. The Rodney District Council was referred to by one community leader as an “…incompetent, spendthrift bureaucracy, totally discredited and beyond recall.”

There have been further development spikes and troughs since then but what is remarkable is that the essential beauty of the Coast has remained intact despite the ravages of development and poor council planning. Indeed some parts of the Coast remain relatively unchanged from the last century, albeit due to geographic constraints and previously generous reserve acquisitions.

In the face of rapid intensification and population growth these locations are now invaluable legacies that we must preserve for future generations. They are, after all, what defines the uniqueness of this special place where we live.