Redress

St Heliers School History

The school has a special place in the history of the District since it was the first public school to be established in the Tamaki area.

In 1877 a small private denominational school run by the Presbyterian Church on what is now the corner of Line and West Tamaki Roads provided the only educational facility in the St Heliers District. The nearest public schools available for children in the Tamaki District were Panmure and Mt Hobson (Remuera).

St Heliers residents petitioned the Education Board in 1877 asking that a Public School be established. The Education Board accepted the proposal and authorised the opening of the school on 12 February 1877 in a building in which a private school had been conducted. The first public school built in the District, the new 'Tamaki West' school opened at the beginning of June 1879. It was erected beside St Thomas' Church on a two-acre paddock fronting Kohimarama Road.

For thirty years the one-roomed school remained there. During the 1908-1909 Christmas holiday period the school was moved on wheels by a traction engine to the corner of St Heliers Bay Road and Maskell Street. The school was then named St Heliers School.  It remained the only state school in the Tamaki area until the opening of Glendowie School in 1952.

Ōrākei

Home of the Ngāti Whātua tribe from the 1840s, when land sales reduced their holdings to 700 acres (283 hectares) around Ōkahu Bay. In 1914 the bay became the site of Auckland’s main sewer outlet, polluting traditional fishing grounds. During the 1920s land above the Ngāti Whātua settlement was taken for housing – Ōrākei became a state housing suburb in 1938. Finally, in 1951 Ngāti Whātua were systematically evicted from Ōkahu Bay, their houses demolished and meeting house burnt.

In the 1980s the tribe sought redress for their land losses. A successful Treaty of Waitangi claim in 1991 awarded the Ngāti Whātua o Ōrākei Māori Trust Board $3 million compensation and led to resettlement of their marae area.

Bastion Point

This promontory above Tāmaki Drive, known to Ngāti Whātua as Takaparawhā, has come to symbolise Māori land issues. It was given to the Crown by Ngāti Whātua as a defence site during the Russian scare of 1885. In 1977–78 a 506-day protest against a proposed Crown sale was held there. The obelisk in Savage Memorial Park on Bastion Point commemorates the burial place of Michael Joseph Savage, first Labour prime minister, who died in 1940.

Kohimarama, Mission Bay, St Heliers, Glendowie

Series of marine suburbs lining Tāmaki Drive on the southern shore of the Waitematā. Back from the sea lies the former ‘Bishop’s Auckland’ where Bishop George Selwyn bought 538 hectares and founded an educational complex at St John’s College in 1844. The theological college and several fine Gothic revival wooden buildings remain. The re-siting of the Melanesian Mission on the Waitematā shore in 1859 gave Mission Bay its name.

In the early 20th century a rail line to Westfield was built across Hobson Bay, and ferries took picnickers to beaches along the shore. A new era of suburban development followed the construction of Tāmaki Drive, completed in 1932. In 2013 residents were predominantly affluent white New Zealanders. They include small communities of recent southern and eastern European migrants. Beaches, cafés and views of Rangitoto make this a popular area.

Tāmaki River

River flowing from Māngere East to a tidal estuary on the Waitematā. It was a vital link (by way of the Ōtāhuhu portage) to the Manukau for Māori. At Karaka Bay, the first bay on the western shore, Captain Hobson met with Ngāti Pāoa in 1840 to collect signatures to the Treaty of Waitangi. The Tāhuna Tōrea sandspit, reaching across towards Buckland’s Beach, has been a protected wilderness area since the 1970s. Half Moon Bay Marina is on the eastern shore. The first Panmure Bridge was built to span the Tāmaki River in 1866, and the current bridge in 1959.

South-eastern suburbs: industrial heartland

Glen Innes, Pt England and Tāmaki

Low-income suburbs lining the west bank of the Tāmaki River. In the 1950s tracts of state housing were constructed southwards from Glen Innes to serve industrial growth in Mt Wellington and Penrose. Their position – close to central Auckland and beside a suburban railway – has encouraged urban renewal and medium-density housing. A campus of the University of Auckland is sited in Tāmaki.

Panmure, Mt Wellington and Ōtāhuhu

Industrial suburbs stretching from the north-east arm of the Manukau to the Panmure Basin. Between Westfield and Ōtāhuhu lies the narrowest point in New Zealand, the 1-km strip between the Tāmaki River and the Manukau that Māori used as a canoe portage.

Industrialisation

Panmure, Ōtāhuhu and also Onehunga began as military settlements, from which the Pākehā invasion of Waikato was launched in the 1860s. In the early 1900s, cheap flat land and easy access to ports, roads and railways made this an ideal area for heavy industry. Southdown freezing works, opened in 1905, were followed by Westfield and Hellaby’s works, new railway workshops, and rubber, chemical and fertiliser companies.