HISTORY
Pukekohe – a frontier township, ca 1885.
Photo Auckland Library Heritage Collections Footprints 02371
Drawing on the past, forward thinking A
ucklanders have seen the light – Pukekohe and the surrounding Franklin district (part of the SuperCity) offers a wonderful lifestyle on the rural fringe, but still within cooee of Auckland’s CBD. New housing developments have mushroomed from Drury through Paerata to Pukekohe as well as to the northwest around Karaka, Kingseat and Patumahoe then out to Glenbrook and Waiuku, while both Pokeno and Tuakau in the south continue to burgeon. Although growing rapidly, Franklin is by no means a new settlement. In fact, it has a rich Maori and European history. Proximity to the Manukau Harbour and two portages (one between the Manukau and the Tamaki River and the other between the Waiuku arm, Awaroa River and the Waikato River) were once major drawcards in the development of the area for both Maori and, later, colonial settlers. The close proximity of the Karaka shore to Weymouth, across a narrow part of the harbour’s tidal arm, made it a 6 – Settling In 2022-2023
well-used waterway, a superhighway of its day. In addition to the land’s cultural and economic value to tangata whenua, the area has long been in agricultural and horticultural use and land around Pukekohe still has concentrated areas of market gardening. Once principally associated with the railway, dairying and Wesley College, Paerata now includes Paerata Rise, a recent estate featuring thousands of houses, which is becoming well established since its first homes went under the hammer in 2018. Close to the Southern Motorway, Drury began life as a colonial settlement focused on the Great South Road, accommodation and rural services. Much more recently, the Auranga housing estate and Drury South project are well underway seeing the area grow substantially. The first immigrant farmers arrived in Franklin in the early 1840s, but the region was occupied long before then by Maori tribes. Maori settlement dates back centuries, with hapu able to trace their whakapapa
