Wattle Downs Land & History

What makes Wattle Downs as it is today?

Rain, sun and plants have all come together in Wattle Downs to shape our land and build soil for a very long time. On average the sun shines more than 5½ hours per day. We get over one metre of rain each year, more than double what London receives. So much rain, that there is even an underground store of water, an aquifer underneath the ground. Rainwater has slowly percolated through the soils, clay and stones to create this underground reserve of water, which comes to the surface through bores and springs.

Long before people came to this land, plants, trees and other native life thrived here amidst the sun and rain. There was erosion as the high rainfall and coastal wave action wore away the soft soils and rock. These subsoils consist of mixed sands, silts and clays derived from volcanic ash and estuarine peat.

Totara trees flourished in the conditions. Pohutukawa trees grew large and led the way in holding soils together, especially near the edges, and where the land might otherwise slip.

Maori life came to the peninsula several hundred years ago. The Wattle Downs peninsula overlooks the entire Pahurehure Inlet and would have been a strategic location for occupation. There were pās or fortified sites near the end of what is now Mull Place (Takirangaranga Point) and above the mouth of the Papakura Stream (near the end of Crannich Place). These are located on headlands on the southern side of the peninsula, commanding views of access into the inlet and further inland towards Papakura and Takaanini. Maori were very aware of the fish, birds and plant resources in lowland and coastal parts of the area. Some signs of where people lived, cultivated, ate and stored food still remain.

In the 19th and 20th centuries settlers came from Europe.Their way of living changed the land and environment again. By 1853 the name ‘Kauri Point’ had been given to the headland at the base of the peninsula when Captain Drury mapped the Manukau Harbour. A map of the Manukau Harbour from 1860 shows that by that time, the peninsula was under ‘Native Title’ as an allotment of 600 acres, bounded on the northeast by the Papakura River.

28 May 1980 - Wattle Downs, Manurewa. Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs. Ref: WA-75082-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

The suburb of Wattle Downs as a whole was given its name from the farm that was established on the peninsula in 1884, where a 200-acre grove of wattle trees was planted to provide the wattle extract used in tanning leather. This venture was, in the long-term, a commercial failure, but it gave us the name ‘Wattle Farm’ or later ‘Wattle Downs Farm’.

You can still see wattle trees around our peninsula, possibly descended from the trees that were part of the wattle farm. After the wattle farm closed, the land was largely cleared for livestock farming including sheep, cattle & dairy. People descended from those who worked on these farms live on in the area today.

Beginning in the 1970s, the farms were gradually subdivided & developed into a number of intensive residential areas, including Wattle Cove, Mahia Park, Kirkdale, Acacia Cove and Wattle Park, with several areas such as Kauri Point which were set aside as recreation reserves. By this stage the coast was already described as badly eroded, even though some protection had been provided by Macrocarpa trees planted along the edges.

Where houses and roads were built the ground was massively disturbed by earthworks including scraping off of topsoil and filling in some of the lower lying areas.

In the few areas that were not disturbed, there is topsoil 200mm deep lying above an orangebrown clay subsoil; great growing conditions for trees, which can help hold the ground from slipping, as well as for growing so many different plants.

Thanks to David Hopkins for this informative article.