Agricultural use

Land use in the Auckland region has moved from agricultural to urban development. The pictures opposite show how sparsely populated the area was in 1940 and the change that has taken place, particularly since the 1950's.

The two figures opposite show how land use has changed between 1950 and 1995.

To the east you can see a combination of residential and industrial development which has taken place on the rich volcanic soils surrounding the mountain. The dwellings that you can see were part of the State Housing development that took place in Auckland in the early 1950's. The industrial growth around Glen Innes and Lunn Avenue took place in the 1970's and 1980's.

Below is a brief time line outlining the transformation from rural to urban Auckland and the impacts this has had on the volcanic landscape.

14th - 20th century

• Maori occupied volcanoes and the surrounding land, and used their rich soils to grow crops.

1769

• Captain James Cook landed in New Zealand.

1820's

• European traders arrived south of the Hauraki Gulf
• Hills were vacated by Maori due to European presence - the hill slopes were left to regenerate manuka and bracken
• Settlers cleared and ploughed new farms, and also utilised volcanic rock for building stone walls
• Villages developed around road junctions at New Market, Mt Eden, Epsom and Onehunga
• The growing city required building materials, so basalt scoria was quarried to develop early roads, and lava was quarried for some of the first permanent buildings. For example, basalt from Mt Smart was quarried for railway development, causing the total removal of a 50m cone. Also, the area to the west of Mt Wellington has been heavily quarried since 1940. This landmark is known as Winstones Quarry. It still provides much of the basalt as a building material for the greater Auckland Region. Stone from basalt lava flows was also used to build what are now some of Auckland's historic buildings. St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Symonds Street (built between 1847 an 1850), the Melanesian Mission at Mission Bay are two examples.

Late 1860's

• By this time, the town and much of rural Auckland had been transformed by development of shingle - roofed, kauri homesteads.

1870's and 1880's

• Economic consolidation and expansion of the region's infrastructure. By the 1880's the isthmus population had grown to 20,000.

20th century

• Continued development of Auckland left scars on all the volcanic cones. The hard basaltic lavas were quarried for base material in road construction, road sealing chip, and concrete aggregate, and later for fill used in the construction of the airport and Mangere sewage ponds, resulting in the complete flattening of several south Auckland volcanoes.

Questions:

1. From what you have learned above about the formation of Auckland's volcanoes, can you suggest what processes would have lead to the presence of the basaltic rock resource to the west of the scoria cone?

Jamieson, A., Sept. 1992. Volcanic Auckland, New Zealand Geographic, No. 16, pp. 90-113.
Cameron, E., Hayward, B., Murdoch, G., 1997. A Field Guide to Auckland - Exploring the Region's Natural and Historical Heritage, Godwit Publishing Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand.