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The 'Whau Highway District' remained largely wilderness up until the 1880's, when the population was about 270. On March 29th 1880 the Auckland - Helensville Railway was opened with a stop at New Lynn. At the time there were 2 mixed trains to Avondale every day except Sunday, continuing through to Glen Eden on Tuesdays and Fridays.

"...although that advantage was tempered somewhat by the two miles (three kilometres) of clay roads and tracks to the bay on the Manukau.

In May 1882 a Crown Grant was signed by the Governor to confirm Paul Joseph Murray as owner of Lot 293, a 40-acre block that included the property known today as Pinesong and also extending over the ridge of the present-day Avonleigh Road to the northwest slope beyond.

Murphy sold out within 12 months and the remote property changed hands a further three times in the next 20 years. Splendid views of the Manukau could not offset the reality that the land, with its thick clay base and with topsoil depleted by the nature of the Kauri, was resistant to cultivation."

Patricia Carr, Last Waltz For Iconic Venue, Titirangi Tatler 39, 2006.

The Blaiklock farm also had a forested gully and wetland - a continuation of the one in the Rahui Kahika reserve today. These areas better survived any forest fires that ravaged the more exposed parts of the isthmus. When Thomas Kirk published the first substantial record of the vegetation in Auckland in 1871, there were still remnants of forest in the gullies consisting mostly of mangaeo, puriri, pohutukawa, kanuka, toro, mapou, toru, rewarewa, hinau, pigeonwood, and kauri. The gumlands carried low-growing manuka, tauhinu, Dracophyllum sinclairii, and two species of umbrella fern. The local kahikatea must have been there too.

Prior to about 1870 the entire district including the Titirangi - Green Bay - Blockhouse Bay region was called 'The Whau'. The name comes from the Whau tree (Entelea arborescens) - wood prized by Maori for use as fishing floats.

The Blockhouse Bay military blockhouse was completed in July 1860 overlooking the old Te Whau pa on a traditional route from the portage. Via a coastal path this route connected to other fortifications further west at Cornwallis. The same year, Great North Road was also formed as a military transport route.

The beginnings of local government were also developed at this time. In 1866 the 'Turnpike Act' was passed to finance better roads via tollgates, of which there were three in the western districts. In 1868 the 'Whau Highway District Board' was formed, followed on 2 June 1869 by the creation of the 'Whau Educational District'.

In reality the process of subdivision had been going on since the Maori sold their ancestral land to the first European settlers soon after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Also in the Auckland City Libraries collection is an old map of the area made in the 1863. Only today's main roads are visible, and most peter out as they approach Titirangi.

On 5th August 1859 there was another auction of crown 'waste lands' by the Provincial Council. There were 200 lots averaging £5 per quarter acre in 'Whau Township, South'.

The Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Ritter Hochstetter visited Auckland in 1859, and later published several things, including a beautiful map of the geology and a book of his travels:

"I have seen beautiful Kauri woods in the coast range West of Auckland, in the Titirangi chain, on the Waitakeri, in Henderson Bush and in the Huia on the Manukau Harbour... The crowns of the Kauri pines rise far above the rest of the forest trees, and produce dark shades upon the slopes of the mountains and in the valleys, here and there intersected by the light green stripes of fern trees... They often occupy several square miles; sometimes there are 30 or 40 trees clustered together which thus, mutually protecting each other, thrive splendidly... tree by tree rises of equal thickness and of equal height, like pillars in the halls of a cathedral. In these clumps the Kauri pine suffers no larger forest trees by its side...

Whether it is the Kauri forests extract from the soil all the ingredients requisite for the growth of no other plants, or that they really grow only upon a soil productive of nothing else: this much is a matter of fact, that those tracks in the vicinity of Auckland which formerly were covered with dense Kauri forests, and where large masses of Kauri gum are dug from the earth, present now nothing, but waste, dreary, sunburnt heaths of notorious sterility, upon the white or yellowish clay-soil of which nothing but dwarfish manuka shrubs and scanty ferns can grow."

Dick Scott, Fire On The Clay - The Pakeha Comes To West Auckland, Southern Cross Books, Auckland, 1979.

"About 1853, George Denyer moved across the Whau creek and took up land on slopes running up to Titirangi, and for a time he and the other members of the family engaged in pit-sawing the kauri growing on these slopes and cutting firewood. By 1868, there were five Denyer families living in or around New Lynn. George Senior had a farm down on the flat; John was living in a house on the Great North Road near the original Whau bridge, while the others, Fred, Arthur and George Junior, were living up towards Titirangi. By this time the others had purchased all the land now bounded by Golf Road, Hutchinson, Gardner and Astley Avenue, as well as a block on the opposite side of Golf Road."

John T. Diamond, Once The Wilderness, Lodestar Press, 1977.

Other early settlers included Thomas Bray, who bought 73 acres in Titirangi also in 1853, and Hybernia Smyth, who bought 550 acres on the slopes beneath Mt Atkinson between 1854-57.

Maybe these early settlers clear-felled the timber in my backyard? The crown also sold a number of timber licenses at this time. In 1854 the wood of the ancient Titirangi forest was sold to Benjamin Holland. The following year John Bishop obtained a license to cut down the forest in the Whau portage. The timber was sent straight by boat to Onehunga and beyond. Most of the early settlements beyond Auckland were situated on the coast or navigable creeks.

Of course the timber cutters were closely followed by the gum diggers, who even further modified the landscape.

By the late 1850's all the timber was cut and the whole area was slowly being turned into farmland. A letter to 'The New Zealander' in January 1860 describes the view from the top of Mt Atkinson looking back toward Auckland as "...clay showing everywhere with hardly a tree or cultivated field..." The view west was still at least partially forested.

"When the barque 'Helena' was wrecked on Te Henga beach in 1853, the survivors were guided by local Maoris along a track from Te Henga to Three Kings. Drury (1854) states that 'it is one days hard walk from Waitakere (Te Henga) to Three Kings'. The exact route is unknown but presumably followed a ridge due east of the beach, went over the Waitakere River and Scenic Drive ridge and met with the Kaipara - Whau track."

B. W. Hayward and J. T. Diamond, Prehistoric Archaeological Sites of the Waitakere Ranges and West Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland Regional Authority, 1978, p96.

In 1850, the short-lived 'Hundreds' system of local authority was introduced, seeing Governor Hobson's old 'County of Eden' split into six parts, each with a hundred families and a warden to oversee them. 'Whau Township, North' (Avondale), and 'Whau Township, South' (Blockhouse Bay) were mapped out in a neat grid of streets and allotments, together with plans for a Whau canal to connect the two harbours. In 1853 the Auckland Provincial Council was formed to fund schools, libraries and other public amenities. In 1854 a bridge was built over Oakley creek from Mount Albert to form part of the 'Whau Highway'.

In 1848 the crown negotiated purchase of Te Whau, Titirangi and Nihotupu from Ngati Whatua. In the same year, John Kelly was the first to legally buy land in the area - Titirangi Lot 2.

"Much has been made of the fact that the site of Auckland was purchased for blankets and axes, but New Lynn can consider itself superior - after all the cutter 'Oripia', two cloaks, one gold watch, one double-barrelled pistol, one bag of flour, one bag of sugar, six sheets, six pairs of trousers, five coats, ten blankets and fifty pounds of money changed hands when the Porter family purchased land that today includes Titirangi, New Lynn and Kelston from the Maori chiefs Te Kawau and Te Rangi..."

John T. Diamond, Once The Wilderness, Lodestar Press, 1977.

In 1845, Dr Pollen built a gate across the Whau creek at the end of the Rosebank peninsula to prevent Maori warriors from coming up the creek.

However it now appears that these people weren't the first Europeans to buy the land from the Maori people. For example, in 1843, John Shedden Adam (1822-1906) was granted Allotment 85 in the Parish of Titirangi / Whau in return for his land shares in the failed Cornwallis settlement - one acre of crown 'waste lands' for four from Cornwallis.

In January 1842, missionary-explorer William Colenso crossed the Manukau by canoe landing at Green Bay. He headed on foot for the Kaipara along the old track that headed north through the Waitakere foothills. Colenso recorded in his journal:

"We travelled on, over open and barren heaths, in a northerly direction til sunset. Observed nothing new in these dreary and sterile wilds (save a handsome shrubby Dracophyllum). Bivouacked for the night in a little dell, nestling among the close growing manuka, not a stick being anywhere within ken large enough to serve as a tent pole."

Dick Scott, Fire On The Clay - The Pakeha Comes To West Auckland, Southern Cross Books, Auckland, 1979.

The same year Governor Hobson proclaimed the creation of the 'County of Eden' - a framework of authority over the first landowners across Auckland. Unfortunately he died before anything was established.

"From the early 1840's the road to Titirangi was via Blockhouse Bay across the upper reaches of the Whau creek, along the ridge (which is now Golf Road) across the present Titirangi Road and down to Atkinson valley then up the hill to Titirangi."

John T. Diamond, Once the Wilderness, Lodestar Press, 1977.

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