Wintertime Adventuring

With the winter weather setting in, we’ve been keeping a little closer to home for our adventures. Rain is the most consistent thing about winter, and wind is the next. We decided to bundle up and hit a couple nearby volcanos one Saturday. The town of Devonport is just south of Takapuna on a little jut of land out into the harbour. It’s actually where the first Maoris landed in New Zealand prior to 1300. It’s thought that they came from some of the eastern Polynesian islands up closer to the equator. Imagine paddling their canoes all that distance! At any rate, right there on the coastline are two extinct volcanos, Mt. Victoria and North Head. They are just pretty grassy knolls now, but have quite a history. We climbed up Mt. Victoria and the scenery was beautiful! However, the day wasn’t. Pretty cold and windy and grey, but, as you can see, we could look out all over, a 360 degree view.

Our classic skyline view with the Skytower

and the Harbor Bridge. We have two missionary couples living in the tall apartment building in front of the bridge. What a view they have!


Another skyline view from the top of Mt. Victoria

Because of this location, guarding the entrance of the harbour, Mt. Victoria and North Head became a strategic location for placing guns and other fortifications. The Europeans only began arriving here in about 1840, but have always feared attack from the north, either Russian aggressors in the 1870-80s, America potentially trying to gain a defensive location in the southern hemisphere, or preparing for Japanese attack in WWII. These hills are a maze of underground tunnels, almost whole cities! There are huge disappearing cannons that could shoot and then retract down into the hill out of sight, as well as gun emplacements on the top.

North Head, the second volcano, we saved for Queen’s Birthday, June 1, which is a national holiday here. North Head is only a mile or so from Mt. Victoria. Again, it was a bitter cold, blustery day, but sunny and pretty.

A much brighter sky! This is taken from North Head, looking towards downtown Auckland on the left, and the little hill on the right is Mt. Victoria. Doesn’t look like grass in winter, does it? Green New Zealand!


North Head still has remnants of the military housing and other military buildings that were built there. In an old cook house left over from the military days, they showed a pretty good film where we learned the history of this area. North Head, too, is a maze of tunnels and has a disappearing cannon. These cannons were fired at Rangitoto Island, five miles across the water, for practice. Luckily, it’s a different direction from Auckland. Rangitoto is New Zealand’s most recent volcano, erupting and forming an island only 600 years ago.

One of the many underground tunnel entrances

Rangitoto Island out in the sea

Because it was a holiday and the sun was out, there were tons of people out enjoying the day. The best thing about this place was how much fun the kids were having. First of all, all those tunnels to explore! And second was the steep, grassy hillsides. Every kid there had a piece of cardboard, and they were sliding down the hills. What a blast!! As you can see, these weren’t wimpy little slopes!

As we were walking along the top of this hill, we saw a narrow little gravel path take off down the hill. It led to a secluded, very narrow little stone stairwell that went down to the cliffs above the water.

We get so much enjoyment from our outings and love the beautiful scenery of of New Zealand! We hope that the pictures and stories we post will give you a little flavor of this great place.