Great Barrier Island
Great Barrier Island lies in the outer Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand, north-east of central Auckland. With an area of it is the sixth-largest island of New Zealand. Its highest point, Mount Hobson, is above sea level. The local authority is the Auckland Council.
The island was initially exploited for its minerals and kauri trees and saw only limited agriculture. In 2013, it was inhabited by 939 people, mostly living from farming and tourism and all living off-the-grid. The majority of the island is administered as a nature reserve by the Department of Conservation. The island atmosphere is sometimes described as being "life in New Zealand many decades back".
Etymology
The Māori name of the island is Aotea. It received its English name from Captain Cook because it acts as a barrier between the Pacific Ocean and the Hauraki Gulf. Entrance to the Hauraki Gulf is via two channels, one on each side of the island. Colville Channel separates the southernmost point, Cape Barrier, from Cape Colville at the northern tip of the Coromandel Peninsula to the south, Cradock Channel from the smaller Little Barrier Island to the west. The island protects the Hauraki Gulf from the ocean surface waves and the currents of the South Pacific Gyre. It is not a sandbar barrier, often defined as the correct use of the term. The island's English name stems from its location on the outskirts of the Hauraki Gulf.Geography
With an area of, Great Barrier Island is the sixth-largest island in New Zealand after the South Island, the North Island, Stewart Island / Rakiura, Chatham Island, and Auckland Island. The highest point, Mount Hobson or Hirakimatā, is above sea level.Great Barrier is surrounded by several smaller islands, including Kaikoura Island, Rakitu Island, Aiguilles Island and Dragon Island. A number of islands are located in Great Barrier bays, including Motukahu Island, Nelson Island, Kaikoura Island, Broken Islands, Motutaiko Island, Rangiahua Island, Little Mahuki Island, Mahuki Island and Junction Islands.
With a maximum length of some, it and the Coromandel Peninsula protect the Gulf from the storms of the Pacific Ocean to the east. Consequently, the island boasts highly contrasting coastal environments. The eastern coast comprises long, sandy beaches, windswept sand-dunes, and at times heavy surf. The western coast, sheltered and calm, is home to hundreds of tiny, secluded bays which offer some of the best diving and boating in the country. The inland holds several large and biologically diverse wetlands, along with rugged hill country, as well as old-growth and regenerating kauri forests.
Surrounding islands
Surrounding islands and islets:| Name | Coordinates |
| Aiguilles Island | |
| Bird Islet | |
| Bird Rocks | |
| Grey Group Islands | |
| Junction Islands | |
| Kaikōura Island / Selwyn Island | |
| Moturako Island | |
| Motuhaku Island | |
| Nelson Island / Peter Island | |
| Palmers Island | |
| Pitokuku Island | |
| Little Mahuki Island | |
| Lion Rock | |
| Mahuki Island / Anvil Island | |
| Motutaiko Island | |
| Okokewa Island / Green Island | |
| Opakau Island | |
| Oyster Island | |
| Papakuri Island | |
| Rabbit Island | |
| Rakitu Island | |
| Rangiahua Island | |
| The Pigeons / Piroque Rocks | |
| Wood Island | |
| Whangara Island | |
| Quoin Island / Graves Island |
Climate
Geology and natural history
Much of Great Barrier Island is formed from remnants of volcanoes associated with the Coromandel Volcanic Zone. The North Great Barrier Volcano, which was centred to the north of the modern island from Whangapoua Bay northwards, formed through events between 18 and 17 million years ago; some of the earliest vulcanism which occurred in the zone. The Great Barrier Volcano formed to the west of the modern island between 15 and 12 million years ago. Much of the modern island is this volcano's eroded eastern flanks. The third volcano, Mount Hobson, is the caldera of a complex rhyolite dome volcano, which was active between 12 and 8 million years ago.Great Barrier Island has been linked to the North Island for most of the last 18 million years, by a land bridge to the south along the Colville Channel. Approximately 17,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, the Hauraki Gulf was a low-lying coastal plain as sea levels were over 100 metres lower than present day levels. During this period, Great Barrier Island was bordered by the two major river systems that flowed on the plain. Over the past two million years, Great Barrier has periodically been an island and a peninsula.
History and culture
Great Barrier Island is the ancestral land of Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea who are the mana whenua of Aotea. Ngāti Rehua have occupied Aotea since the 17th century after conquering Aotea from people of Ngāti Manaia and Kawerau descent. In the mid-19th century during the early Colonial era of New Zealand, extensive private and crown land purchases meant only two areas of the Hauraki Gulf remained in Māori ownership: Te Huruhi on Waiheke Island on Waiheke and a 3,510 acre parcel of land at Katherine Bay on Great Barrier Island.Local industries
Mining
Early European interest followed discovery of copper in the remote north, where New Zealand's earliest mines were established at Miners Head in 1842. Traces of these mines remain, largely accessible only by boat. Later, gold and silver were found in the Okupu / Whangaparapara area in the 1890s, and the remains of a stamping battery on the Whangaparapara Road are a remainder of this time. The sound of the battery working was reputedly audible from the Coromandel Peninsula, 20 km away.In early 2010, a government proposal to remove 705 ha of land on the Te Ahumatā Plateau from Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act, which gives protection from the mining of public land, was widely criticised. Concerns were that mining for the suspected $4.3 billion in mineral worth in the area would damage both the conservation land as well as the island's tourism economy. Locals were split on the project, some hoping for new jobs. If restarted, mining at White Cliffs would occur in the same area it originally proliferated on Great Barrier. The area's regenerating bushland still holds numerous semi-collapsed or open mining shafts where silver and gold had been mined.
Kauri logging
The kauri logging industry was profitable in early European days and up to the mid-20th century. Forests were well inland, with no easy way to get the logs to the sea or to sawmills. Kauri logs were dragged to a convenient stream bed with steep sides and a driving dam was constructed of wood, with a lifting gate near the bottom large enough for the logs to pass through. When the dam had filled, which might take up to a year, the gate was opened and the logs above the dam were pushed out through the hole and swept down to the sea. The logging industry cut down large amounts of old growth, and most of the current growth is younger native forest as well as some remaining kauri in the far north of the island. Much of the island is covered with regenerating bush dominated by kanuka and kauri.Other industries
Great Barrier Island was the site of New Zealand's last whaling station, at Whangaparapara, which opened in 1956, over a century after the whaling industry peaked in New Zealand, and closed due to depletion of whaling stocks and increasing protection of whales by 1962.Another small-scale industry was kauri gum digging, while dairy farming and sheep farming have tended to play a small role compared to the usual New Zealand practice. A fishing industry collapsed when international fish prices dropped. Islanders are generally occupied in tourism, farming or service-related industries when not working off-island.
Shipwrecks
The remote north was the site of the sinking of the SS Wairarapa around midnight of 29 October 1894. This was one of New Zealand's worst shipwrecks, with about 140 lives lost, some of them buried in two beach grave sites in the far north. As a result, a Great Barrier Island pigeon post service was set up, the first message being flown on 14 May 1897. Special postage stamps were issued from October 1898 until 1908, when a new communications cable was laid to the mainland, which made the pigeon post redundant. Another major wreck lies in the far southeast, the SS Wiltshire.Nature reserves
Over time, more and more of the island came under the stewardship of the Department of Conservation or its predecessors. Partly this was land that had belonged to the Crown since the 1800s, while other parts were sold or donated like the more than 10% of the island that was gifted to the Crown by farmer Max Burrill in 1984. DOC has created a large number of walking tracks through the island, some of which are also open for mountain biking. The Aotea Conservation Park has the only multi-day wilderness walk in the Auckland region, boasting two DOC huts and numerous campsites. The Park spreads over more than 12,000 hectares and offers multiple walking tracks for novice and experienced walkers.The island is free of some of the more troublesome introduced pests that plague the native ecosystems of other parts of New Zealand. While it does have wild cats, feral pigs, black rats, Polynesian rats, mice and rabbits, there are no possums, mustelids, hedgehogs, brown rats, deer or feral goats, thus being a relative haven for native bird and plant populations. Rare birds found on the island include brown teal ducks, black petrels and kākā.