Best of New Zealand - 2nd March - Auckland

Wednesday 2^nd March – Auckland

Parnell, a suburb of Auckland, dates from the European settlement of Auckland in 1841. To its west lies the Auckland Domain, to the south Newmarket, and to the north the commercial area of St Georges Bay with mainly office-space. Parnell was named after Samuel Duncan Parnell, who is credited with the establishment of the Eight hour day in New Zealand. The Borough of Parnell, established in 1877, was amalgamated into the Auckland City Council area in 1913or in 1915. The Parnell Road Board administered the area before the Borough was established. While Parnell has so far never had a dedicated train station, it is planned to construct a new station near the Mainline Steam Depot at the west of the Parnell shops area, north of the Parnell Tunnel, which has been located under the suburbs since 1873.

The Anglican Cathedral, which stands at the top of the hill, has become an iconic feature of Parnell. It replaced the old wooden St Mary's, demolished in 1888, having served the community for 28 years. The current building has two parts: the brick choir and body of the church date from about 1960 and represent a "modern" simplified version of Gothic. This closely resembles Guildford Cathedral, by Edward Maufe, completed in 1961. (Guildford exemplifies Municipal Gothic: one commentator described it as "the dying gasp of the Gothic Revival in England".) The massing of the forms, the detailing of the masonry and the smooth expanses of plain brick occur in both buildings. Over the transept entrance stands a bronze sculpture of the Archangel Michael defeating the Devil, very similar to the Epstein sculpture of the same subject on Coventry Cathedral (finished 1962). The front part of the church, built in the 1990s to the design of Professor R.H. Toyand John Sinclair, recalls the new Coventry Cathedral built after World War II. It features large stained-glass windows, illuminated by the sunlight at certain times of the day. Māori motifs and symbols appear in the newer part of the building, which awaits a large spire to finish the composition. Next to this building stands the smaller wooden Gothic St Mary's. This dates from 1885 and served as the pro-cathedral after the demolition of the earlier St Mary's and until the building of the current cathedral. Designed by B.W Mountfort, it stood on the other side of Parnell Road until the 1980s. During the early 1970s the suburb became rather dilapidated. Les Harvey, a local businessman, created "Parnell Village" and revitalised the area as a week-end tourist shopping-destination. This involved Parnell re-inventing itself as a set of "Ye Olde Worlde Shoppes". As many other Victorian buildings underwent demolition in Auckland at the time, period materials became available cheaply, and the buildings of Parnell village emerged altered, extended and tarted up in a somewhat fanciful but fun ersatz Victorian style. Much of this restyling remains in evidence within Parnell Village and within the Parnell Road shopping area, under the ongoing ownership of the Harvey family's company, City Construction.

Auckland has a number of important educational institutions, including some of the largest universities in the country. Auckland is a major centre of overseas language education, with large numbers of foreign students (particularly East Asians) coming to the city for several months or years to learn English or study at universities - although numbers New Zealand-wide have dropped substantially since peaking in 2003. As of 2007, there are around 50 NZQA certified schools and institutes teaching English in the Auckland area. Auckland has a multitude of primary and secondary schools. The city also has several private schools. Auckland contains several of the largest (by full-time student numbers) high schools in the country: Rangitoto College, Avondale College, Macleans College and Massey High School. It also contains New Zealand's largest Catholic school, St Peter's College. Amongst the most important tertiary educational institutes are the University of Auckland (City, Tamaki, Grafton Campus and satellite campuses) Auckland College of Education (Epsom and Tai Tokerau Campus), AUT (City, North Shore and Manukau campus), is New Zealand’s newest University Massey University (Albany campus) and the Manukau Institute of Technology (Otara campus), with Unitec New Zealand (Mt Albert campus) being the largest technical institute in Auckland.

The Sky Tower is an observation and telecommunications tower located on the corner of Victoria and Federal Streets in the Auckland CBD, Auckland City, New Zealand. It is 328 metres (1,076 ft) tall, as measured from ground level to the top of the mast, making it the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, and the 15th tallest member of the World Federation of Great Towers. Due to its shape and height, especially when compared to the next tallest structures, it has become an iconic structure in Auckland's skyline.

Bastion Point (Takaparawhau in Māori) is a coastal piece of land in Orakei, Auckland, overlooking the Waitemata Harbour. The area has significance in New Zealand history for its role in 1970s Māori protests against forced land alienation by non Māori New Zealanders. In 1885, the NZ Government built a military outpost at Kohimarama, or Bastion Point, because it commanded good strategic positioning over Waitemata Harbour. It was not built on Takaparawhau Point, which had earlier been given to the Government for that purpose. In 1886, the Crown used the Public Works Act 1882 to take ownership of 13 acres (53,000 m2) of Bastion Point for this purpose of defence. When, in 1941, the Crown no longer needed Bastion Point for defence, the ancestral Māori land was not returned to its traditional Māori owners but instead gifted to the Auckland City Council for a reserve. (This was the last 60 acres (240,000 m2) of uncommitted land at Orakei that the hapu still hoped to get back.) In 1976, the Crown announced that it planned to develop Bastion Point by selling it to the highest corporate bidder for high-income housing. Joe Hawke, members of his hapu, and other activists, formed the Orakei Māori Action Committee taking direct action to stop the subdivision. In 1977-1978 the Orakei Māori Action Committee organised an illegal occupation of the remaining Crown land to prevent its confiscation by the Muldoon Government. A marae and housing was built, and crops were grown. A fire in one of the buildings caused the death of a young girl.

A peaceful occupation lasted for 507 days and was finally ended on the 25th May 1978, when 800 police and the New Zealand army were used to forcibly remove the occupiers and destroy the temporary buildings including vegetable gardens and a meeting house, which were constructed to accommodate the living during the protest. Two hundred and twenty two protesters were arrested. The occupation and use of force to end it played a part in highlighting injustices against Maori, and the occupation was a major landmark in the history of Maori protest.

In the 1980s New Zealand Government formally apologised and returned the land to Ngāti Whātua with compensation, as part of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process.

Mission Bay is a suburb of Auckland city, it is located seven kilometres to the east of the city centre, on the southern shore of the Waitemata Harbour. The Mission Bay district has been described as "a popular residential suburb and seaside resort ... about 266 acres (1.08 km2) in area. Three-quarters of this area forms an amphitheatre of low hills which almost encircles the remaining portion, a low-lying region of about 70 acres (280,000 m2) which slopes down gently towards the north to terminate in a picturesque shell beach about a quarter of a mile long". Present-day Mission Bay is built upon three parcels of land comprising part of the Kohimarama block that were bought from the Crown in the early 1840s. Most of the land subsequently passed into the hands of the Melanesian Mission, who sub-divided and sold it for building in the 1920s, at about which time the name 'Mission Bay' became commonly-used to describe the area. Before this the district was referred to by a number of names, most commonly 'Kohimarama', but also, later, as 'Flying School Bay'.

Mission Bay takes its name from the Melanesian Mission, which was based in the bay. Some of the mission school buildings still stand in the reserve, an area of parkland adjacent to the beach. The buildings, designed by Reader Wood, date from 1858 and are built of scoria rock quarried on the volcanic island of Rangitoto. The Melanesian Mission School, also known as St Andrew's College, was founded by Bishop George Augustus Selwyn for the education of Melanesian children.

Mission Bay Reserve also has a link to the history of early aviation in New Zealand. Just after the First World War the Walsh Brothers (Austin Leonard Walsh 1881 - 1951 and Vivian Claude Walsh 1887 - 1950) located their flying school here, and for many years they used the bay as a landing area for their seaplanes.

The centre piece of the Mission Bay Reserve is the Trevor Moss Davis Memorial Fountain, constructed of Sicilian marble fluted to catch the light and ornamented by three bronze sea monsters gushing water. It plays regularly, sending dancing jets of water as high as 12m (40 ft) in the air and at night it features a spectacular light show. The fountain was given to the citizens of Auckland by Mr and Mrs E.R. Davis in memory of their son. During the summer it is used as a swimming pool for young children.