maungawhau

There are several traditions about the explorer Rāhiri. In a journey that took several years, he first went from the far north to Auckland (naming Mt Eden Maungawhau after the whau trees that grew there). [] || Mt Eden (Maungawhau) is one of the most prominent volcanic cones remaining in the Auckland region. In the last of a number of eruptions about 15,000 years ago, three overlapping scoria cones became a single, huge scoria mound with a central crater. Lava flows extended out from the base of the mound, and in some places were more than 60 metres thick. Maungawhau was a significant Māori [|pā], large enough to provide refuge for several hundred people. || In Auckland on 27 July, 5 centimetres of snow fell on the summit of Mt Eden Late July 1939 []
 * Maungawhau 196 metres high ||
 * ===Rāhiri===
 * ===Mt Eden===

The volcanoes have formed, one by one, over the last 50,000 years. Others produced fountains of molten rock, forming cones of lava flows and scoria, such as One Tree Hill, Mt Eden and Mt Wellington. Rangitoto Island, in Waitematā Harbour, is Auckland’s youngest and largest volcanic cone – Māori saw it form about 1400 AD.

Remaking the landscape
After Polynesians arrived in New Zealand around 1250–1300 AD, they burnt large areas of forest.

The surviving cone sites are a unique part of the city landscape, most being maintained as public parks and reserves. They are part of a unique Maaori urban centre, beginning, probably, about AD 1,000 and developing until the cone paa were abandoned in the 1700s, shortly before Captain Cook's first visit to this country.

The Auckland Isthmus and region have been the scene of a series of basaltic volcanic eruptions over the past 250 000 years resulting in a field covering approximately 100 km2, including approximately 50 eruption centres with scoria cones and maar craters and 8000 ha of lava flow fields. All of the eruptions were short-lived, and each volcano, or cluster of vents, was the product of a single eruptive episode. The last eruption, of Rangitoto, occurred about 600 years ago. The volcanic cones dominate the wider views of the Auckland landscape.

The resources afforded by the cones supported a long period of Maori settlement, use and occupation. Each cone was surrounded by large areas of rich volcanic soils providing extensive gardens. Most were modified by Maori and have had their slopes and summits modified by digging, to form terraces, ditches, banks, and pits, for living, gardening and defence, forming a significant cultural landscape. []

The central focus of the suburb is the dormant eponymous [|volcano] whose summit (196 metres above sea level) is the highest natural point on the [|Auckland isthmus]. The majestic bowl-like crater is 50 metres deep. The volcano erupted several times resulting in a series of craters, with the last eruption about 15,000 years ago.[|[1]][|[2]]

[[|edit]] Mount Eden Prison
Main article: [|Mount Eden Prisons] To many New Zealanders the name Mount Eden is linked with Mount Eden Prison, which was built in a castle style between 1882 and 1917. It is constructed out of the local basalt rock, one of the very few buildings built in this uncompromising material. Built with prison labour it was designed by [|P.F.M. Burrows] and is similar in appearance to [|Dartmoor Prison] in England.

In 1879 White was commissioned by the government to edit //The ancient history of the Maori//, a collection of oral traditions. Volume IV of this work gives a longer version of the story of Ponga and Puhihuia, attributed to Ngāti Kahukoka, the tribe traditionally based at Awhitu on the Manukau Harbour. Ponga, a young chief of Awhitu, travels with his companions to visit relatives at Maungawhau (Mt Eden). During the welcoming dances he and Puhihuia, the young daughter of the chief of Maungawhau, fall in love with each other and escape by canoe, pursued by her tribespeople. Puhihuia's mother sends a war party of women to recapture her daughter, but Puhihuia refuses to return home and defeats each of the women in single combat. This convinces her family of her love for Ponga, and peace is made between their two peoples. []