An annual survey by Steve Braunias on the 20 best things in Auckland life.
Best train
Te Huia. Passing strange to begin this compendium of the best things of Auckland life by pointing out a way of getting the hell away from it. We love Auckland but it’s so cloying. It’s all around us, loud and possessive – the revived ride to Hamilton is a chance to wash Auckland out of our hair and re-emerge into a New Zealand of military conquest and stolen lands, of river and swamp, past the straight furrows and dark tilled earth at Drury, past the historic barges rusting on the banks of the Waikato River at Mercer, past the red carpets of azolla rubra on the water’s surface at the Whangamarino swamps, past black goats and fat sheep and large pants pegged to rural washing lines. Always good to come home, though.
Best ferry
Beach Haven-Hobsonville Point. This is such a peach of a ferry ride, a small and perfectly formed peach – it takes only five minutes. It’s like taking a raft. You stand on the edge of one shore and you skim across the water and next thing you know you’re standing on the edge of the other shore, the whole thing set in a little watery paradise. It connects the North Shore to West Auckland, it brings those two great land masses of the Auckland isthmus together – it’s a ferry ride which feels like a bridge, it feels like you’re walking on water. It’s a bright jewel, finely cut.
Best bridge
Ngā Hau Māngere. In one of his last acts as mayor, Phil Goff cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the new bridge in August. He went out on a high: this is a lovely little piece of engineering, with an arch that leans backwards towards the flat, slow waters of the Manukau. The bridge connects Māngere Bridge township to the Onehunga shore. It gets people from A to B but it serves another, finer purpose: it’s become one of the dreamiest spots in Auckland, such a nice place to idle and watch white-fronted terns dive into the harbour.
Best water towers
Somewhere in Chatswood. Actually this is a bit of a sore point. I have spent much of the past year admiring the two side-by-side water towers on top of the North Shore hills from across the water at my seaside hacienda, and hatching plans to go there and see them close-up. I acted on it this week. I got out on Onetaunga Rd up on a ridge near the Chelsea Sugar Factory. Maps indicated a walking track. Maps did not, however, warn me of great big wire fences installed by the New Zealand Defence Force. I got talking to passersby who explained that the military took over the land around the water towers about 10 or 15 years ago. They are now lost to the public, visible only from a distance, across the water, where I will now look at them with longing and sadness.
Best gutters
Keith Hay Park, Mt Roskill. They may not be officially or accurately called gutters; it may be more official or accurate to describe them as culverts; but either way, the form and function of the watercourse that runs alongside the length of the west side of Keith Hay Park is one of Auckland’s engineering marvels, with its clean lines and gentle inclines that allows the stream to keep on the move. In fact the water is actually Oakley Creek. Yes, Oakley Creek, dredged up and contained in concrete, held in concrete, transported in concrete. Behold the works of man! Keith Hay himself, that great local booster of all things Roskill, would have approved.
Best temple
Shri Ram Mandir, 11 Brick St, Henderson. Idiots tried to set fire to this beautiful white Hindu temple in November. Karma will kick their arse. This is a breath-taking construct of holiness, with a kind of outdoor gazebo for prayers, and two elephants at the front steps. The temple is set on a little industrial street alongside Kumho tyres and a grouting business. Grouting, and the Lord Vishnu; verily, all of life is on Brick St.
Best cinema
Silky Otter, Orakei. Nothing beats a cinema for the true exhilarating pleasure of spectating something on a flat surface, and nothing beats the Silky Otter for cinematic spectation. I watched Top Gun 2 here. Tom Cruise flew his planes out of the laser projection screen and then around my head as I lay back in the 50-seat room fitted out with custom-designed recliners. It’s not so much elegant as swelegant; going to the movies at the Silky Otter is going in style.
Best book about Auckland life
Poor People with Money, by Dominic Hoey. “The cops came around to our old brick house on Mount Albert Road … I caught the bus up to the gym Dad coached in at Three Kings … The flat was in Avondale, a cramped two-bedroom unit surrounded by identical white units all pointing out at weird angles. It had a driveway that ran between the houses and led nowhere … The sun was setting over the Waitākeres. The blood-red sky reflected in the windows of the car dealerships filled with Ferraris and Teslas. A loop played in my head as I walked past the drivethrough McDonald’s: money money money. I wanted some of my own.” This terse crime novel is a fantastic read and every page is soaked to the bone with a shabby Aucklandness.
Best closing address it the High Court at Auckland
David Johnstone for the Crown. Earlier this year I reported on a trial where a woman was charged with the manslaughter of a man who died screaming in agony after he set himself on fire beneath a house in Mt Roskill. All the evidence against her was circumstantial. It was a hard case to prove. Crown prosecutor David Johnstone turned his incredible closing address into a kind of short story; he took just one seemingly bland line of dialogue from the case and examined it from different angles, each revealing its true meaning, its full horror. You didn’t know afterwards whether to applaud or ask him for a copy of his closing address and for him to sign it. The jury found the woman guilty: Johnstone’s short story was a masterpiece.
Best live show
The Auckland Cactus and Succulent Society Show, Albany Village Hall. There were queues out the door when the greatest garden event of the year took place over a weekend in November. Cacti are such an exotic, provocative, right-wing form of life. They stand for beauty and aggression, resilience and creative solutions; they are temples of the sun, and they ought to be in every home in the sunshine state of Auckland. The best growers exhibited their best efforts at Albany and transformed it into a bristling wonderland.
Best tree in parks
Erythrina x sykesii. Otherwise known as the coral tree, or the flame tree. Like kōwhai, it belongs to the pea and bean family, which also includes such plants as wisteria, lupin, clover, broom, gorse and kākā beak. Introduced from Australia, it goes about its business with typically swaggering Australian flair, exploding into bright red flower from August-October. It’s a common sight all over the Auckland isthmus and my own favourite is the one looming over the creek in Cox’s Bay Park in lower Westmere. They look so great in bloom – it’s a tree in flames, wrote Auckland naturalist John Walsby, “with its bright red tongues of floral fire flaring up”.
Best enchanted forest
Orangihina Path, Te Atatū peninsula. Te Atatū! Gosh I miss my former stamping ground, sometimes; the pull of that special lick of land will always remain strong, and a few weeks ago I returned to take one of the great small walks of Auckland - on to the Orangihina reserve, past the horse paddocks and up to the power pylons above the entrance to the Whau River, then down to the water’s edge through an Enchanted Forest. Yes, truly, an Enchanted Forest, where the trunks of trees have been painted with characters from children’s stories in bright colours. There’s Snow White, there’s the Gruffalo, there’s Tāne; you never know who you’ll see next. Apart from the beach, it’s the best free thing for kids in the whole city.
Best garden centre
Roger Hunter’s Garden Centre, 39 Tidal Rd, Māngere. Wow. Just wow. It’s a garden centre that feels decadent, and not just because of the rows of fruity pink wheelbarrows. Most garden centres lay down pebbly paths but this place is wet and moist underfoot, it’s a jungle, humid and steaming, in the open air, flitting with birds. At one end you look towards a bank covered in orange black-eyed susans. There are thousands of plants, actually more like tens of thousands. All of it is a theatrical experience, the vision of a genius in pursuit of beauty - and that genius is the majestic Roger Hunter, a tall man with long, beautiful hands, his presence as exotic as anything he grows.
Best garden of national significance
Tōtara Waters, Whenuapai. Many Aucklanders will have fond memories of going out to Kumeū and seeing a roadside sign for a garden centre that really did read BROMELIAD’S SUCCULENT’S YUCCA’S. The apostrophically challenged owner passed on a few years ago. The place to go now for bromeliads, succulents and yuccas with the apostrophe held firmly at bay is Tōtara Waters, recognised by the NZ Garden Trust as a garden of national significance. It has the biggest selection of bromeliads in New Zealand. As well as plant sales, you can amble around the two-acre garden down to the water’s edge. It’s a peaceful, pretty spot in the countryside, full of spectacular plants that assume fantastical shapes.
Best burger bar
Jail, 7B/295 Penrose Road, Mount Wellington. Go directly to Jail. You will not eat a better, juicier, flat-out more delicious burger in all of Auckland. It’s got a crazy Wild West theme – I usually go for The Bandit burger, but also vouch for The Chieftain burger – and the really comfortable seating area has a strange painting of a First American girl with heavy eyeshadow. You could describe it as arresting. Sit there a while and chow down on the burgers and/ or mash and gravy, toasties, and crispy AF onion rings, and then ride into the sunset.
Best bakery
Mahia Bakehouse, 64 Mahia Rd, Manurewa. It’s sort of in the middle of Manurewa nowhere, set off the street on a busy road, with a huge car park (how many people are they expecting?) and a charming old outdoor wooden table. There’s not a lot of food. One whole display cabinet has a few bags of sweets. The range is small. But the mince savouries and hot bread are really good, and it’s really nice to sit at the wooden table, eat, and watch the world go by.
Best flag
Tongan flag, Watchman Island. To mark Tonga’s independence day on June 4, an enterprising sailor tied the Tongan flag to a pōhutukawa tree on Watchman Island, that small, pretty dot of sandstone in the Waitemata, to the west of the harbour bridge. It looked so good there. It was the tallest thing on Watchman Island, flying high, in full possession of its territory. It stayed there for maybe two months and tens of thousands of motorists crossing the bridge would have seen it. Eventually, it disappeared and the harbour looked emptier, paler.
Best dog
George of Botany. The year’s most cheering story appeared last month in the Howick Times. Reporter Chris Harrowell wrote about the hunt for George, a dog that went missing in Botany in August. There were early sightings of him at Paradice Ice Skating and a nearby McDonald’s. Somehow he crossed Ti Rakau Drive. He was next seen in Dannemora and then Flat Bush. But the trail went cold in September and October, and owner Delaney Ferabend feared the worst – until George was found at a home in East Tāmaki, in November. “George was hiding behind the couch,” she told Harrowell. “I popped my head around and he was wagging his tail and whining and barking from happiness.” Strangely, he had actually put on weight during his homeless exile. “The vet was shocked … I’m thinking [he ate] rabbits or rats or maybe even possums.” Good old George!
Best street
Queen St. Three cheers to Simon Wilson for his relentless boosting of Queen St in the Herald. Bores, moaners and sourpusses spent much of the year bemoaning the golden mile; they said it was a dump taken over by the homeless, that no one ever went there, that it was a ghost canyon of orange cones. But the Herald man insisted it would come right - and it has. Big celebrations like Diwali and the Santa Parade were a reminder of the special place Queen St has in the heart of all Aucklanders, and it’s once again a happy, lively, busy street, a boulevard of commerce and scooters, the place to go.
Best stroll
Westhaven Path. The thing about Auckland is that it’s the lucky city. It’s not so much a New Zealand city as one of the great cities of the South Pacific, shining in the sun, ripe with Moreton Bay fig trees and backyard plantations of taro, the sky full of birds and the water full of fish - a stroll down the Westhaven Path from Curran St in Herne Bay takes you to the harbour bridge, where whole families gather to fish on the tide. They stay till after dark and the bridge is illuminated in purples and reds and blues. It’s magical. It’s our place. It’s Auckland.