The big boy
of the Hunuas holds 35.3 gigalitres. That's 14,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, and the Mangatangi is only one of 10 Auckland dams. They're all full.
My favourite dam, the Upper Mangatawhiri, packs 16.2 gigalitres which is lucky because we smash 415 million litres a day.
As recently as this year, you were allowed to camp by the Upper Mangatawhiri.
It's beautiful. Bush-clad ranges with streams, waterfalls and magnificent vistas. A natural playground just an hours drive from Auckland.
Unfortunately baches, campgrounds and lodges are closed under alert level 3 step 1. If you are looking for a legal water catchment related good time, you'll have to visit watercare.co.nz.
Dam levels update throughout the day, and they have full-colour live cams too. I've been following their feeds since Mangatangi was at 48 per cent. There is something deeply depressing about a water catchment with its gravel showing.
I've watched Mangatangi add 7000 Olympic swimming pools and am happy to report everything is covered. Watercare.co.nz once again has the sexiest live cams on the internet.
Ironically, our dam level rises are caused by the same thing that's making level 3 step 1 extra punishing. Rain. The second they allowed us to have picnics, it hosed down and hasn't stopped. We are water-rich and picnic poor. You can have too much of a good thing, as Tairāwhiti/Gisborne district recently discovered.
Lockdowns produce dark nights of the soul. I woke up at 3am the other morning and fell into a deep worry spiral. My mind was haunted with thoughts of death, taxes and the important moments being taken from my children by these restrictions.
To cheer me up, I reached for my phone to check the dam levels. As my device repeatedly failed to recognise my fingerprint, a strong feeling of self-hatred took over.
What kind of pathetic nerd gets his late-night jollies from the amount of water in the lower Nihotupu damn? When did I become the kind of man who uses 10,573,149m³ of H2 in the Upper Huia as an emotional crutch? There are two possible explanations.
Maybe I love water catchments because I lost my virginity on the banks of the Ross Creek Reservoir in the 1990s, or I could be going crazy.
I text two people I knew would be up that early in the morning, Seven Days star Dai Henwood and Seven Sharp star Jeremy Wells. I sent both of them the same screengrab. A sexy shot of a graph showing dam levels sitting at 97.24 per cent with the question 'Hey bro, are you into this s***, cause I freaking love it?'.
Henwood fired back in seconds with a rude set of sexual emojis and a 'hell yeah, I am into it hard. Love dam levels. I'm checking em 5 times a day. How good?'. I can't explain how good this made me feel. I am not alone in admiring the Lower Nihotupu Dam at 10,585,630m³.
If a comedy superstar and great bloke like Dai Henwood is into dam levels, it must be okay. Two minutes later, Wells came through with a heartfelt 'dams?… not really'.
Auckland is having a rough time at the moment. We live in purgatory waiting for some people to do the thing that we have already done, so our leaders will allow us to go back to doing a few things we used to be allowed to do.
In times likes these, you have to look for wins, and 92,923,516m³ across 10 dams in Auckland's Hūnua and Waitākere ranges is good enough for me. Do yourself a favour, head over to watercare.co.nz, and fill your boots.
