KEY POINTS:
We're at the Botanic Gardens in Manurewa, just off the busy Southern Motorway. Sixty-four hectares of greenery stretch before us, the various paths meandering by plant displays and past duck ponds.
This welcoming oasis is in a part of Auckland which usually gets noticed for all the wrong
reasons.
Colleen Brown breathes in the crisp early morning air and all is quiet.
"Just look at that," she sighs.
"You know, this is my world. This is stunning."
The Manurewa City councillor for the Manurewa ward often comes to the gardens to sit and just be.
This, too, is Manurewa, she says. Don't forget the good things about the place she has lived for 24 years, the town where she raised four children and where she has thrown her heart and soul and considerable energy into the community.
Brown has wanted the Herald back in Manurewa since the recent killings - the shooting of the Indian liquor store owner, the fatal bashing of an elderly Asian woman in her home and the senseless running down of another Asian woman in nearby Manukau shopping centre.
We all know these headlines. The country was left reeling by such a quick succession of brutality in one of the country's most deprived areas.
Manurewa's name was darkened again, though Brown points out the alleged killers were mostly from other parts of Counties Manukau.
The community was left reeling, too, and now is left picking up the pieces.
Brown says she will take us to "the real Manurewa."
Later in the day, our tour guide will change. Alan Johnson, a former city councillor and now a Manurewa community board member, will take us to see his real Manurewa.
He will take us to the trouble hot spots, the run-down suburbs brimming with youth who eye a future roaming in one of the numerous youth gangs.
Johnson's words will convey a sense of the undercurrents of violence which bubble in Manurewa.
Though the pair see through different eyes, they are not enemies. They agree the ward is woefully under-represented on the council. For a town of 80,000 people, equivalent in population to Wanganui, there are just four ward councillors.
They agree changes need to be made in the place where they live and which they love.
For now, though, it is Brown's tour and she has a list of favourite places she will share with us.
COLLEEN BROWN'S MANUREWA
Colleen Brown
A councillor at Manukau City Council for three terms.
She is a Counties Manukau District Health Board member and is active in other community groups.
She has lived in Manurewa for 24 years.
She's a bubbly, forceful character and proudly middle class. Throughout the morning she will throw her head back in laughter while repeatedly urging us to accentuate the positive.
She's delighted today that the sun is shining and that for some reason the taggers who plague the area have not stained many of the walls and fences overnight as they so often do.
In the car, on the way to what she calls the secret garden [it's one of those places only the locals know about], she says Manurewa is a friendly place.
"You know you've always got help. People are neighbourly. They won't be all over you but they will be neighbourly."
There is enormous resilience here, she says, as we drive through leafy roads with pleasant homes.
Manurewa is a solid area, Brown says. People like to work, they like to achieve. They are good, hard-working folk who want the same things in life as anyone else.
She stops at Totara Park, in one of the "posher" parts of Manurewa, though it's not outrageously posh.
She shows us the open-air swimming pool and says people come to this park for picnics. The children play on the playground donated from a flower show and go for bush walks among the stands of tall totara.
Brown has no grumble from me. It is lovely here. We tramp along the frosty grass and she talks of one of the many walks they call the 100 steps, where if you want to tire your kids out you take them up twice.
We go to the Nathan Homestead, a majestic home from colonial times which is now a community centre. It's the school holidays and programmes are under way for children.
Then it's Orford Estate and the secret garden, though this turns out to be more of a secret glade. Another bushwalk and suddenly an expanse of lush green lawn hidden from view.
This is lovely, though Brown says candidly she once called the cops about a flasher wearing a cocktail dress who called out "yoo hoo" to her.
She laughs. The point is, this beautiful place is also Manurewa. It's where she brought her children, it's the kind of place where kids can be kids and run and play.
It's idyllic childhood stuff every child should be able to experience, she says.
Brown, actually, is not glossing over the downside of her ward.
She takes us to Robert Harris [to show us you can get good coffee in Manurewa, too] and one of the town's four well-equipped libraries next door, but she also takes us to the main drag with its proliferation of liquor and gambling outlets.
She voluntarily points out "the famous Northcrest". This tunnel leads to the carpark behind the rundown shopping mall. It is also where prostitutes vie for business.
Brown looks around her on the main street and points out the ethnic diversity.
It is an ordinary day and ordinary folk, Sikhs, Chinese, Maori, Polynesian, Pakeha and people from the Middle East, are going about their business. We run into Murray Dunbier, town manager for the Manurewa Business Association, who is with one of the town centre "ambassadors".
The town has eight ambassadors who walk around, helping shoppers if necessary, but who mainly keep an eye out for any trouble or taggers.
We chat about prostitution and crime and Brown says Manurewa does have areas of desperate need. People need to feel safe, she says, and they do when the see an ambassador or a police car. She points at a police car waiting in the traffic, then looks a little alarmed as the car puts on its siren and the photographer takes off after it.
"Positive!" she yells after him. "Positive!"
She takes us to see a notorious set of public toilets behind the mall where mainly transvestite prostitutes tout for business.
None are here but a Manurewa "Crimewatch" car pulls up. The Crimewatch cars are like the ambassadors on wheels, they drive around the streets reporting any trouble to the police and noting any new graffiti.
At the wheel is Alan Gidman, a volunteer in his 70s, who, not having been warned by Brown to be positive, says "we're due another stabbing" to which Brown says a horrified "what?"
Since the stabbing and death of a young tagger in January the graffiti had eased but now it's coming back, says Gidman.
They chat about community involvement, or its lack. Crimewatch needs more volunteers. At a meeting in one of the better areas there was huge interest from people who said they wanted to help. But no one volunteered.
"They all want someone else to do it," says Gidman.
In the car, Brown says she's not asking to hide the issues, rather to let people know there are positives.
She shows us the new Alfriston College and takes us to council pensioner flats.
Brown is proud that where other councils have sold off their pensioner housing, Counties Manukau has not.
We go past Mountford Park with vast sports grounds packed at the weekends and see the new $13 million indoor swimming pool and gym.
We tour a new library and recreation centre in Clendon, a poor area, and finish at the Weymouth coast where modest homes have fabulous sea views.
On a path overlooking the Manukau Harbour, Brown is in heaven.
She says: "It is truly, truly, a privilege to stand here. Look at it, this is just phenomenal, I love it."
ALAN JOHNSON'S MANUREWA
Alan Johnson
A member of the Manurewa Community Board, a Weymouth Intermediate School trustee and a former Manukau City councillor.
Involved in community housing projects and works with the Child Poverty Action Group.
He has lived in Manurewa all his life.
Alan Johnson's tour begins differently. We go to rundown netball facilities largely funded by women selling sausages, and to streets of state and Habitat for Humanity housing which are tidy but deprived.
He talks about how Manurewa is ignored by the larger council which focuses resources elsewhere.
He takes us past the new corrections and probation centre, a "bustling centre of activity" and past the Winz Office, "the busiest place in town."
About 18 months ago he toured the deprived areas of New Zealand. He thinks Manurewa beats them all, mainly because of sheer scale.
Where in notorious Ford Block in Rotorua, the setting for the film Once Were Warriors, you might have 500 houses, in Clendon there are 5000.
Colleen Brown and he mix in different worlds, he says on the way to the Marlins Rugby League Club, of which he is treasurer. This is New Zealand's biggest league club but has only a couple of fields and a clubroom with broken windows and a building which has to be repainted every year because of tagging.
There are 50 teams, catering for 700 kids and 1000 playing members in all.
But neither the club nor the members have any money. Annual fees are $20 a person or $30 a family but people have trouble paying that. Sometimes a choice must be made about which son can play because a family cannot find another $10.
The council does not help, yet this club engages the most at-risk people in Manurewa, says Johnson. A couple of years ago he coached Chris Kahui's brother and says the league club was probably the only positive thing the Kahuis were involved in.
The probation centre recently dragged some 17-year-olds into a team and the club said "yeah, we'll take you on, we'll adopt you".
"We think we're a social service agency that happens to be involved in rugby league."
Some still get into trouble, some still tag and sometimes a family member is murdered, "but how else are you going to reach them?"
At the library in Clendon, Johnson tells a story not mentioned by Brown.
About a year ago a security guard was severely beaten by three lads who lay in wait for him after hours.
"That guy's partially paralysed and it was just gratuitous."
He takes us to decile one [the most deprived] Weymouth Intermediate School where he is a trustee and which is constantly fighting against gang behaviour coming into the school.
He talks about the time the principal came across a Bebo site which children were using to organise fights at Mountford Park, "200 kids looking for a fight."
"One of the great ironies was these kids had built web pages on Bebo so at least some of the skills we were teaching in IT were coming out, and they were coming to Clendon library and using the computers to organise fights."
The parents had no idea. A big problem is the disengagement of parents from their children, partly due to the stresses in their own lives and partly because their children are leading vastly different lives.
A lot more needs to be done to assist parents because children are being lost, says Johnson.
A lot of the children at Weymouth Intermediate are hungry and some roam the streets in gangs all night long.
At the school we meet principal Chris Cooper, who says disclosures of abuse are regular.
"Sometimes it just breaks your heart when you hear them talk."
The school is trying to build a new facilities centre because, Johnson says, while they can't change the world, they can change the lives of the kids while they are in the school.
Johnson's tour ends with a drive around Manurewa's worst streets with the grand finale at the suburb of Rata Vine, tucked away off Great South Road.
There are vacant sections where Housing New Zealand has removed terrible housing blocks which Johnson says looked like "chook sheds."
Of three shops in a row next to the park, two have their roller doors pulled down. One used to be a liquor store, says Johnson, but the owner closed up because it was too dangerous.
But these places are not unique to Manurewa, Johnson says. You will find them in in other parts of New Zealand. We have seen a town of striking contrasts and met people who care deeply. Both are Manurewa.
