Mahurangi Regional Park
Straddling the head of Mahurangi Harbour, Mahurangi Regional Park is a boater's paradise incorporating areas of coastal forest.
Māori lived here in large communities. The park was the ancestral domain of Ngäti Rongo and there are four fortified pa sites at Opahi, Cudlip and Te Muri Points and above Sullivan’s Bay. A sea captain, John Sullivan, married Merehai Kaipuke and settled at Otarawao (Sullivan’s Bay) in the 1870s. Their descendents farmed the land for nearly a century and farming continues on the park today. More than 100 Māori and European settlers are buried in the Te Muri urupā (cemetery) on the park. The urupā was established in the 1860s alongside two sacred (tapu) pōhutukawa trees. Scott Homestead, at Scott Point, is a reminder of the Mahurangi Harbour’s busy past as a hub of timber milling, ship building, firewood cutting and trade. Thomas Scott Jr built the Georgian style house in 1877 on the site where his father, a shipbuilder, ran an inn until it was destroyed by fire. Volunteers have lovingly restored the house and its surrounds.
