Onehunga Bay Reserve and Taumanu Reserve

Auckland Super City Council have spent a super sum upgrading a small reserve on the edge of the Manukau Harbour into a large park. With the former working class suburb of Onehunga undergoing a rapid urban renewal, Council had to make good on a 30 year old promise restore the foreshore area, which was cut in half by the South western Motorway in the 1970s.

Starting as a Ngati Whatua settlement, Onehunga Bay used to provide easy access to the Manukau Harbour for recreation, boating and fishing. The shallow harbour can be difficult to access at other points due to mudflats and mangroves. Though industry had taken over the deeper water to the east, the beach remained until the Southwestern motorway blasted through the area in 1977. Since then a duckpond grandly named a lagoon and a small picnic area have competed with traffic noise to entertain the locals.

The park involves a bridge for walking over the state highway, and extensive landscaping on the southern side of Orpheus drive which runs parallel. New land has been created and landscaped, and sand and shells barged in from Pakiri, in what Council states is the largest land recreational reclamation in New Zealand. Interpretation panels explain the importance of the Manukau Harbour for migratory wading birds. The park opened in 2015 and can be reached by public transport.