Rangimatariki - Rosebank Park Domain

Rangimatariki - Rosebank Park Domain
By James Littlewood

This is not the first time I’ve covered a rev-head location. But this one’s different. Rangimatariki: the very name speaks of the sky and the stars. Perched on the south head of the river Whau, this island sits quietly out of view, completely invisible to the thronging multitudes traversing Auckland’s northwestern motorway, just metres away.

To reach it, you have to go all the way down Rosebank Road, and then Patiki Rd, right to the end, where it feels like you’re about to be spat out onto the motorway. Just there on the right, beside the local branch of a multinational chemical manufacturer, there’s a sign pointing left: “Rosebank Park Domain”. You’ll barely have time to read it before swinging hard left, hitting the brakes and setting your pace to the slip road running beside the cycle track, beside the motorway.

At the end of the slip road is KartSport Auckland, which looks exactly as it sounds: a tarseal go-kart track, with pits, a starting tower and a mini-speedway off to the side. It only looks out of place because you’re not expecting it. In fact, you’re now on an island with the Whau estuary to the south, and the Waitemata beyond the motorway to the north. In a peculiar coincidence of scale, the entire island is entirely occupied by the little racetrack.

It’s an island of little tiny cars, sandwiched between a motorway of normal cars, and a river of normal boats.

Many years ago, of course, it was just a little island surrounded by miles and miles of mangroves, and the river. And there was also a fishing village. The tide came into the Whau and the Whau flowed into the tide and all the crabs and stuff in the mud got stirred up and attracted bigger fish and birds so it was perfect for gathering kai. Also the mangroves and mudflats all around it made it an undesirable place to attack.

However, the site has seen its share of conflicts and bloodshed. Historian Paul Moon wrote that in 1792, a Ngati Poua group fishing for sharks off Kauri Point (on the northern coast of the Waitemata, directly opposite Rangimatariki) were harrassed by a Ngati Whatua group, who killed them and took their waka. Some were left on nearby 'Boat Rock' to meet their end on the incoming tide.

The two iwi had other conflicts on the site in the same year, maybe to exact utu for previous harms, or maybe simply to gain control of the island, and the bounteous kai moana it afforded.

It’s funny to stand there now, watching the go carts, and the cars, and the factories and warehouses, and the odd boat here and there on the Whau. And to imagine what it would have been like for those early occupants, without all that stuff. You wonder what it looked like when someone was inspired to name it for Rangi the sky, and for Matariki, the great and distant constellation that defined the start of the growing season, and the learning season, and that guided navigators all over the world, easily visible in both hemispheres, called The Pleiades in Europe, Subaru in Japan, Parvi in India, Makali’i in Hawaii, Mao in China and Thurayya in Arabic: Rangimatariki.

Image Credit: James Littlewood and Google Maps