Maungarei / Mount Wellington

This guide to Maungarei / Mount Wellington in Auckland explores the youngest volcano on the city's mainland, whose two summit craters met very different fates, one still open, the other filled with concrete and drinking water decades ago. You'll hear about Maori occupation of these slopes from around 1400, and the disputed origins of the name Maungarei, the watchful mountain, tied either to an ancient chief or an ancestress said to have flown here as a bird. Look down the eastern slope as you listen; hundreds of shallow storage pits are still cut by hand into the grass.