Takarunga / Mount Victoria
Scoria-cone volcano crowned by a hidden disappearing gun and Maori pa earthworks above the harbour.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Takarunga / Mount Victoria in Auckland moves between two very different lives of the same volcanic cone: centuries as a fortified Maori pa with terraces still visible in the grass, and its transformation into a colonial signal station after an 1885 war scare sent a false alarm through the city. You'll hear about the flagstaff keeper who watched for ships, the settlement once called Flagstaff before it became Devonport, and the massive disappearing gun installed on the summit. It stands on one of dozens of volcanoes that built Auckland roughly thirty five thousand years ago.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
North Head
Clifftop volcanic headland riddled with hand-cut tunnels and nineteenth-century disappearing guns guarding a harbour entrance.
Maungawhau / Mount Eden
Dormant scoria volcano with a deep crater once a fortified Māori hilltop stronghold.
Maungarei / Mount Wellington
Largest scoria cone of a volcanic field, its crater terraces still scored with ancient food-storage pits.
Te Tatua-a-Riukiuta
Volcanic cone with pa terraces and kumara pits, the sole survivor of three peaks quarried for red scoria.
Devonport
Volcanic headland laced with prisoner-dug tunnels built to repel an invasion that never came.
Māngere Mountain
Volcanic cone with a rare central lava dome, once home to a major fortified Waiohua pa.