Heritage et AL

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Polyfest, celebrating five incredible decades of diverse communities sharing their cultures through dance, singing, and oratory. With Tāmaki Makaurau as the home to a vibrant Pasifika community, it remains the perfect location to host this annual festival. From its humble beginnings with four schools and their students, Polyfest festival now attracts over 100,000 visitors and brings together more than 70 schools to celebrate Moana Oceania cultures and more. The festival proudly showcases traditional music, dance, costumes, and languages, but it is the camaraderie, cultural enlightenment, and vibrant celebration of youth that truly stand out. Image: Hillary College Yearbook 1976. Auckland Libraries Research South In recent years, the festival has faced several challenges that have also impacted Aotearoa as a whole. In 2019, the nation mourned the tragic events in Christchurch, leading to the cancellation of the festival’s final day. The following year,...

In February 2017 Manurewa Library celebrates its 50th anniversary. On 20 February 1967 it was opened on the first floor of the Natali Buildings on the corner of Great South Road and Station Road. It was Manukau City Council’s first full-service free public library. Ref: The Natali's Buildings, c1979, South Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, Footprints 01617. Known as Pegler’s Building when it was opened in June 1930, this originally housed seven shops on the ground floor and a reception room or hall, four offices and two flats on the first floor. In 1967 the reception room was converted into a library.

The team who built the giant Farmers Santa in 1960 would be amazed at the icon’s fluctuating fortunes . The statue enjoyed a 30 year run until the store’s Hobson Street site was sold (now the Heritage Hotel). He relocated to the Manukau Shopping Centre and was sacked for being too tatty, then taken apart and left in a rigger’s yard. Santa was later sold for $1; renovated for $40,000; restored again for $100,000; and had his winking eye and beckoning finger removed. He was the world’s largest fibreglass Santa in 1960; and crowned the world’s creepiest Christmas ornament in 2011. Ref: Coloured postcard of the Farmers Trading Company, 1970s, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 9-1.

As you drive along Puhinui Road from the airport towards Papatoetoe and Manukau City Centre, you’ll pass some of Papatoetoe’s oldest historic places. These are pa sites that today guard this gateway to Manukau. The major site here is the Papatoetoe Pa (NZAA reference number: R11/59).  The pa was formed on a headland near the upper reaches of the Waokauri Creek, where it controlled the Papatoetoe portage. Papatoetoe Pa was protected on its landward side by a ditch and bank originally about 50 metres long. The pa was about 105 metres in length, 60 metres wide at its broadest point; reducing to 25 metres wide at its tip. Ref: Map showing the headland pa (R11/59), Cultural Heritage Iventory (CHI), Auckland Council GIS Viewer. Please note the data shown in the map provides a rough guide to the site only  The photo below looks down at a branch of the Waokauri Creek from the pa entrenchment. Ref: Footprints 01427, Papatoetoe Pa, 1948, photograph reproduced by courtesy of ...

South Auckland Research Centre has recently added almost 500 photographs and descriptions to its image database Footprints . The database already contains a selection 5000 of historical photographs and other images relating to South Auckland. The latest additions include a collection of black & white images from Southmall in Manurewa. The images cover the 1950s through to April 1972 and have been supplied courtesy of the Manurewa Historical Society. They include aerial shots of the shopping mall, but the bulk of the collection shows the variety of competitions and performances held at the newly opened Southmall centre during the late 1960s and early 70s, such as beauty pageants and baby competitions. Large crowds attended the jazz, pop-folk and other performance after the opening of the Southmall centre. In the photo below, well-known organist Reg Morgan demonstrates his skill to an admiring crowd on 24 February 1970. Ref: Footprints 05389, Reg Morgan on the organ, Southma...

On 6 February 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in the Bay of Islands. Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson afterwards circulated copies of the treaty for signature by other chiefs throughout New Zealand. Over the next few months five or six treaty meetings were held in the Waitemata and Manukau areas. Image: Captain William Hobson, circa 1835. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 5-0205. The first of these was held during Hobson’s first visit to the Waitemata, on 4 March 1840. The exact location is uncertain, but was probably Karaka Bay, and if not Karaka Bay then certainly somewhere along the shoreline between the Tamaki River and Maraetai. Sixteen Ng āti Paoa, Ng āti Maru and Ng āti Tamater ā – and perhaps also Ngai Tai – chiefs signed a copy on this occasion, with Captain Joseph Nias and the missionaries Henry Williams and William Fairburn acting as witnesses.