Date visited: 17 August 2021
Elevation: 87m
Volcanic history
Te Ipu kura a Maki or Mt. Smart is better known to most Aucklanders as the stadium where they do the sports and the concerts.
Located in the suburb of Onehunga, it is (another) scoria cone volcano that erupted around 20,000 years ago and from the late 1800s until the 1960s was extensively quarried.
Mt. Smart also the site of Elton John’s last concert in Auckland that was cancelled and the stadium evacuated when the crater began to fill with water during heavy rain.
This maunga is one of the 14 Ancestral Mountains of Auckland, or Ngā Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau. In 2014, ownership was returned to mana whenua as part of a Te Tiriti o Waitangi redress and is currently managed by the Tūpuna Maunga Authority. You can find a list of all tūpuna maunga on the Auckland City Council website.
Our visit
You can’t access the crater itself unless you’re here on official stadium business or going to a concert, so we were limited to exploring the outer slopes of the tuff ring.
However, there was enough to see to make the trip worthwhile. We parked on Beasley Ave and made our way up into the forested area between the road and the stadium. We encountered a security camera.
Then we came back out to the road and down the footpath along Church Street.
It looks like a nice tree-lined avenue but it’s probably one of the busiest and most exhaust-fumey roads in Auckland. Exercise extreme caution.
This is the corner of Maurice Road and Church Street where I imagine there was once a sign. I feel like in the olden days this might’ve been the original entrance.
Within the little forest separating the stadium from the road, we found several interesting formations of rocks that did not appear to be accidental or the result of volcanic activity.
Directions and facilities
Mt. Smart is located on Beasley Avenue, Onehunga, or the corner of Church Street and Maurice Road. If you go on a weekday, parking on the surrounding streets is manageable, but busy. There are no facilities to speak of if you are just visiting the outside of the stadium as we did, however, there is a MacDonalds on Church Street that’s a convenient place to stop for refreshments.
Happy adventuring,
