Date visited: 2 February 2022
Elevation: 78m
Volcanic history
Mātanginui (or Greenmount, or Green Hill) is a scoria cone volcano that erupted approximately 20,000 years ago. In more recent times, it was a Ngāi Tai iwi pa site. Even more recently (or at least as long as I’ve been alive), Aucklanders have known this place as the rubbish dump, or the Greenmount Landfill.
I understand plans are afoot, now that it has been sufficiently filled with waste, to turn it into a park that will be called Styak-Lushington Park (named after the families that used to own the land and I’m guessing also Styak’s Swamp, which is just north of here).
Interestingly, according to this Stuff article from 2016, the Council’s permit to fill the old quarry with refuse expired in 2005 and since then, they’ve been “remedying” it with cleanfill, slowly rebuilding the cone to its “original form” in preparation for its transformation into a public reserve. It’s not open yet to my knowledge, but I shall look forward to visiting/climbing it in the future. There is some more information about this plan, including an artist’s impression of what it might look like, on the Our Auckland website.
Our visit
Obviously the maunga was not safe to enter this day, since it was still under construction and very much closed (at least according to the sign on the gate. We did not see any construction).
However, at the gated entrance we did find an interesting volcanic rock with a hole in it, almost like a miniature lava cave.
Looking at the maunga today, it’s impressive (and a bit gross) to think that its cone has been rebuilt at least partially out of household garbage. One interesting point the Stuff article above notes is the difficulty posed by the presence of numerous methane vents on the maunga to vent gases from the decomposing rubbish. It’ll be interesting to see what becomes of that in the future.
Directions and facilities
For this visit we stopped on Smales Road, a few hundred metres from the intersection of Smales and Harris Road, but there is no official parking and we really just parked in the driveway. There are no facilities, as it’s not yet anything except a former rubbish dump. However, watch this space.
Happy adventuring,
