What a transformationParemuka is the newest park in the City and set to become one of the largest and busiest. Watch this park develop into one of Waitakere's feature parks. Join the kids on the jetties and boardwalks, feed the ducks, float toy boats, or fly a kite. Promenade past the ponds to picnic sports or the playground. Or ride your bike around the ponds. Among the new locals in the area are pukeko and native fish. Note: You will need to have Paremuka Flyer (Size 595K)
How to get thereVia Hillwell Drive or Munroe Road. View the location map.
HistoryThe Paremuka is one of a number of little streams with headwaters in the Waitakere Ranges that flows into tributaries of the Henderson creek and then on to Waitemata Harbour. The land around the stream was originally swampy and damp with poor soil. Te Kawerau A Maki were the first to live here, building a settlement, Wai Hururhuru, nearby. One of the west coast/east coast portages was also close and the stream's name is a clue to what brought early Moari most often to its banks - very white, strong variety of flax used for weaving garments suck a piu piu. Muka is the white interior of scraped flax; parepare is the process of scraping flax with a mussel shell. Early European surveyors described the area as undulating fernland, devoid of large trees. Gum diggers were most likely the first Europeans to use the land as the stream is close to the valley's historic Kauri Gum Reserve. Peter Babich, whose family vineyard borders the Paremuka stream, remembers the area being half scrub, half vineyard in his youth. As a child he and his brother used the stream as their private playground as "there were not many kids around to play with". "When my father and his brothers moved here from Northland in 1919 there were no roads, water, hotels or boarding houses. For the first six months they made a bit of a shelter while they planted their first cash crops - fruit trees, grape vines." "As kids we fished for eels and went shooting. There were always plenty of ducks and pheasants down there."
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Paremuka
