Your Place - Kaiwaka

The name translates literally as 'food canoe' but more acurately describes the area as a natural food basket. Today the population of the town and surrounding area numbers around 540; the place has not grown terribly much in the last 50 years. All that may change though. Europeans first settled here in 1859, but it was subsistence living at best, their farm incomes being supplemented by bush felling and gum digging. From the mid 1880's Kauri became the major export crop and, at times, as many as six sailing ships waited at anchor in the norrow Otamatea River, ready to load logs and sail out through the Kaipara Harbour.