Customer Reviews

Maori Auckland

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This is an extremely useful and compact book. It is about A4 size, 96pp long and with softcovers

It is a really punchy and concise book about the Maori history of New zealand. It includes lots of early pictures and maps of Auckland with the sites put it. I really enjoyed this book because it talked of things which had long gone with European settlement and the suburbs - small lakes, rivers and even mountains removed or leveled to make way for houses, streets and growth.

This also has a small but good prehistory of the region (pre-European) including the conflicts, the tribes, the legends etc

It has some wonderful additional stuff, the nights of the moon which was the Maori calendar (the days were described by the moon. there is also a Maori place-name glossary in the back for auckland names and include a brief description and sometimes possible reasons for it - whether pre-european or not.

There are several turn of the century pictures around Auckland. which show how isolated Auckland was then, now a city of over 1 million people.

My main problem with this is two fold. Firstly I think the maps need to have the current Auckland names on them. Using the Maori names is really great, but it makes it difficult to relate it to what is there now without better references in it. Secondly I think the whole of the Gulf should have been included. There is some brief reference to it such as Rangitot and briefly Browns Island, but I don't understand why Waiheke is not included. Maori were very mobile with canoes and trading, and the island is a short hop from Maraetai - if not Auckland itself.

Otherwise I think this is a great book and we will be recommending it to any visitors to Auckland. I think it is one of the best reads, and easy to follow. It is really enjoyable and has an air of authority about it as well.