Te Pou Hawaiki

This parking garage at the University of Auckland’s Epsom campus is on top of what used to be a volcano known as Te Pou Hawaiki. That means Pillar of Hawaiki, Hawaiki is the ancestral homeland the Maori came from… but despite the similar name nobody thinks it’s the same islands we call Hawaii.

According to the field guide, it was the second smallest of all the volcanoes in the city before it was quarried out to become a World War II bunker, and then was used as the civil defense headquarters up until the 1970s.

It is just down the road from the Epsom Bowling Club, which is where we have band practice on Tuesday nights. The bowling greens are surrounded by lava rock retaining walls, which I suppose could have been quarried from this little fella next-door.