Albert Park

HIDDEN CULTURE OF CENTRAL AUCKLAND - WALK - TALK AND MORNING TEA

By Celia Walker

The grand old trees and ornamental gardens of Albert Park rub shoulders with the University of Auckland, Auckland Art Gallery, AUT and the edge of the central business district, creating a mingling of users and uses. Setting this land aside as a reserve in the 1870s and its development as a park from the 1880s was an act of foresight for a city that is otherwise fairly bereft of green space.

The land that has become the park has a complex history of occupation and defensive use, with much of its former life hidden beneath its manicured overlay, and little to show in the way of signage or story-telling. The area was part of a complex of intensive Maori occupation until 1840, reaching across to Symonds Street and into Grafton Gully.

The Rangipuke papakainga was the main village, with the defended Te Horotiu Pa at the park’s north-western end. Maori would have also made use of the now-buried Waihorotiu stream that flowed down into Queen Street and its adjacent swamp in the area of Aotea Square. Colonial occupation of the site from 1845 was military in nature, with a garrison of 900 troops and an extensive barracks complex. Only a hint remains of the 9-hectares that comprised the Albert Barracks, with a fragment of the barracks wall preserved in the nearby University of Auckland grounds.

Like many of the higher points around Auckland, there are traces from several periods of military activity. Two large guns remain from the time of fears of a Russian invasion in the 1880s, and a network of tunnels that were excavated in World War Two lie beneath the park. A Boer War memorial finishes off these military links, and sits in an area of the park that is also home to the imposing monument to Queen Victoria (1899), and a giant rendering of Sir George Grey.

The central fountain forms the core of the formal structure of the gardens, itself a confectionery of ironwork that was imported from England in 1881. More recent, though now showing their age a little, are Neil Dawson’s sculpture Throwback, from 1988, a piece of fallen architecture that has caught a hint of the sky, and Chris Booth’s massive Gateway of stacked stones at the Victoria Street entrance to the park.

Although the sculptures and fountain are all monumental in scale, the mature trees are what really make Albert Park exceptional. There are some truly enormous specimens of Moreton Bay fig, pohutukawa and other rarer trees, many planted in the 1880s. They have been allowed to make their own way in places, with branches stretching across the path, and roots diverting paths off course, a semi-wild feeling prevailing with the trees and less manicured groundcover on the western slopes that lead down towards Queen Street.

The nearby remnants of one of Auckland’s earliest volcanic eruptions are known as the Albert Park volcano, however the main eruption cone was adjacent to the park itself in the area below Bowen Avenue where the Metropolis building is.
The landscaping and stairways of Freyberg Place hint at these now-buried lava flows.

HIDDEN CULTURE OF CENTRAL AUCKLAND - WALK - TALK AND MORNING TEA

Image Credits: Celia WalkerThrowback Neil Dawson