Up Mangere Mountain

What is it with mountains? With rivers, islands and most geographical features the name comes first i.e. Cook River, Cook Islands, Cook Strait etc. But with mountains, the ‘Mt’ bit comes first i.e. Mt Cook. Why isn’t it Cook Mountain? Who decided these things? Was there a committee? You probably hadn’t thought about this so I’m worrying about it for you. In the middle of Mangere suburb is Mangere Mountain. Not Mt Mangere but Mangere Mountain. It sounds bigger and more significant, with some mystery and mana. It has craters and fortifications. It’s out there on its own, detached from Mt Eden and One Tree Hill. Mangere Mountain can be seen from miles around and you can see everywhere from it. I like the sound of Mangere Mountain. It’s the sort of mountain you’d imagine having its own gods and things.

Best of all, there’s no road up it for buses and taxis and cars. There’s not even an obvious walking track. You have to circle around it until you work out where to go. And that’s what we did Thursday 1 March. We walked over from Ambury Park, and walked up Mangere Mountain. It was a windy day. As we sat on the top (when we found the top) we tried to shelter and work out what we could see. For once we’d remembered the binoculars so that helped. And our 2009 AA Auckland street map helped – mountains don’t change as much as motorways.

Something mysterious did happen that day. We disappeared into a black hole. At least Telecom thought we did. The day before we had a plan for our mobile broadband T-stick modem thing. And the day after we had one as well. But on 1 March Telecom denied that we and our plan existed. They haven’t been able to explain since what happened but I note that it was the day we climbed Mangere Mountain.

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