Puketutu Island

Puketutu Island
File:Puketutu Island Near Mangere Bridge.jpg The island today, from Mangere Mountain
Highest point
Elevation
Coordinates
Geography
Location	North Island, New Zealand
Geology
Volcanic arc/belt	Auckland volcanic field

Puketutu Island is a volcanic island in the Manukau Harbour, New Zealand, and is part of the Auckland volcanic field. European settlers called it Weekes' Island, but this was eventually abandoned in favour of the historical Māori name.

In the 1950s, several of its scoria cones were heavily quarried for fill to extend Auckland Airport nearby. The island's highest point, 65 m high Pinnacle Hill, was retained. The charitable trust now owning the forested island has proposed a scheme whereby biosolids from the nearby Mangere wastewater treatment plant (which surrounds the island, covering 600 ha on the landward sides, and served around 600,000 people in the 1990s) could be used to reshape the older form of the island. While the process could take up to 35 years, the final goal is envisaged as becoming a park for the Auckland Region.

The island was also used as the site for several pā (Māori earth fortifications usually guarding a settlement or important site) throughout the last centuries, though these were deserted by the time of the arrival of European colonists in the area.

• Puketutu Island Or Week's Island.jpg

  Puketutu Island (then called 'Weekes' Island') in the 1910s, before it lost most of its cones to quarrying.

• Pinnacle Hill on Puketutu Island.JPG

  Puketutu Island's Pinnacle Hill, with a waka or canoe in the foreground.

See also

• List of islands of New Zealand
• New Zealand outlying islands

References

• City of Volcanoes: A geology of Auckland - Searle, Ernest J.; revised by Mayhill, R.D.; Longman Paul, 1981. First published 1964. ISBN 0-582-71784-1.