Beach Road / AFWT Serie #14 Traditional Cache

THE CACHE

It is a simple but fun cache. The street is super busy, so stealth is required. The container is quite small so bring you own pen. In the GZ think in green and you will be on the right path.

SPOILER - Pull the trigger down, NOT OUT!! I already saw it laying on the floor and it is hard to fix this cache... If someone breaks it again, and you see no trigger, you will have to use your own tools, just to little sticks will do. Push the spring down twice, and release it ;)

Have fun, and never have been more appropriated to say: Happy HUNTING!!

HISTORY OF THE STREET

Have you ever wonder why do we have in Auckland a road named as Beach Road, when actually it is not facing the sea??

Do you think that Auckland, was always that big??? Well, let me tell you that the city hasn't been only just growing economically, vertically with new skyscrapers, or busting in population... The city also needed to grow in size, and the slopes of the previous shore were not enough for the inminent need of flat lands to develop a proper port and commercial area for this important bussines not in the Pacific.

Painted in Blue in the picture above we can appeciate all the land that has been reclaimed once to the sea... and look carefully... The beach road was once where it is suposse to be!! At the waterfront of the city, right below the cliffs of Te Rerenga Oraiti pa „the leap of the survivors‟, which refers to incidents when Ngati Whatua drove their foe to the end of the point and their only chance of survival was to leap into the harbour below. 

Like many great cities around the world, Auckland is a City Port, with the Port developing hand in hand with the community and regional economy it serves. In Auckland, this can be traced back to the 1300s when Maori settled in Tamaki Makaurau and the shores of the Waitemata served as a hub for people and goods for hundreds of years.

It wasn’t until the 1840s, following the European discovery of New Zealand by Abel Tasman in 1642, Captain James Cook's 1769 voyage to map the coastline of New Zealand, and some years after New Zealand had been settled by British colonials, that the Port of Auckland was officially established.

There was an urgent need to establish a suitable capital and trading centre at this time and, shortly after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in the Bay of Islands on 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson, Lieutenant Governor of the new British colony of New Zealand, chose Auckland as New Zealand’s first post-Treaty capital specifically for its potential as a port. Despite unsatisfactory wharf facilities being sited on the large tidal mudflats at Official Bay and Commercial Bay, the township quickly grew into a hub for maritime trade. In 1843, just over 3,000 people were living in Auckland, and most of them depended on the port to provide them with a living either directly or indirectly.

There was intense demand for better port facilities and over the following 20 years the Auckland Harbour Board completed substantial works and reclamations around Auckland’s foreshore. Now the old beach road is swallowed up by the new urban development, being an important transport link, and recent projects have converted it in a pedestrian heaven.

The Beach Road walking and cycling project forms an important link in Auckland’s first urban cycleway. It connects to Grafton Gully Cycleway and cycle routes on Tamaki Drive and Quay Street. Together they form a continuous, safe and convenient route for people to access the city centre by bike.