The following information is based on the Statement of Evidence by Susan Evelyn Bulmer prepared in relation to 'In the Matter of the Town and Country' Planning Act 1977 on 19 July 1990, that was appended to HP290/1991 considered by the Maori Heritage Committee 24 October 1991.

Please note: NZHPT does not normally use the double 'a' or double 'u' that some people use when spelling Maori words, but the following report by S E Bulmer does and we have left it as is.

HISTORY OF MATUKURUA:
The proposed stonefield reserve consists of the last remaining segment of about 45 ha in the Matukurua volcanic fields. The area is south and west of McLaughlin's Mountain in Manukau City, a roughly triangular segment running from the base of the former cone. The fields were formerly about 500 ha in extent, surrounding Wiri and McLaughlin's Mountains, both of which supported terraced cone paa.

(N.B. This account has been prepared from published sources and has not yet been checked by Tangata whenua).

Matukurua ('the two bitterns' - Graham 1980:18) is the collective name for the two paa on the cones there, Matukutuureia (McLaughlin's Mount) and Matukutuururu (Wiri Mount). The traditional names come from George Graham, who recorded a text about the paa and the people who lived there (Graham 1925). The other name used to refer to these settlements is Puhinui ('the large eel' or the large plumes), the name of the streamlet partly encircling the fields.

From archaeological evidence, the settlement of Matukurua began at least by AD 1200 (Sullivan 1975), but probably much earlier. The volcanic lands and climate of Taamaki were among the best in the land. Some Maaori histories relating to the sites date to the 17th and 18th centuries, on genealogical grounds. A Tainui (Waikato) ancestor, Te Ata i Rehia, was a daughter of Huatau, a Waiohua chief of Matukutuureia paa in the 17th century (Graham 1925). The two paa were attacked by Kawharu, a chief of the Ngaati Whaatua of Kaipara, in about 1750 (Graham 1912). Takawai, a woman of Otaahuhu in the 17th century, married Huarangi, a chief of Puhinui (the name of the stream on the western and southern sides of the field), (Graham 1925:6). The Te Akitai people lived at Wiri (Matukurua), as well as at Puukaki and Otaahuhu in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Matukurua was probably unoccupied in the early 19th century, when Taamaki was generally vacated about 1820 in the path of musket raids from the north. Although the people returned to Auckland about 1835, apparently Matukurua was vacant at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and the land was sold as part of the Clendon Block in 1842, and re-sold to T.M. McLaughlin in 1845. Thereafter the land was used mainly for pastoral farming, and because its abundance of rocks prevented ploughing, the archaeological features are in a relatively good state of preservation.

Quarrying in the Matukurua field began on the eastern side, along the railway line, as early as the 1870s, although large scale quarrying at the McLaughlin's property, which included the proposed reserve area, only began in the 1960s. Six different quarries have destroyed all but 10% of the original fields. The proposed reserve area also includes the coastal peninsula, as well as a portion of Downers quarry, both of which are still used for pasture.