Kawau Island - History

History

Kawau, though providing little arable land, was well-favoured by Māori for its beautiful surrounding waters, with battles over the island common from the 17th century on.

Copper was mined on the island after discovery in the 1842, in the first years of European ownership. With imported miners and their families from Wales and Cornwall, the mining settlement finally reached a maximum of around 300 people, before problems with shipping and mine flooding (despite the construction of a pumphouse) closed the mine again in 1855. In 1844/45 the island produced about 7,000 pounds of copper which was about 1/3 of Auckland's exports for that year. The island was bought a few years later by Sir George Grey, Governor of New Zealand, in 1862 as a private retreat. Grey extended the original copper mine manager's house (built 1845) to create the Mansion House, which still stands, and made the surrounding land into a botanical and zoological park, importing many plants and animals. The house changed hands several times after Grey, and decayed increasingly, but has been restored and furnished in the period of Governor Grey and is now in public ownership in the Kawau Island Historic Reserve, administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The reserve is public land and covers 10% of the Island, and includes the old copper mine, believed to be the site of New Zealand's first underground metalliferous mining venture (1844).

The island is home to kiwi and two thirds of the entire population of North Island weka. Among the animals that Grey introduced were five species of wallabies. Three of the six introduced wallaby species remain and do considerable damage to the native vegetation, thus harming the habitat for these flightless birds and other native fauna. The wallabies destroy all emerging seedlings which means that the present native trees are the last generation. The usual understorey forest species are absent due to wallaby browsing and in many cases the ground is bare. Possums, also introduced by Grey, destroy mature native trees. The result has been a considerable loss of biodiversity, with bird numbers plummeting due to loss of both food supply and habitat. Even the surrounding marine environment has been severely compromised by silt carried from the bare ground by rainwater.

Grey's wallaby introduction however had some minor indirect benefit in the early 2000s, when species from the island were introduced into Australia's Innes National Park to boost genetic diversity.