Westfield is a suburb of

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, New Zealand For many years the

abattoir A slaughterhouse, also called abattoir (), is a facility where animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a packaging facility. Slaughterhouses that produce meat that is no ...

s located here were discharging large amounts of untreated waste into

Manukau Harbour The Manukau Harbour is the second largest natural harbour in New Zealand by area. It is located to the southwest of the Auckland isthmus, and opens out into the Tasman Sea. Geography The harbour mouth is between the northern head ("Burne ...

. This had a detrimental effect on the ecology of the harbor, which at the turn of the 20th century had been a popular and attractive place to swim, sail, fish and gather shell fish. For most of the middle of the 20th century it was a health hazard and its shell-fish a probable source of food poisoning. Since the freezing works disappeared the water quality has improved greatly. There is a large railway marshalling yard located beside the Manukau Harbour.

Portage Road Portage or portaging (Canada: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a ...

is the location of Te Tō Waka, one of the overland routes between the two harbours (and thus the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

and the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea (Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abe ...

), where the Māori would beach their waka (canoes) and drag them overland to the other coast, thus avoiding having to paddle around North Cape. This made the area of immense strategic importance in both pre-European times and during the early years of European occupation.

History

At one point during World War II there were plans to create a canal between the two harbours; this was not constructed but a canal reserve remains in place between the Tamaki River and Manukau Harbour, midway between the Westfield and Otahuhu railway stations. This was once the site of the

Westfield Freezing Works The Westfield Freezing Works was a large meat processing facility in the Auckland suburb of Westfield, New Zealand. The site was established by Auckland's Hellaby family in 1908. Generations of families worked at Westfield, but economic reforms i ...

, part of a large industrial zone located near the

North Island Main Trunk The North Island Main Trunk (NIMT) is the main railway line in the North Island of New Zealand, connecting the capital city Wellington with the country's largest city, Auckland. The line is long, built to the New Zealand rail gauge of and ser ...

railway at this point. The buildings were decommissioned during the 1980s and 1990s, releasing large areas of land to be redeveloped as office parks. Westfield was also the location of

Kempthorne Prosser Kempthorne Prosser & Co. Ltd, also known as the New Zealand Drug Company Ltd, was the leading drug and fertiliser manufacturer in New Zealand from 1869 until 1978. The company's full name was Kempthorne Prosser & Co.'s New Zealand Drug Co. Ltd, es ...

Limited's large Westfield Chemical Fertiliser Works which operated from 1887 to 1966. The works were demolished in the 1970s. In March 2017,

Westfield Railway Station Westfield railway station was a station of the Auckland railway network in New Zealand. The station closed to all services on 12 March 2017, following an announcement by Auckland Transport on 17 January 2017, because fewer than 330 passenger ...

was permanently closed due to low patronage.

Auckland Transport Auckland Transport (AT) is the council-controlled organisation (CCO) of Auckland Council responsible for transport projects and services. It was established by section 38 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009, and operates under ...

announced it would have required a costly upgrade in order to keep it in operation.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Photographs of Westfield
held in Auckland Libraries' heritage collections. Suburbs of Auckland Populated places around the Manukau Harbour Populated places on the Tāmaki River