Mākara Beach,
previously spelled Makara Beach, is a suburb of
Wellington
Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...
, New Zealand, consisting of a small seaside village and its surrounding countryside. The
Wellington City Council
Wellington City Council is a Territorial authorities of New Zealand, territorial authority in New Zealand, governing the city of Wellington, the country's capital city and List of cities in New Zealand#City councils, third-largest city by popul ...
regards it as a separate suburb to
Mākara
Mākara is a locality located at the western edge of Wellington, New Zealand, close to the shore of the Tasman Sea. The suburb is named after the Mākara Stream (''mā'' is Māori for white, ''kara'' is a kind of greywacke stone).
The Wellingt ...
.
Features
Mākara Beach is a seaside village, 20 minutes drive from the suburb of Karori.
It has a parking area for beach visitors.
The beach is suitable for fishing and diving, and is a designated off-lead dog exercise area.
The suburb is accessed through Makara Road, which enters the suburb in the south and continues north alongside Makara Stream until it reaches the coast at Ohariu Bay. This is the main bay of the suburb; the suburb also includes Warehou Bay and Smiths Bay.
Makara Stream's estuary is described by Wellington City Council as "an important native ecosystem and is gradually being restored by the Makaracarpas, a local environmental group."
The Makara Foreshore Reserve was once an area of sand dunes. In 1942, these dunes were bulldozed based on fears that invading Japanese could hide in them. Rare plants are gradually re-establishing themselves in the area.
There is a 7 km walkway, managed by the
Department of Conservation, that starts from the village. It follows the beach and goes through farmland up to historic gun emplacements.
History
Mākara Beach had a resident community of fishermen in the 19th and 20th century, using solid clinker-built dinghies. Fisherman Leopold Haupois, known as ''French Louis,'' had arrived from Normandy in France in 1875; in the 1930s Lady Bledisloe the wife of the Governor-General used to visit ''French Louis'' to practise her French conversation.
Throughout the mid 1980s, the village was used as the fictional town Kaihoro in
Peter Jackson’s 1987 film
Bad Taste.
Mākara Beach was hit by
Cyclone Gita in 2018. Homes were flooded and property was destroyed. The following year, a plan was announced to protect the village from future weather events due to
climate change
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...
. The plan's recommendations included raising the beach's crest level, constructing a sea wall, clearing gravel from the stream's mouth, and reinforcing its bank.
During the national COVID lockdown in April 2020, residents erected a barricade and signs to keep visitors from the rest of Wellington out. While one resident said, "All we're doing is what the police are doing...telling people to go home", a lawyer told media that the public could not block roads and this could be a criminal offence.
Flooding in 2021 damaged a road that leads to Mākara Beach. It was estimated that repairs would cost NZD 1.5 million. This route to the suburb was closed for several weeks.
Demographics
Mākara is part of the
Mākara-Ohariu statistical area.
External links
*
References
{{coord, 41, 13, 15, S, 174, 42, 50, E, display=title, region:NZ_type:city
Suburbs of Wellington City
Bays of the Wellington Region
Beaches of the Wellington Region