Untamed Coast: Auckland's Waitakere Ranges and West Coast Beaches

In Untamed Coast Bob Harvey takes us on a personal odyssey to places he knows and loves. It is an intimate journey set in spectacular, primeval landscapes of sea-hewn rocks and black sand beaches. It is the story of the west coast between the Manukau and Kaipara harbours where sea collides with land and rainforest cloaks the hills. It is a place of powerful evolutionary and geological forces, of nature in the raw. It is about the men, women and children who live there.

Waitakere's west coast has attracted people, from the very earliest days of Maori settlement a thousand years ago. Bob Harvey writes of the people of the coast with vitality and respect. There are tales of courage, or tragedy, of greed and war. These are stories of the pioneers, of Maori and later paheka who came to the coast. Some sought to tame it but most learned to live with its power and respect its spirit.

The sea is the omnipresent setting for many of the descriptions of human activity in this part of New Zealand. There are a surprising number of shipwrecks, with hundreds of lives lost. As befitting an old surfer, there are swimming tragedies too, in which the author's knowledge of the sea and awareness of its dangers are apparent.

Bob also takes us to the secret places he has discovered during his lifetime of exploring the coast. His evocative descriptions are personal; his love of these places is clear.

The narrative is enlivened and illustrated by Ted Scott's photographs and others from historical collections. These images capture the characters, the landscapes and the drama of the coast and add a fascinating dimension in the text.

This book is written by a true raconteur, one whose nostalgia for a New Zealand of the past comes alive in these pages. It will appeal to all who love these places and should strengthen our determination to keep it forever the untamed coast.

Bob Harvey, born and educated in Auckland, spent his life building and running one of New Zealand's largest advertising agencies, which he sold in 1991. Since then he has been Mayor of Waitakere City. In 1998, on behalf of the city, he was awarded the UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize in Stockholm for the Asia Pacific region. He spends every spare moment with his family at Karekare on Auckland's west coast, running the coastal tracks and swimming.