Manukau Heads Lighthouse

About

The lighthouse stands above the entrance to the Manukau Harbour at the tip of the Āwhitu Peninsula, and it is run by a volunteer trust rather than a council or a company. You can climb it. A hundred and twenty-five steps up the tower and twenty-three more inside to a three hundred and sixty degree view over the harbour mouth and out to the Tasman. It holds the original third order dioptric lens fitted in 1929, which is the only one in New Zealand the public can get to. The original 1874 light was dismantled and this reconstruction was dedicated in 2006. The site also remembers the wreck of HMS Orpheus on the Manukau bar in 1863, which killed a hundred and eighty-nine people and remains New Zealand's worst maritime disaster.