Visit our mountain, learn about geology, Māori lifeways and explore our heritage gardens and visitor centre. Your hosts are mana whenua - local people

Almost everywhere you look on the Mangere Mountain there are humps, hollows and terraces - tell-tale signs of those who have lived here before. Six small sculptures cast in iron or carved from stone have been placed around the mountain. These give you some clues about how the land was used.

The landmarker mimics the cluster of Maori garden mounds just above it. Early on, Maori discovered that raising plants off the ground and using stones as soil warmers extended the growing season by up to six weeks.

The three piles of vegetables in this area represent the kumara, taro, and potato (introduced later), which were kept in these deep cellar-like pits. The pits had roofs which helped keep the food dry and at stable temperatures.

This sculpture depicts the key features of a family housing terrace. There is a whare - for sleeping, a cooking area with stacked hangi stones, a rack for drying fish, a covered storage pit for the kumara harvest, and a pile of palisade posts ready for installation.

Maori carved this volcano to make a pa, a defended place to keep people safe. Moat-like trenches and fence-like palisades were made to deter attackers. A profile of these defences has been incised into a boulder near an old defensive ditch.

The diet of those who lived here hundreds of years ago was diverse. The landmarker depicts over 20 different foods sourced from the sea, rivers and forests. Above the landmarker is a midden, the remains of meals eaten many moons ago.

So that each family group had access to resources from mountain top to sea, land was divided into pie-shaped wedges marked by stone walls. The landmarker shows how this may have looked from a bird's-eye view.