1965: Liesure Island
March 11, 2022
By AHNZ
‘Leisure Island’ was established at Mt Maunganui in 1965 on Moturiki Island. It was officially opened on 12 November, 1966 Marineland¹. Latter (1981) named Mt Maunganui Marineland. There were swimming pools, bumper boats and water slides. It was home to a zoo of sea animals: seals and dolphins and penguins.
Moturiki had otherwise been an abandoned rock quarry and even further back in the dim darks an abandoned Maori fort.
Marineland was closed down in 1990 for various Statist explanations. The chief reason an Anarchist would allege is that the operation wasn’t lining the right politicians’ pockets. The procedural reasons would be the old ‘health and safety’ gimmick. Then, there’s the post-80s urge to surrender property to Maori interests.
“Senior supervisor at Marineland, Regan Beckett, agreed that marine mammals such as fur seals found injured or sick in the wild will probably have to be put down or left to die following the closure of the park…Mr Beckett said the closure of Marineland was a result of an edict from the Department of Conservation that there would be no indigenous marine mammals in captivity by 2015.” – Marineland’s closure blow for sea life – critics, RNZ (2015)
“On Moturiki Island on the foreshore of Mount Maunganui Ocean Beach is Marineland, home of the largest display of marine mammals in the Southern Hemisphere. Here can be seen dolphins leaping from the water to win a fish from their trainers, a hand-fed man-eating leo pard seal, a pair of baby sea elephants, and performing seals, sea lions, and monkeys.” – park promotional material shared by Brad Gordon in 2019
“An attempt to turn the clock back on Mount Maunganui’s Moturiki Island failed to gain any traction with the Tauranga City Council today. A water fun park was proposed for Moturiki, also known as Leisure Island from the days when it was home to marine mammal and other visitor attractions. Tauranga resident Catherine Hunt organised a petition that gathered 1688 signatures supporting her idea. However the council unanimously agreed not to support the petition” – Leisure Island ‘fun park’ plans before council, Bay of Plenty Times, NZ Herald (2015)
“Mrs Hunt grew up in Mount Maunganui and said coming home from Australia after 30 years she realised there was “nothing here”.” – Support for water park despite setback – special report, Bay of Plenty Times, NZ Herald (2015)
“In 1964 a Tauranga entrepreneur put forward the idea to create a large outdoor aquarium on the old quarry site on Moturiki Island. In 1965/66 drilling took place on the old quarry floor, explosives were set and detonated. When the loose material had been excavated there remained a large open shape. This was filled and stocked with dolphins and other marine life and Marineland was established. it was very popular at first but gradually patronage began to decline,..” – Marineland, Moturiki (Leisure Island,) Tauranga Historical Society (2014)
Also, there’s the Department of Conservation ethic of putting everything ‘indigenous’ in welfare.
Just as the National Library purges non-indigenous books, or Auckland government purges non-indigenous trees, DOC purges non-indigenous animals and jealously guards contact with indigenous animals to itself alone. The same was also applied to Napier’s older Marineland which lasted a bit longer before also being shut down for Statist reasons.
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1 Ref. Tauranga 1882-1982, A.C. Bellamy (1982)
Image ref. Mark Baz Ryan, NZ Old Skool, Facebook (2019)
Image ref. Bay of Plenty Times, NZ Herald (2015)
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