Point Howard (Ngaumatau), New Zealand.

A great sense of accomplishment for finally completing a Wikipedia article on where I grew up. Ngaumatau – Point Howard is a suburb on the Eastern side of Te Whanganui a Tara - Wellington Harbour, New Zealand. (full article on Wikipedia)

Ngaumatau – Point Howard is a headland and bay situated near the swamp land around Waiwhetū and the estuary of Te Awakairangi – Hutt River. It is the first of a series of bays on the eastern side of Te Whanganui a Tara - Wellington Harbour which wind their way to the Pencarrow headland. Maori legends and oral history record the hills in this area being clad in rare New Zealand beech forest which reached down to the shoreline.?

The first Europeans to visit the Bays were probably whalers and traders but European colonisation of Ngaumatau – Point Howard began with the 1826 survey of Te Whanganui a Tara - Wellington Harbour by Captain James Herd on board the ship Rosanna. This was followed by Colonel William Wakefield and the New Zealand Company's choice of the harbour for their first settlement and the arrival of the first settlers in 1839, on board the ship Tory. Captain Chaffers named the headland next to Lowry Bay, Point Howard, after Philip Howard, a member of the New Zealand Committee Association. Point Howard was originally part of Lowry Bay but remained undeveloped by Europeans for most of the nineteenth century.

An expansion of industrial sites at Seaview on the northern approach to Ngaumatau – Point Howard in the 1920s led to major developments for the suburb. After Seaview was identified as a site for the storage of oil the Texas Oil Company (Texaco and later Caltex) bought five acres in 1929 and built oil storage tanks.

Geoff Barker, 2022.