Tamaki, New Zealand
Tamaki is a suburb of the city of
Auckland, in the
North Island of
New Zealand. It is located in the east of the city, 11 kilometres from the city centre, by the banks of the
estuarial Tamaki River, which is a southern arm of the
Hauraki Gulf. The suburb is between the suburbs of Point England to the north and
Panmure to the south.
Tamaki is under the local governance of the
Auckland City Council.
According to the 2001 census, Tamaki has a population of 4263.
Tamaki is Currently Represented in Parliament By Allan Peachey of The National Party.
To the west of the suburb is
Mount Wellington, a 137-metre
volcanic peak which is part of the
Auckland Volcanic Field, and which was formed by an eruption around 9,000 years ago.
For many years, Tamaki's most famous resident was the somewhat volcanic
Prime Minister of New Zealand Robert Muldoon, who was Member of Parliament for the Tamaki
electorate (which included parts of several adjoining suburbs, mostly north and north-west) from
1960 until
1991.
By a quirk of geographical naming, the suburb of
East Tamaki is located several kilometres to the south of Tamaki.
The name
Tamaki is of contested origin. It is an ancient
Polynesian word for
battle; it can also mean
full of people, i.e., heavily populated - an ironic possibility given that the Maori name of the heavily populated Auckland isthmus in
Maori is
Tamaki-makau-rau. A third possible origin of the names is
Ta-Maki, meaning
successful attack by Maki, which was the name of a local tribal chief.
The name has become a surname. See, for example,
Brian Tamaki of the
Destiny Church.
