Awanui

Awanui is a river port about 7km north of Kaitaia in the Far North district in the Northland region in the North Island of New Zealand. The village lies at the base of the Aupouri Peninsula. The Awanui River flows through the city north to the Bay Rangaunu. In the 1920s, kauri and Kauriharz from Kaitaia on Awanui was brought to the coast. State Highway 10 branches off from State Highway 1 in Awanui. Waiharara is 16km north-west, about 6km north-east and Kaingaroa Kaitaia is located 8km south. In the 2006 census the town had 351 inhabitants, a decrease of 188 since 2001.

Beginning in 1868 Subritzky John Anton sold his family’s shares in Maldon in Australia and took the Barkentine Prince Alfred to New Zealand. They arrived in Auckland harbor and went with a family-owned schooner Houhora and Mount Camel Station, a very large estate, where his older brothers and Captain Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolph belonged.

In a short time almost the entire north of the country from Awanui was owned or controlled by the Subritzky family. The place was built by Awanui and the wider family circle, to which both Pakeha and Maori were part. The hub of the business of the family was the Mount Camel Station.

A major influence was on the extreme north of New Zealand over the next 50 years through importing cattle and developing their own breed of Shorthorn cattle. They set up a shipping link with Auckland and transported many of the early pioneer families in the north.

The Subritzky’s prepared flax mills and started the fibers for the sale and export. Then came the days of the Gum Digger and the rest of the 1800s and well into the 20th Century the prosperity of trade in Kauriharz in Northland was contributed to. The sinking of the steamer Elingamite on 5th November 1902 in the city played a role, because here, three of the victims were buried.