Devonport and North Head

The twelve-minute crossing

The Devonport ferry leaves from the Downtown Ferry Terminal on Quay Street and takes about twelve minutes. It runs frequently through the day and into the evening, takes an AT HOP card, and costs a fraction of any harbour cruise. It is, without much competition, the best-value thing a visitor can do in Auckland.

Sit outside on the way over for the skyline, and on the way back at dusk for the same view with the lights on. That return leg — Sky Tower, the Viaduct masts, the whole harbour going gold — is the shot everyone tries to take from the shore and cannot.

You do not need to plan anything else. The ferry lands at the bottom of Victoria Road and the village starts immediately.

The crossing itself, and what you are looking at

The twelve minutes are not dead time. Sit outside, and here is what passes.

Leaving the terminal you have the ferry building behind you — 1912, red and white, Edwardian baroque — and the container cranes of the working port to the east. Ahead and slightly right, Rangitoto fills the horizon: a low, almost perfectly symmetrical shield volcano that came out of the sea about 600 years ago and is the youngest and largest of the roughly fifty volcanoes Auckland is built on.

To the left, the Auckland Harbour Bridge crosses the Waitematā. It opened in 1959 with four lanes and was so immediately inadequate that two lanes were added to each side in 1969 — sections fabricated in Japan and craned on, which is why Aucklanders call them the Nippon clip-ons.

Off the starboard side as you approach Devonport, North Head rises with its gun emplacements just visible, and behind the village Takarunga makes the second cone. Grey ships at the naval base to the east.

Behind you the city skyline stacks up with the Sky Tower at 328 metres, the tallest freestanding structure in the southern hemisphere.

On the way back at dusk that skyline is the shot everybody tries and fails to take from the shore. Stand at the stern, on the upper deck if there is one, and wait for the lights.

Dolphins are seen in the harbour reasonably often, and orca come in to hunt rays — not common, but common enough that it is worth looking at the water rather than only the view.

The village

Devonport was settled early and never industrialised, which is why it still looks the way it does — wooden villas with cast-iron verandahs, a couple of blocks of shops, and a beach at either end. It has been a naval base since the 1840s and the navy is still there, which gives the place an oddly formal edge for a seaside town.

Victoria Road is the main street: cafes, a good bookshop, galleries, an old cinema. It takes twenty minutes to walk and most of an afternoon to do properly. Cheltenham Beach, ten minutes' walk north around the headland, is a wide sheltered swimming beach that looks straight at Rangitoto, and it is usually close to empty.

The Torpedo Bay Navy Museum sits on the waterfront between the wharf and North Head, is free, and is better than it sounds — particularly on New Zealand's naval history in the Pacific.

Why Devonport exists, and why the navy is still there

Devonport was one of the first places Europeans settled in the Auckland region, and its whole shape follows from one fact: it sits on the north side of the harbour entrance, directly opposite the town, with deep water off it.

The Royal Navy established a base here in the 1840s, and the Royal New Zealand Navy has been headquartered at Devonport ever since — HMNZS Philomel occupies a large stretch of waterfront east of the village. That is why there are grey ships in the bay, why the street names are naval, and why the suburb never industrialised: the navy owned the land that would otherwise have become wharves and factories.

The village itself was built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a ferry service made it possible to live across the water and work in town. What went up was timber villas with cast-iron lacework, a main street of two-storey shops with verandahs, and a cinema. Because there was never any pressure to redevelop, most of it is still standing, and much of it is protected.

Before any of that, the two maunga were pā sites. Takarunga and Maungauika were occupied and terraced by mana whenua over centuries, and the terracing on both is still legible in the grass. Devonport's colonial architecture sits on top of a much longer occupation, which is worth holding in mind while you are photographing the verandahs.

The practical upshot for a visitor: this is one of the few places in Auckland where you can walk through a largely intact pre-1930 townscape, and it takes twelve minutes to get to.

The Navy Museum, and the naval story

The Torpedo Bay Navy Museum sits on the waterfront between the ferry wharf and North Head, is free, and is considerably better than most visitors expect from a free service museum.

It occupies a set of restored buildings that were themselves part of the defences — the torpedo boat shed and the submarine mining establishment, built in the 1880s during the same Russian scare that produced the North Head works. The building is part of the exhibit.

What it covers: New Zealand's naval history from Māori and European maritime traditions through to the present. The strongest material is on the Second World War in the Pacific — HMNZS Achilles at the Battle of the River Plate in 1939, the first major naval action of the war and one in which a New Zealand-crewed cruiser played a central part — and on the country's post-war role, including the frigates sent to protest French nuclear testing at Mururoa in the 1970s. That last section explains a good deal about modern New Zealand's sense of itself, and it is worth reading properly.

There is a good children's section with uniforms to try on and knots to tie, and a café with one of the better outlooks in Devonport — straight across the harbour to the city.

Allow an hour, or ninety minutes if you engage with it. It fits neatly between the village and North Head, which is a five-minute walk further along the shore, and it is a useful wet-weather option if the tunnels look uninviting.

The working base next door is not open to the public, but the ships are visible from the waterfront path and the museum will tell you what is currently in.

North Head — Maungauika

North Head is the volcanic headland at the harbour entrance, and it is the reason to come rather than simply the extra.

From the 1880s, fearing a Russian attack that never came, the colonial government fortified it heavily. What is there now is a hill honeycombed with tunnels, gun emplacements, magazines and observation posts, most of them open to walk into, unstaffed and free. Take a torch. Some of the tunnels are long, dark and genuinely disorienting.

Above ground it is a Department of Conservation reserve with a summit path and a 360-degree view: the city one way, Rangitoto and the gulf the other, and the harbour entrance directly below with container ships coming through.

The maunga is administered by the Tūpuna Maunga Authority on behalf of the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau. Stay on the formed tracks, and treat it as the significant site it is.

Inside the tunnels: what you are actually walking through

North Head's fortifications are the most extensive publicly accessible military works in New Zealand, and they are worth more than a quick look.

The build-up began in the 1880s during what became known as the Russian scare — a period of colonial anxiety about Russian naval raiders in the Pacific that produced coastal defences around all four main New Zealand ports. Nothing ever came. The works were extended through both World Wars, with the Second World War adding searchlight positions and command posts.

What survives, and what to look for:

• The disappearing gun. An 8-inch breech-loader on a hydro-pneumatic mounting that dropped below the parapet to be reloaded, then rose to fire. One of very few left anywhere in the world in its original emplacement.
• The tunnel network linking magazines, engine rooms and gun positions. Some sections are lit; several are not, and are pitch dark and low. A torch is the difference between exploring and turning back. Phone lights work but drain fast.
• The observation posts on the summit, with the original range-finding slits framing the harbour entrance.
• The searchlight emplacements down at water level on the eastern side.

There is a long-running local legend that a pair of Boeing seaplanes was sealed into the tunnels in the 1920s. Multiple excavations have found nothing. Locals will still tell you about it.

Practicalities: allow an hour to ninety minutes. Wear shoes with grip — the tunnel floors are damp. Some passages are narrow and low enough to be uncomfortable if you are claustrophobic, and all of the above-ground sights work fine without going underground. Children love it; keep them close in the dark sections.

Takarunga and Maungauika as maunga

It is easy to visit both of Devonport's hills as a viewpoint and a military site respectively, and miss that they are something older and more significant than either.

Maungauika (North Head) and Takarunga (Mount Victoria) are volcanic cones from the Auckland field, and both were substantial pā — fortified settlements — occupied over centuries by mana whenua. The horizontal steps you walk across on both slopes are not landscaping. They are the terraces where houses and storage pits stood, cut into the scoria and still legible eight hundred years or more later. Takarunga has some of the clearest terracing on the North Shore.

Both maunga were taken under the Public Works Act for the colonial fortifications, and both were returned to the collective ownership of the thirteen iwi and hapū of Tāmaki Makaurau under Treaty settlement legislation in 2014. They are now administered by the Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau Authority, a co-governance body of mana whenua and Auckland Council representatives, and held in trust for the common benefit of all Aucklanders.

What that means for a visitor is straightforward:

• Stay on the formed paths. Walking across the terraces erodes archaeology that cannot be replaced.
• Do not enter craters or climb on the earthworks.
• Vehicle access to the summits has been restricted across the maunga network; expect to walk the last stretch.
• Treat them as significant sites rather than as parks with a view, because that is what they are.

Knowing this changes the North Head visit in particular. You are walking through a Victorian gun battery built on top of a pā that had already been there for centuries — two entirely different systems of defending the same harbour entrance, layered on one hill.

Mount Victoria — Takarunga

The second cone sits directly behind the village and is a ten-minute walk up from Victoria Road. It is the highest point on the North Shore, and the summit is a grassy crater rim with a view that takes in North Head, the harbour, the city and the Hauraki Gulf in one turn.

It is an easier climb than it looks and the reward is disproportionate. If you have an hour in Devonport and cannot decide between the two cones, Takarunga is quicker and North Head is more interesting.

Eating, drinking and shopping in the village

Devonport punches well above a village of its size on food, largely because it has a resident population with money and a steady flow of day visitors.

Victoria Road is the main strip and takes about ten minutes to walk end to end. Along it you will find cafés with good coffee (New Zealand's coffee standard is high and Devonport meets it), a couple of proper restaurants, a bakery, an ice-creamery that generates a queue on hot days, and a handful of pubs including one on the waterfront with harbour views.

Worth knowing:

• Brunch is the strength. Devonport does a leisurely weekend brunch particularly well, and it is the meal most day visitors should aim for.
• Evening is quieter than you might expect. Some kitchens close early, especially midweek and in winter, and the last ferries shape the trade.
• The bookshop is genuinely good — independent, well curated, and a reliable rainy-hour option.
• Galleries and antiques. Several small galleries and second-hand dealers, which suits the slow pace of the place.
• The Vic, the cinema on Victoria Road, has been operating since 1912 and is one of the oldest continuously running picture theatres in the country.

The Devonport Craft Market runs on the waterfront on set weekends, and there is a monthly farmers' market. Both are small and pleasant rather than destination events — check the dates rather than building a trip around them.

You can eat well without booking on most days, which is a relief after Waiheke.

How to spend the half day

• 10:00 — ferry from downtown.
• 10:15 — coffee on Victoria Road, wander the shops.
• 11:00 — walk up Takarunga (Mount Victoria) for the orientation view.
• 12:00 — lunch in the village.
• 1:30 — along the waterfront past Torpedo Bay to North Head. Tunnels, gun emplacements, summit.
• 3:00 — Cheltenham Beach for a swim, or back into the village.
• 4:30 — ferry back, outside, facing the city.

Take a torch, take swimwear in summer, and wear shoes you can walk hills in. There is no need for a car and nowhere convenient to park one.

Practical notes

• Ferries run from the Downtown Ferry Terminal roughly every 30 minutes through the day, more often at peak, with services into the evening and later on Friday and Saturday nights. Twelve minutes each way. AT HOP or contactless.
• Check the last sailing if you are staying for dinner, particularly on a Sunday when the timetable thins.
• Driving takes 20–30 minutes via the Harbour Bridge, longer at peak, and village parking is metered and limited. The ferry is better in almost every case.
• Buses connect Devonport to Takapuna and the wider North Shore if you want to continue rather than return.
• Accessibility. The ferry and the village are flat and step-free. North Head has a sealed road to near the summit and some accessible viewpoints, but the tunnels and several tracks are not accessible. Takarunga has a road to the top.
• What to bring: a torch, swimwear in summer, sun protection, and shoes for hills.
• Time needed: three hours minimum, half a day comfortably, a full day if you add the beaches or walk north.
• Best time: a clear day, any season. Winter afternoons here are excellent — low light on the harbour, no crowds — and the return ferry at dusk is the best view in Auckland regardless of month.

The beaches, and continuing up the shore

Devonport's beaches are calm harbour beaches — nothing like the west coast — and they are among the best easy swimming in Auckland.

• Cheltenham Beach — the main one, about ten minutes' walk north of the village around the base of North Head. Wide, sheltered, shallow at low tide, and facing straight across at Rangitoto, which makes it one of the most photographed views in the city. Usually quiet.
• Narrow Neck — a little further north, patrolled in summer, with a grass reserve and a café. Popular with families.
• Torpedo Bay — small, right by the Navy Museum, and handy for a quick dip between the village and North Head.
• Devonport Beach — immediately beside the ferry wharf. More a place to sit than to swim.

If you have a full day rather than a half, the coast keeps going. A walking and cycling route runs north from Devonport through Narrow Neck and Takapuna to Milford — about eight kilometres of mixed beach and street. The Takapuna to Milford coastal walk at the far end is the highlight: a rock-platform path that passes a fossil forest where 200,000-year-old kauri and other trees were engulfed by lava and left as moulds in the rock. It only works at low or mid tide, so check the tide chart.

Takapuna itself has a long beach, a Sunday market, and a decent restaurant strip, and it is on a bus route back to the city over the Harbour Bridge — so you can walk one way and ride back rather than retracing.

When to come

Devonport works year-round, which is not true of much else in Auckland, because the ferry runs in almost all conditions and the village is compact.

Summer (December to March) is the obvious choice: swimming at Cheltenham, long evenings, outdoor tables, and the ferry running late. It is also the busiest, particularly on weekends and over the Auckland Anniversary Regatta in late January, when the harbour fills with several hundred yachts and the crossing becomes a spectator event in itself.

Autumn (April and May) is our pick. The sea is still warm from summer, the weather has settled into its most reliable stretch, and the village is quiet.

Winter (June to August) is genuinely good here, which surprises people. Auckland's winter arrives in bands rather than settling in, and between the fronts you get bright, cold, sharp days where the harbour looks superb and the light is low. North Head's tunnels are indifferent to weather. The village cafés are warm. Bring a jacket — the wind on the water is real — and expect some kitchens to close midweek.

Spring (September to November) brings the pōhutukawa toward flowering — they peak around December, which is why they are called the New Zealand Christmas tree — and the days lengthen.

Whatever the season, check the last sailing before you commit to dinner, and take a layer. The single most common Devonport mistake is dressing for the city rather than for a boat.