The Western Reclamation

Western Reclamation

The Wynyard Quarter is a reclaimed piece of land on the Waitemata Harbour at the western edge of the Auckland waterfront, New Zealand....

 in Auckland City is also sometimes called 'Tank Farm'.

Tank Farm (sometimes Tuff Crater) is the name of a volcanic explosion crater (or maar

Maar

A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater that is caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption, an explosion caused by groundwater coming into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake. The name comes from the local Moselle...

) in North Shore City, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, near the approaches to the Auckland Harbour Bridge

Auckland Harbour Bridge

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is an eight-lane box truss motorway bridge over the Waitemata Harbour, joining St Marys Bay in Auckland with Northcote in North Shore City, New Zealand. The bridge is part of State Highway 1 and the Auckland Northern Motorway...

.

Its Maori name is Te Kopua o Matakamokamo, meaning 'the basin of Matakamokamo'. Matakamokamo is an ancestral figure in Maori oral tradition who, during a domestic argument, is said to have inadvertently cursed the goddess of fire, Mahuika. As punishment, the goddess called on the parent god Mataoho, who had the necessary powers, to send up numerous volcanic eruptions to plague the hot-tempered man and his wife Matakerepo. The two eruptions that were eventually fatal to the couple were said to be at the sites of what is now called Tank Farm and Onepoto Domain

Onepoto (volcanic crater)

Onepoto is the name of a volcanic explosion crater in North Shore City, New Zealand. It is a part of the Auckland volcanic field.Located near the approaches to the Auckland Harbour Bridge, it was created by a series of eruptions approximately 250,000 years ago...

 respectively. Consequently, the former was named Te Kopua o Matakamokamo, and the latter Te Kopua o Matakerepo.

Part of the Auckland volcanic field

Auckland Volcanic Field

The Auckland volcanic field is a monogenetic volcanic field in the North Island of New Zealand. Basaltic in nature, it underlies much of the metropolitan area of Auckland....

, it was created by a series of explosive eruptions. Although its age is unknown it could be one of the older voclanoes in Auckland like its neighbours Onepoto and Lake Pupuke. Originally a freshwater lake, it later became a tidal lagoon

Lagoon

A lagoon is a body of shallow sea water or brackish water separated from the sea by some form of barrier. The EU's habitat directive defines lagoons as "expanses of shallow coastal salt water, of varying salinity or water volume, wholly or partially separated from the sea by sand banks or shingle,...

s when the sea levels rose after the last ice age

Ice age

An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...

. Tank Farm is mostly in its natural state, though some parts of the tuff ring were quarried and its name stems from the petrochemical

Petrochemical

Petrochemicals are chemical products derived from petroleum. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sources such as corn or sugar cane....

s storage tanks located here during World War II.

The local council uses the name Tuff Crater for this volcano - a name taken from Hochstetter's (1864) map of the volcanoes of Auckland where a number of volcanoes, including Tank Farm, were each labelled "tuff crater" or "tuff craters".