Waioteao Motions Creek must be one of the most abused creek in central Auckland. Most of its upper reaches in Arch Hill Gully have been piped under the northwestern motorway. It is heavily channelled around Western Springs Lakeside Park and through Auckland Zoo, then makes it s way to the sea around the edge of the landfill that is now Seddon Fields.
From 1846 to xx the current site of Auckland Zoo was the location of William Low and Joseph Motion’s flour mill, built at the tidal limit of Motions Creek. The stream powered a water wheel which ground wheat grown largely in around the mill. At high tide, cutters from the Port of Auckland could be manoeuvred through the mangroves to a wharf for loading flour. As land transport improved, Old Mill Road connected the mill site with the Surrey Crescent ridge. Willima Motoin sold the land in 1870 but it wasn’t transformed into Auckland Zoo until 1923.
The lowest stretch of Waiateao runs through Jaggers Bush, named for the tannery, fellmongery and wool-scour that Frank Jagger and William Parker ran in the 1880s and 1890s. The business continued until the early 1930s, by which time the area had become a city dump and a spot for disposing of night soil.
Over the last century, the landfill that once covered the areas has been capped and Jaggers Bush is now peaceful spot with good bird life, but the legacy of the regions industrial past still affects the restoration attempts.