Hinuera

Hinuera Stone, or Ongatiti Ignimbrite,[4] is a Late Pleistocene,[5] light-brown rock containing angular fragments of pumice in a fine-grained ash matrix.[6] It has been quarried since at least 1893,[7] though not on the present scale until 1954,[4] and is sold as Hinuera Stone for cladding and other decorative uses.[8] The stone is soft enough to be quarried by cutting with saws.[9] One of the first houses built with Hinuera stone was the Bishop's House in Ponsonby in 1893.[10]

The Hinuera Gap, a geological feature stretching west and southwest from the locality towards Piarere, was in prehistoric times the path of the Waikato River, which had its outlet in the Firth of Thames. The river's course was altered to its current outflow by the massive Oruanui eruption about 26,500 years ago.[11] A remnant river, the Waitoa River, now flows through the gap, with its source lying less than one kilometre from the Waikato River, close to the junctions of SH1 and SH29.[12] The route of the latter of these roads takes it through the Hinuera Gap.

Hinuera's area unit had these census results -[13]

Hinuera was a flag station[14] off Hinuera Rd,[15] on the Kinleith Branch, from 8 March 1886. The station was renamed from Mangawhara to Hinuera on 1 April 1897. It was used as a transfer point during construction of Horahora power station in 1911,[16] for additional turbines in the 1920s.[17] The station became staffed[1] and expanded to 3 tracks in 1919.[18] It closed to passengers on 12 November 1968 and to freight on 29 March 1981.[19]

Hinuera School is a co-educational state primary school for Year 1 to 6 students,[20][21] with a roll of 158 as of March 2020.[22]

The area's first official school, Mangawhara School, opened in 1908,[23] though the Education Board had a lease of a railway cottage from 1893.[24]

• James Cotter, MLC was from Hinuera

• 2014 view of old butter factory