Community Message

Kia ora, and welcome to Waiheke!

We are happy you are visiting our beautiful island, to enjoy our pristine beaches and walking tracks, unique arts and crafts, and superb food and wine. We hope you meet up with people from our passionate local community, many of whom have lived here for several generations. Others have chosen to move here from all around the world, to be part of a community that treasures and carefully protects Waiheke’s natural environment.

This community sustains itself and the natural environment through thousands of hours of voluntary work put in each year by locals, who contribute to reforestation, look after injured birds, clean the beaches and care for the community. So as we welcome visitors, we also ask that you please tread lightly on our island during your visit. With fewer than 10,000 locals and more than one million visitors each year, we need your help to keep our environment and community safe and healthy.

While you enjoy your stay here, please become a ‘Waihekean’ – respect our natural and neighbourhood environments and do your part to preserve them from being damaged. Reduce, reuse and recycle, just as you would at home. Please be respectful of others on the roads and in the shops. And keep the noise down after 10pm – the person living next door might well need to be up at dawn to prepare you an amazing breakfast at a nearby café, or to get an early ferry to the city to work.

Most importantly, please minimise water use. Waiheke is a non-reticulated community, and we rely on rainwater from our roofs for drinking, cooking, washing and watering the garden. Summer droughts are normal, and every drop counts.

Waiheke Islanders are also working consciously to reduce waste, to help our environment and our oceans. We ask that you be aware of how much waste so many visitors create, and that you make and leave behind as little rubbish as possible.

As represented in local sculptor Chris Bailey’s Te Werowero sculpture at Matiatia, Waiheke will return your care and respect tenfold. If we all work together to keep the island’s beauty and unique character intact, it will continue to give visitors like you a wonderful experience for generations to come.

Mā Te Wā