Our five a day

The first sense I get of Auckland's turbulent volcanic past is on Saturday when Amanda and her partner Steven decide to take me on a crater 'run'. There are over 50 in the Auckland area, though some are more obvious and some are not complete craters. It's a warm, sunny day so we head first to Devonport, on the north shore of the Auckland harbour, which is home to two craters. Devonport is one of those great little neighbourhoods that seem to produce no end of bakery-cafes, bookshops and funky retro stores. 
We have blasts of sunshine that, by a meteorological fluke, accompany each volcano visit. Here's team Eason-Blackburn on top of Mount Victoria with the city's CBD in the background and covetable corners of Twenties and Thirties housing beneath the hill.
And here's me on Mount Victoria with the gently sloping, perfectly spherical volcano, Rangitoto, in the background. The entire island is covered in scratchy scoria, not a surface you'd want  to slip on.
We nip on to North Head and its crater where we catch a couple having wedding photos taken, and I spot another couple sat in the back of their camper van smoking weed and watching the sunshine interact with an approaching storm. Man. 

North Head is famous for its military encampment set up during World War 2 and the inside of the hill is latticed with tunnels you can explore with a torch. We go as far as we dare by the light of my mobile phone and Anouk and I sing a song that echoes around in the dark.
Then there are the two most famous craters, One Tree Hill, below, which had its sacred totara tree vandalised and now it's None Tree Hill (or as Anouk calls it, One Pee Hill, after the time she was caught short on its slopes. A girl who can pun that cleverly at six is sure to go far). 
There's a lovely story around this one, though, as the land was gifted for a park by a Scotsman, John Logan Campbell, who arrived from Edinburgh with hardly a penny but went on to become mayor (he is often referred to as the 'father of Auckland'). His first house in the city has been moved here, Acacia Cottage, and there's a smart cafe in a Twenties building serving afternoon teas. There's also a great movie in the visitor centre next door that gives an impression of what One Tree Hill looked like when it was settled by Maori with a population of around 5,000. 
Mount Eden is next and we drive through the neighbourhood's elegant streets to reach this one, a huge inverted cone-shaped crater with a ringside view of the CBD. Amanda points out the depressions that would have been Kumera (sweet potato, staple of the Maori) pits, for storing supplies to keep them going through the winter.

We finish in the rain with a slightly more unkempt volcano. This one is Amanda, Steven and Anouk's local, Mount Albert, named after Queen Victoria's husband. 

So we've travelled from Victoria to Albert and succeeded in our quest to climb five craters in a day. There's nothing for it but to go to the family's favourite Chinese and order celebratory dumplings. Yum.