Long Bay Regional Park (Te Oneroa ō Kahu)
Kids & familyBeach Road, Long Bay, Auckland 0792
Clifftop walking trails plus swimming & kite flying in a beach park with BBQ & picnic sites.
Spending our whole lives in Tāmaki Makaurau,we've come to appreciate the great parks in our beautiful city, and wanted to share our knowledge and general information to help others: whether the playground is fenced, the parking is a mission, if there are toilets.. a general hub to help you find a good park.
Prams and access, scenery, toilets and water, parking, safety. These five decide whether a visit works, whoever you came with.
Playground, picnic and BBQ, and shade for family parks. Off-leash and walking tracks for dogs. Food and coffee nearby for a date. Nothing else counts.
The overall number averages whichever factors apply. Playground, prams and access, food and coffee nearby, and picnic and BBQ count half. They say more about how you’re visiting than about the park itself.
Every factor has a written 1, 3 and 5 to score against. A 1 on toilets and water means nothing on site. A 5 means an accessible one by the playground, and a fountain that works. So a number means the same thing in every park.
Nearly every park here has had its facilities read off a council or operator page, then dated and linked. The handful we haven’t got to yet say so on the page.
All eleven factors are written out at the full scale, inside How we rate a park.
It averages the factors that apply to that park: five shared ones, plus a few specific to whether it is a family, dog or scenic spot. Four of them count half as much as the rest, being playground, prams and access, food and coffee nearby, and picnic and BBQ. Those say more about how you are visiting than about the park itself.
That the facilities were read off a council or park-operator source on the date shown, and we linked what we used.
No. There is no sponsorship, no advertising and no paid placement anywhere on this guide. We try to maintain the integrity of this site as a hub for nature lovers.
Roughly once a week, when we sit down and review them. Most scores come from our own visits, though a few lean on online reviews or anecdotal opinion where we haven’t been ourselves. We try to stay as objective as we can.
Beach Road, Long Bay, Auckland 0792
Clifftop walking trails plus swimming & kite flying in a beach park with BBQ & picnic sites.
The Promenade, Takapuna, Auckland 0622
White sand looking straight at Rangitoto, with a fossil forest in the rocks at one end.
13 Chartwell Avenue, Glenfield, Auckland 0629
Glenfield's main family park, with a big modern playground and plenty of flat grass.
Hibiscus Coast Highway, Orewa 0931
Three kilometres of flat, safe sand with a grass reserve running the whole length.
Manly Esplanade, Browns Bay, Auckland 0630
Wide beach for walks & swimming, with nearby eateries & an adjacent park for picnics.
63 Milford Road, Milford, Auckland 0620
A sheltered family beach at the mouth of the Wairau Creek, with the cliff walk to Takapuna at one end.
1507 Whangaparaoa Road, Army Bay, Auckland 0930
Bayside sanctuary with a boat ramp, 3 beaches & campgrounds, plus paddocks with farm animals.
164 Brightside Road, Stanmore Bay, Whangaparāoa 0932
The peninsula's main recreation park, with a pool complex and a sheltered beach below it.
37 Schischka Road, Waiwera 0873
Leafy coastal area featuring facilities such as trails, a campground, a boat ramp & beaches.
90 Sunnynook Road, Sunnynook, Auckland 0620
Local fields with a playground and the Wairau Creek path running alongside.
1181 Takatu Road, Tāwharanui Peninsula 0986
Picturesque regional park with 4 beaches, wetlands, forests & a wildlife habitat.
Mahurangi East 0982
Rolling coastal farmland and pōhutukawa along the bays either side of the harbour heads.
24 Kerr Street, Devonport, Auckland 0624
This mountaintop park offers a short hike to the summit with city skyline & harbor views.
31/35 Cresta Avenue, Beach Haven, Auckland 0626
Broad flat fields in Beach Haven, dropping down to the mangrove edge of the upper harbour.
Council Terrace, Birkenhead, Auckland 0627
A sheltered tidal bay with a flat lawn, a playground and the harbour bridge in view.
Mairangi Bay, Auckland 0630
A compact sheltered bay with a grassy reserve, a surf club on the sand and cafes across the road.
18 Takarunga Road, Devonport, Auckland 0624
Former military fortifications atop a grassy headland, with tunnels & guns, plus harbour views.
2 Victoria Road, Devonport, Auckland 0624
The waterfront lawn at the Devonport ferry, with a pirate ship playground and a band rotunda.
24 Tarahanga Street, Northcote, Auckland 0627
A dinosaur playground and a summer splash pad, sitting on the floor of a volcanic explosion crater.
2 Jack Hinton Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632
A large sports complex with a well kept fenced dog park, safely away from the pitches.
Beach Road, Castor Bay, Auckland 0620
Off leash around the clock, all year, if you can face the stairs down to the sand.
180-186 Sanders Road, Paremoremo, Auckland 0793
A large fully fenced dog paddock, which is the rare thing here and worth the drive.
Colonial Road, Birkenhead, Auckland 0626
Sugar refinery ponds and bush tracks, with a Victorian red brick factory as the backdrop.
38b Killarney Street, Takapuna, Auckland 0622
Lakeside lawns on Pupuke with a playground, deep shade and a great many opinionated ducks.
Old Lake Road, Devonport, Auckland 0624
A long beach facing east, with generous off leash hours and a playground behind the sand.
212 Onewa Road, Birkenhead, Auckland 0626
A deep native gully in the middle of Birkenhead, with a boardwalk dropping all the way to the harbour.
113 Bayswater Avenue, Bayswater, Auckland 0622
Flat peninsula fields with harbour on two sides and the city skyline across the water.
Cheltenham Road, Devonport, Auckland 0624
Shallow, sheltered and about as safe as an Auckland beach gets, with Rangitoto straight across the channel.
150 Parkhurst Road, Parakai 0830
A big bush reserve with a creek, kauri overhead and tracks running through to the next valley.
Balmain Road, Chatswood, Auckland 0626
A secluded little dog beach at the bottom of a bush walk. Fine for dogs, not for you.
Glenfield Road, Glenfield, Auckland 0629
A long bush walk along a stream, with kauri overhead and hardly a soul on it midweek.
36 Sylvan Park Avenue, Milford, Auckland 0620
A shaded lakefront off leash park on the quiet side of Pupuke.
Albany, Auckland 0632
Landscaped lakes and fountains, two minutes from the Albany mall.
40-50 Hillcrest Road, Hatfields Beach, Orewa 0931
A small kauri remnant with a well graded loop track, just off the highway.
Vauxhall Road, Narrow Neck, Auckland 0624
A clifftop military reserve with wide lawns, bunkers to poke around, and a path down to the beach.
Northcote, Auckland 0627
A remnant pūriri forest hidden between the motorway and the stadium, loud with birds.
38 Saint Peters Street, Northcote, Auckland 0627
A flooded volcanic crater with a flat loop of boardwalk and mangrove, and birds the whole way round.
Okura Bush 0794
A coastal bush track above an estuary, ending at a beach you can only reach on foot.