Great Barrier Island is geologically an extension of the Coromandel.  It is steep, windswept, and open to the elements - wind, fire and torrential rain.  It's soils are mostly thin and infertile. 

It was never an easy place to live, but Maori lived there for centuries before the first European settlers in the 1840s.  Since then, it has experienced population boom and bust as one resource after another was discovered, exploited and used up. In 2006 the permanent human population was 850, down from the 1996 peak of 1,152.  

The first great resource exploited by Europeans were whales from 1829 to 1962.  Timber extraction,  mining (for gold, silver and copper), farming and fishing followed and today, the Island has become a romantic get-away for tourists and well-to-do owners of holiday homes. 

Despite the holiday homes, average income for the residents of Great Barrier is the lowest in the Auckland region. There is no reticulated water or sewage, no general power supply (houses must have their own generators or solar/wind power) and only patchy telecommunications.  Transport to and from the Island is by air or ferry.  The roads on the Island are mostly dirt. 

Mining saw the construction of the town Oreville, which in the early 1900s had a population of close to 1,000.  Today there is no sign of Oreville apart from the ruins of a concrete stamper battery for crushing the ore. 

Timber was extracted for export overseas and for firewood for Auckland. Kauri timber was extracted from the 1840s to the 1940s and by the beginning of the 20th century, the Kauri Timber Company was New Zealand's largest native timber mill.  Logging dams where constructed to ferry logs down to collecting points beside tramlines.   When the tramway closed in 1941, virtually all kauri of any size had been extracted.

Farming was never easy because of the poor soils and distance from market but it involved the clearance of more than half the Island (all but the steepest and highest parts).  Today,  earlier dairy farming has given way to drystock (sheep and beef) and small scale horticulture (e.g. macademia nuts).

Fishing was an important economic activity for many of the Islanders but collapsed from the impacts of New Zealand's national quota system (which favoured larger companies) and competition for fish from foreign fleets.

In short, after a century and a half or exploitation,  little remains of the wealth from the extraction of resources and the Great Barrier landscape shows damage that will take centuries to recover.

I returned from my trip to Great Barrier  troubled by the thought:: Does this island show us signs of the future?  It is beautiful and romantic but the soils are thin; the vegetation over more than half the island is ti-tree, bracken fern and impoverished farmland; the wildlife is richer than on the two mainland islands but is sparse rather than rich; and socially, it is a dual society of impoverished locals and well-to-do holiday home owners or tourists.