The Parawhau tribe originally occupied the land forming Whangarei city.� They continued to live in several villages around the main settlement through the 19th century.� Whangarei's industrial start began in 1839 when timber milling developed, but the first Europeans fled to Auckland for a time during the 1840s when war broke out in the Bay of Islands.� It was not until ship building and the kauri gum trade got underway that new settlers arrived, coastal shipping being their main link with other centres.� The railway was put through to Auckland in 1925 but an "all weather" road was not completed until 1934.
Infamous nicknames such as Tom the Rat, Jack the Bug, Fenian Mick, Harry the Humbug, Spouting Sammy and Blathering Bill developed around the sawyers, timber-workers, runaway sailors and shingle-splitters who built rough shelters around Whangarei's outskirts� in the "rowdy towns" which sprang up in the 1860s.