Forest Lake, New Zealand


Forest Lake is a suburb of Hamilton in New Zealand and was added to from around the 1930s. It is centred around Forest Lake Road, which is used by around 10,000 vehicles a day.
For quite a long time there was swamp in a large part and this has now been drained but Lake Rotokaeo remains and the ground remains quite damp in parts.
Forest Lake is named after the forest that once surrounded Rotokaeo. It has no precise boundary, but is in the southern part of Te Rapa, north of Maeroa and west of Beerescourt, census area units.

History

Until the 1863 invasion of the Waikato, the area lay between the pās of Mangaharakeke and Kirikiriroa on the lands of Ngāti Wairere.
After confiscation, farms were established on from Lake Rotoroa to Forest Lake Rd, owned by Thomas Jolly, and, to the north, owned by John Carey, a doctor with the 4th Waikato Regiment.
The first housing was the Laurenson Settlement, on Forest Lake Road, near Walsh Street, built for workers between 1914 and 1921, under the Workers Dwellings Act 1910. The 1927 Hamilton map showed that most of Forest Lake had by then been built on an area north of Waitawhiriwhiri Stream in what had been Pukete Parish when the 1913 map was drawn.

Minogue Park

Minogue Park was first bought by Hamilton City Council in 1959, then extended in 1964, 1973, 1975 Rotokaeo Lake, 1979. There was a speedway until 1979, now this has been replaced by Minogue Park netball courts, a destination playground and a BMX track. The Model Engineers Club moved to the park in 1983 and now has of miniature railway track, a 1953 diesel shunter and the former Frankton signalbox. The playground was modernised in 2015. A cycleway is planned to link the playground with Nawton.

Rotokaeo Lake

The Māori language-name Rotokaeo translates as Lake of freshwater mussels. It also provided other food, such as Paranephrops, kokopu and Short-finned eel, and plants such as Typha orientalis, Lygodium articulatum and flax. Electro-fishing in 2009 found catfish, goldfish and mosquitofish, as well as eels.
The lake is supertrophic, sometimes resulting in algal blooms. An outlet weir keeps water at a maximum depth of. The catchment is about, mainly stormwater from neighbouring streets. Rotokaeo now covers, but once extended south into the area of the netball courts and BMX track, which was filled in for a rugby ground and then a stock car track. Before urbanisation the lake probably also had a larger area of peat bog.
Before 2007 Mexican water lilies covered 86% of the lake, attracting many wading birds, but, after weed control, a 2008 survey found mallard, pukeko, coot, black shag, little black shag, little shag, black swan, Canada goose, Japanese snipe and dabchick.
There is little submerged vegetation but kahikatea bush has been planted to the north and west, with baumea, kawakawa, mahoe, manuka, swamp millet and Hypolepsis distans, wheki, mata, turutu and silver ferns. The rest of the lake is surrounded by , kuta and makura sedges, Myriophyllum propinquum, pohuehue, flax, dwarf bog rush and swamp coprosma. Weeds remaining include alder, arum lily, crack willow, grey willow, gorse, Mercer grass, pampas, reed sweet grass, yellow flag iris, parrot's feather and Japanese honeysuckle.