Ponui Island (also known as Chamberlins Island) is a privately owned island located in the Hauraki Gulf, 30km to the east of the city of Auckland, New Zealand.
The first record of land purchase for Ponui Island was on 23 September 1826 by the New Zealand Company Three other islands were purchased at this time, Pakatoa Island, Rotoroa Island and Pakihi Island. It is recorded that the land was sold for one double-barreled gun, eight muskets, and one barrel of gunpowder, with the deed translated and signed by Thomas Kendall, and witnessed by three men from the ship Rosanna and 15 Māori.
In 1853, the island was bought and occupied by the Chamberlin family. From the 1880s until the early 20th century, stone and sand from the island was extracted for use in concrete structures in Auckland, notably, Grafton Bridge. In the early 1900s, a considerable amount of kauri was logged and bush was burnt off for cattle grazing on the southern end of the island. The other shipwreck at Oranga Bay was the Australian steel steamer (bought by Auckland machinery merchant Mr. F. Appleton in 1927) the Kurnalpi. The only permanent inhabitants (nine in the 2001 census) are associated with the farms, which are predominantly used for sheep.
The island is a popular site for youth camps for organisations such as Scouts. Crusader camps (now under the banner of Scripture Union) have been held on the island since 1932.
Biodiversity
The island is the home of New Zealand's only feral donkey breed, the Ponui donkey. It has a large number of ship rats, and populations of brown rats, mice and feral cats. North Island brown kiwi were introduced to the island by the New Zealand Wildlife Service, a forerunner of the Department of Conservation, in 1964, at the request of the island's owner. Fourteen kiwi were released, six from Little Barrier Island and eight from Northland. Ponui now has one of the highest densities of the North Island brown kiwi anywhere in New Zealand. The Department of Conservation has no plans to take Ponui kiwi to supplement existing populations elsewhere, because of their mixed genetic origins, according to a 2006 report,