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Postcards will have to be thrown out; songs rewritten and a hill renamed all because of the felling of a single pine tree in Auckland last month.

The Monterey pine was a familiar Auckland icon, celebrated in postcards and calendars, the subject of a song by U2 in The Joshua Tree and the reason why the 183m volcanic cone on which it stood was called One Tree Hill. The wits are already calling it None Tree Hill.

None of which matters to the visitor who’s never seen it before, but they’ll almost certainly be taken to the summit anyway since it is still the most impressive pa-sculptured site in the city and a brilliant spot from which to survey the surrounds.

But it matters to the locals, many of whom staged a vigil the night before the tree was due to be felled, and it matters to local Maori who sung a karakia (prayer) at dawn to bless the tree. The on-site mourners were given pine cones and bits of wood from the tree but the council promises not a splinter will be sold to tourists or anyone else for that matter.

Now you may think this is a lot of fuss for a ratty old pine and perhaps a sign that pagan nature worship is alive and well, but the experts tell us that underneath this outpouring of grief is something more significant.

Auckland is not a large city in terms of population (just over one million inhabitants) but it is sprawling. The pine helped anchor this formless meandering mass; it gave the city a sense of perspective, stability and a focus. A handy visual aid wherever you were. And that’s all gone now, wailed the mourners.

Besides which we did badly at the Olympics; the dollar is at an all-time low; there’s a feeling that the brightest and the best are leaving; business confidence is down and petrol prices are up. A dead icon was the last straw.

We have a tendency to the gothic, do we New Zealanders. Fortunately all is not lost - on the landscape front at least. There’s plenty of lofty vantage points left which help pin this hard-to-grasp city down. For a start there’s still One Tree Hill, sans tree but nevertheless home to a tall obelisk in memory of a city father.

More importantly the view from the summit hasn’t changed, offering superb views over the twin harbours, the city and the trees of Cornwell Park. On a good day you can spot Great and Little Barrier Islands in the Hauraki gulf and even the outline of the Coromandel Peninsula in the distance. Sheep graze on the hill’s grassed slopes and present the illusion of a farm in the heart of the country’s largest metropolis.

And you can still see the terraces of satellite pa which once surrounded the main site during its heyday in the 17th and early 18th century; each then fortified with ditches earth ramparts and wooden palisades and nourished by large cultivations and kumara (sweet potato) pits.

And then there’s the arboreal history of the summit, best considered in situ. For it was once home to a towering totara tree, revered by Maori as commemorating the birth of an important ancestor. But shortly after the settlers arrived, vandals cut down the tree, and to make amends the pine was planted. However Maori activists saw this as a symbol of colonialism and finally, after a series of chainsaw attacks, fatally wounded the pine.

There’s already talk about replacing it with a native tree or a sculpture or a memorial plaque. Or just leaving it alone.

But it’s not the only vantage point on the horizon. Extinct volcanic cones are very much a part of the Auckland landscape. No less than 63 separate points of eruption have been recorded. Some of the smaller cones have been quarried out of existence but the major cones have been declared reserves.

The view from the summit of Mt Eden encompasses the whole Auckland isthmus and from the tip of the precipitous crater walls a direction-finder identifies points of interest.

Or you can catch a ferry over to frilly seaside suburb of Devonport and climb Mt Victoria, another volcanic cone, and look back to the city. Better still catch another ferry to the city’s youngest volcano, the island of Rangitoto, a mere 800 years old, and then do the two hour walk to the 260m summit and back. It’s always slightly warmer on Rangitoto thanks to the black scoria and probably also thanks to the exercise, but the 360 degree view of the gulf and the volcano-studded cityscape of Auckland is matchless.

But the latest and possibly most controversial elevation on the skyline is man-made. The central city Sky Tower looks like a large hypodermic needle, a point not lost on artists, who use this as a symbol of the influence of gambling - Skytower harbours several casinos.

But it’s also home to a theatre and restaurants, including the inevitable revolving restaurant 328m high. However the axiom that the quality and cost of the food in a revolving restaurant is in inverse proportion to the height of the tower doesn’t apply here. Orbit does excellent meals of the Pacific Rim variety and costs no more than you’d expect to pay at a top restaurant.

And since you have to pay to get to the viewing tower anyway it’s practically a saving to fork out for a good food and get a moving panorama into the bargain.

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