The river port has ceased operation and a recreational wharf is located at Unahi, on the shore of Rangaunu Bay, approximately 3 km north of the township.

Further along State Highway 10 is Kareponia Marae and the Patukoraha hapu o Ngati Kahu Iwi[4] For much of the 20th century, Awanui was dominated by the Kaitaia Co-operative Dairy Factory, located immediately north of the township.

Given the distance away from markets, together with improved farming technology and transportation methods, these mergers eventually forced the factory at Awanui to close by the early 1990s.

[7] Early in 1868, John Anton Subritzky and his family sold up their business interests in Maldon, Australia and sailed to New Zealand aboard the barquentine Prince Alfred, arriving first in the Port of Auckland, and then sailing aboard a family schooner to Houhora and the Mount Camel Station, a large estate owned by his older brothers Captain Ludolph Johann and Heinrich Wilhelm.

The hub of the Subritzky family operations was the Mount Camel Station, and their influence on the Far North for the next fifty years stretched far and wide.

They landed just north of Mount Camel, and several of the party stumbled overland through the scrub to the Houhora Hotel to raise the alarm.

They also knew that a passenger ship, the Zealandia, was sailing up the coast en route to Australia and would soon be passing Mount Camel.

They informed the captain and he immediately got under way at all speed, however, leaving behind a very exhausted whaleboat crew to their own devices some 25 miles out to sea.

After checking his pocket watch, Captain Subritzky realised that the tides were all wrong and the bar at the harbour entrance was hardly covered by the incoming sea.

He hurried to the Greyhound, roused the crew and made ready for sea wearing sea-boots and pyjamas.

The bow section cleared and then there was a terrific thump as the keel struck the bar, but the vessel shuddered her way over then ploughed northward and into the open sea.

The Greyhound was the first ship to commence the search and lifted three dead men from the water, later identified from documents in their clothing as Messer's Green, Parker and C. Johnson.

However, the master of the Clansman refused to take possession of them, and so the Greyhound was forced to return to Awanui due to the decaying of the remains.

The three deceased were buried in an unmarked grave at Saint Joseph's churchyard in Awanui by the crew of the Greyhound and the Reverend Merton.

[9] A Royal New Zealand Air Force aerodrome and base was located nearby at Waipapakauri during World War II.

At the end of hostilities in 1945, the airbase was closed and facilities abandoned, the far more suitable Kaitaia Airport nearby being developed with a paved runway.

The results were 53.0% European (Pākehā), 71.3% Māori, 6.1% Pasifika, 2.6% Asian, and 1.7% other, which includes people giving their ethnicity as "New Zealander".