Friday 27 March 2020

28 March 2020 Onerahi, Whangarei Harbour, Northland



Who could have imagined even a month ago that we would be in this situation; relative prisoners in our own homes? It feels as if we are at war, but the war is raging beyond our view, beyond our immediate understanding and we are all living in some kind of limbo. Of course we, most of my fellow Earth dwellers are in this together, so there is nothing I can write that cannot be trumped by other’s dilemma.

Its over two months since I posted anything here; the hot dry summer continued, glorious for sun seekers who frequent the beaches of the north, but not so good for the farmers desperate for growing conditions to improve. And even for the amateur backyard horticulturalists such as myself, I was not tempted to replace my exhausted vegetable plants until threatened closures of the plant nurseries just last week. I had thought I would wait for autumn to arrive before I tried again, but circumstances have changed that plan.

Despite the lack of gardening activity, we seem to have been forever busy and our trips away have been few and far between. 

 Back in January we took ourselves out to dinner, which in itself is hardly a subject for this blog, but what I should mention is that we wandered down stream along the Hatea River after dining, the sun low in the sky, and delighted in the scene, so often just taken for granted. The old almost dilapidated boatsheds along the riverside are quite charming from the Loop path, no matter what time of day, and even more so at that later hour. Alas the nights are already drawing in as we move further away from that longest day back in December.


Another day, my mother and I wandered along the other side of the river, admiring the scene at an even slower pace, sitting awhile to rest on one of the many seats placed for just that purpose. This city we live in has some lovely features and is well worth spending time in rather than just passing through as so frequently foreign travellers do.

On yet another day, we went out to tidy up our section at Parua Bay rewarded ourselves with a drive further down the harbour, past lovely McLeods Bay, and on out to Reotahi which sits between the foot of Mount Aubrey and the narrower passage of the harbour directly across from the log port.

Reotahi is the access point to that part of the Whangarei Harbour Marine Reserve around Motukaroro Island, and is popular with divers and snorkelers who wish only to look and not touch. Alas the parking facilities are minimal, a fact that has always put me off doing as we did this time. In a past life I had often stayed with a friend there at Reotahi, but never ventured beyond my friend’s boundary, thus never exploring the “old abattoir” which I knew to be somewhere around the corner.
From the beach at Reotahi, there is an easy pathway on around the harbour all the way to Little Munroe Bay, or easy at least to the ruins, which is as far as we walked in the blazing sunshine. What an amazing discovery! Such a massive site now mainly overgrown and in part, decorated by more adventurous graffiti artists.

There is no signage at all about the abattoir; the only signs being about the marine reserve, but a little research provided me with some of the following details.

 The project was the brain child of one Alfred Bevins who should have known better than to establish a freezing works exactly there, although there was a dire need for an alternative to shipping cattle and sheep all the way down to Auckland by scow. But the site at Reotahi, perched out on the narrow sea edge of Mt Aubrey had no level land of any size, no road access and no fresh water of sufficient quantity. Sheep had to be brought around the bluff on double deck barges, coal was barged in from Ngunguru up the coast but there was the plus of having deep water close to the works for all that to-ing and fro-ing.

The fact it went ahead, albeit for an abbreviated time, is quite astounding. Construction commenced during 1911 and the first shipment from the Reotahi Works occurred in June 1912. The business suffered financial woes and ownership changes through the intervening years until in January 1920, fire destroyed the whole main block of killing house, chillers, freezers, stores, cannery, and the pelt and hide department. While the cause of the fire was never discovered, one cannot wonder whether it was lit deliberately to put all the struggles to be put to bed once and for all. In August of that same year W&R Fletcher, the owners by now, decided to dismantle what was left of the works and close down the site.
Seventy three years later, the historical significance of the former freezing works was recognised by Heritage New Zealand with the placing of a plaque at the site to commemorate the site of the Northland region’s first freezing works. Alas we did not stumble over that plaque and were piqued that there was nothing further on the site to explain its importance. Perhaps this is part of the plan to encourage people to use the internet more?

In late February, more particularly, on 29th, noting the date, my husband and I remembered that it was his old friend’s 16th birthday and wondered how he was getting on, as you do cast your mind toward friends of the past. Late in that same afternoon, while I was in the kitchen preparing dinner and Chris was upstairs watching one of several international cricket tests played over the summer, the doorbell rang. Given that our solid door requires the key to unlock it and we have very few visitors, I peered out of the window to see who dared come. 

There was a nut brown little man of senior years, who looked harmless enough for me to venture downstairs to greet him. “Hello”, I said. 

He looked at me with a broad smile and said, “It’s Stan!” The very man we had been thinking of earlier in the day! 

“Happy Birthday”, I cried, “Come in!” and yelled up two floors for Chris that he had a visitor. 

He too was at a loss to recognise our visitor, because in truth, it was a very different apparition from that which greeted us five years ago in England’s Preston. Then Stan had been preparing from an operatic production in which he was required to be particularly hairy, head and face, and given the weather had been most inclement, had also been clad in woollen beanie and bulky jacket. That had been my first meeting so it is not surprising I did not recognise him. 


It was this Stan who had met Chris in Perth back in the very early seventies when they had been fellow Ten-Pound-Pom Tradies, with whom he had travelled and worked his way around Australia and subsequently travelled back to France overland through countries that had little facility for backpacking Englishmen.

Amazingly Stan was still now travelling without phone and internet savvy, with just the odd Lonely Planet or Rough Guide picked up along the way, and a modest rucksack; not the norm for a modern Westerner in his early seventies. Without the technology and gadgetry that we all take for granted these days, he had had a few misadventures and disasters that would have been otherwise averted, but here he was, and we were delighted to have him stay for a couple of days and the opportunity to show him around our lovely region.

Apart from partaking of far too much food, all washed down by too much wine (especially since we had put ourselves on a regime of reduced calories and no alcohol), we spent one full day doing a comprehensive road trip about the Whangarei area. We drove out to McLeods Bay, pausing briefly on Jumbo which has since sold, then out to Pataua South where we wandered across the estuary bridge out toward the ocean beach and stood contemplating the expansive of the Pacific. Back on the bridge we chatted with juvenile fishermen and watched fearless children, and some older bulkier sorts, jump off into the swift flowing tide. One young dare devil told us there was a stingray lurking below, warning others to watch where they put their feet as they emerged out of the cool briny for another round of raucous fun. 
Back on the road, we returned to Parua Bay and then took the inland route back across to Whangarei through Whareora and on out to the 26.3 metre high Whangarei Falls. There we sat under the shade of big native trees enjoying the filled rolls, muffins, apples and thermoses of tea and coffee I had managed to scrape together for such an event.

From here we drove on up to the coastal settlements of Ngunguru and Tutukaka, taking a detour to Wellingtons Bay where we walked barefoot along the sand. We thought the beach rather crowded, even for a Sunday, but for Stan, used to English beaches, especially those up around Blackpool, it was almost desolate.

On up the coast through Matapouri to Sandy Bay where we stopped again to wander along barefoot, an activity that without Stan’s prompting would never have occurred. My husband hates the feel of sand between his toes, but somehow that day, it didn’t seem to matter. 

Turning inland, we returned to Whangarei via Hikurangi, then drove up to the top of Parahaki from which there is the very best view of our city, and then home for more food and drink after an excellent day of playing tourist in our own backyard.

It was with sadness and a little anxiety that we saw our guest off in his rental car the next day, hoping he would not have any further misadventures. Even then at the end of February, he was sensible enough to realise that his scheduled home flight through Singapore may not be the best option. He planned to phone the airlines from his next motel in the hope of flying via a safer and virus-free route. We have yet to hear from him and can only hope he made it home safely and remains so there in Preston. Perhaps he will respond by snail mail when I eventually post off a few photos I think he might like to remember his time with us, and hopefully we will all catch up again sometime in the future, next time back in Preston.

In early March we drove down to Auckland to attend a matinee performance of The Book of Morman, this the second time we had done so, the first being in London. Then we had so enjoyed it, laughed ourselves until we ached and had been so looking forward to a repeat experience. Of course it is a brilliant production and this in Australasia is no less in its standard of talent. However I did not find myself laughing out loud to the same extent, the crudeness seemed just a little more so, taking away with it the comedy. There is a fine line between acceptable and unacceptable filth on stage, and this seemed a little too much. Perhaps the last couple of years have caused me to become more prudish, perhaps my deafness has worsened; who knows exactly what it was, but I would still encourage folk to go see it (when the theatres reopen). Alas our daughter and her family were booked to see it two weeks after us, but by then Covid-19 had closed the theatres.

One week later we drove down to Auckland to attend the annual Covi Motorhome Show. (Note “Covi” is the motorhome insuring arm of the NZMCA and has nothing to do with “Covid”). I had been a little anxious as to the wisdom of going as the Covid-cloud was already hovering over our lives; I think there was only one case in the country at that stage. Of course we enjoyed the show as we always do, Chris particularly so. He has a capacity to ooh and ahh over dozens of beautiful caravans and motorhomes in a purely window shopping manner, unlike me who wants to buy anything that impresses me that much. Despite his avid interest in hydraulic levellers, electric bikes and a multitude of other gadgetry, we managed to spend nothing but the entry fee and the lunch we brought from the food caravans offering a variety of wares.

Having at last dealt with property matters that seemed to have been taking up every day apart from those mentioned above, and my mother being in good health, we decided to head off for a ten day holiday. We agreed we would not call on anyone while away, even our own children who lived along our possible route, as Covid-19 was closing in and we had already self-isolated to a certain degree, something which is not very hard for introverted folk such as ourselves.

On Friday 20 March we set off south in our motorhome, stopping at Wenderholm for lunch and then on through Auckland and out to the coast east of  Clevedon, out to Kawakawa Bay and one down that absolutely lovely but recently repaired road to Kaiaua where we parked up with several other self-contained motorhomes at the Boating Club. I had packed a bottle of bubbly, despite our months of abstinence, and we drank that with our fish and chips to celebrate the property sales of the previous week. In other times we might have dined out to celebrate, but these were already becoming strange times, although not as strange as those to come.

It’s a lovely spot there by the launching ramps although on a Friday night the returning fishermen like to party in the adjacent hotel so it’s not as peaceful as Rae’s Rest a little further south. That afternoon the Coromandel Range had stood out with great clarity against the eastern sky, quite different to the following morning when it was a mere silhouette as is no often portrayed in paintings.

Travelling further south and around the bottom of the Firth of Thames, we ran into fog, such as I have not seen in years, but by the time we reached Thames, it was beautifully sunny and promised a glorious day. We shopped there before heading up the west side of the Range, along what must truly be one of the most beautiful routes in New Zealand, and would have been even more so several months ago when the pohutakawas were in full bloom. 

It was our intention to stay in Coromandel for a day or two, and so apart from stopping at the top of the ridge before one heads steeply down toward the town of Coromandel to enjoy the elevated views, we did not linger on that twisty road.

The Coromandel NZMCA Park is in a most convenient place, right in the centre of town. While the idea of the entry behind a service station and high residential fences on the perimeter may not excite some, you cannot deny the fact that it is so close to everything. The bars, the bay, the restaurants and shops are within a few minutes’ walk, as is the dairy where we bought deliciously decadent ice-creams.

But that evening came the directive that we should all be home, and while there was yet to be the absolute official directive, the guidelines were clear, we would have to abort our trip. So the next morning we headed back north exactly retracing our route, and travelled as far as Wenderholm. It is some years since we have overnighted at one of the Auckland Regional Parks, and we no longer have an annual pass. Chris has been averse to staying in these parks since they put their tariff up, but I was adamant; I wanted to wake up to the sound of a thousand tuis. So I spent nearly an hour first on the park phone being given totally wrong information and then on my cellphone talking to another Council official who attempted to guide me through their “new” on-line system. Of course it did not help that it was a Saturday and they were working with a skeleton staff, but I persevered and finally we won!

So we were back in Whangarei on the Sunday after just three nights away, and just three days before the official lockdown was decreed.

Social isolation is not a great trial to us, but it is a worry to have my mother with whom I have visited nearly every second day and helped attend to her administration, alone in her apartment. We text several times a day, and I did this morning try to telephone her having pre-warned her so that she could put her special little microphone up to the telephone receiver, but quite frankly it was all a bit hopeless. Tomorrow we will drop groceries at her door and perhaps we shall wave to her from the parking area below her windows.

Shopping is not as easy as the government would have us believe. Yesterday we walked down to the village with a short list of five items. I posted a letter then took a seat up on The Green from where I could observe the queuing folk at the pharmacy, the two dairies and the supermarket. Chris joined the queue at the latter and waited to be let in, one at a time. He emerged fifty minutes later with just two of the items, unhappy with the poor organisation. But I guess we are all learning how to cope in this new environment. Tomorrow we will try a supermarket in the town and I will take my book to wait in the car while Chris tests his patience. Online shopping seems impossible, at least for now; the slots are all booked up for weeks and until there are more staff and more delivery vans, I guess it shall remain so. Still there are only 416 confirmed cases in the country and the increase looks about the same as yesterday. If we all follow the directives, we should theoretically manage to contain the disease and the increased cases will decline incrementally. Fingers crossed and hands washed. 

And I reckon there will be some great looking gardens in the neighbourhood by the time the lockdown is lifted.

Stay safe all.

Monday 20 January 2020

21 January 2020 Onerahi, Whangarei Harbour, Northland


We remain anchored to our house, tied by property related work and family obligations. My mother is, on the whole, coping well with life, but through habit has the world coming to her rather than the reverse. Very poor hearing is a good excuse for this; I would most likely live the same if I were to find myself in her shoes at that ripe old age. The extended family, all of whom work regular jobs, have been taking full advantage of the wonderful summer weather and the fact that New Zealand simply closes down from Christmas until at least the middle of January. Woe betide should you need a repair done or the services of a lawyer or surgeon. So we have passed the summer so far in a manner that has allowed us (or me) to visit with her about every two days.

But even more demanding have been the gardens scorching under the relentless sun, needing regular watering. That at our vacant rental is one thing, but I must take full responsibility for tying us to my vege patch. This is the very reason we did not have a vege garden even before we set off on our gypsy pathway; I learned the hard way,  when we would return from several weeks holiday to find the garden a mass of desiccated twigs. So instead we are enjoying home grown salad vegetables, lettuce and tomatoes, silver beet and herbs, all tenderly raised by yours truly.

We did pop down to Auckland at the end of November for a couple of days, in order to meet up with our Waihi Beach family and enjoy the live matinee performance of “Les Miserables”. Unlike the others who had seen it live several times before, my sole experience was the movie version which stars two of Australia’s iconic actors making very ho-hum singing efforts. This live performance was outstanding and I absolutely loved it! I would rather own a filmed version of this than the other that has lingered on our shelves for some years.

We stayed in Henderson at the NZMCA Park there which improves each time we call, although its limited size means there will be a ceiling to improvement at some stage soon. From there we caught the bus into the city, returning early evening by the same. It was our first trip away with the new batteries, or at least, without using mains power, and we were hugely disappointed when electrical matters were still found to be wanting. So we returned to the outfit in Silverdale, who very red faced, found it had been wired the wrong way round. They soon remedied the situation and fitted a rather sophisticated monitor, at a price, and so we were able to come on north, hopeful that we were super fit for freedom camping once more.

Christmas was spent relatively quietly, my mother coming out for dinner on Christmas Eve, the longer evenings allowing her the luxury of driving in daylight. On Christmas day, the Waihi Beach family turned up late afternoon, having  feasted in the Bay of Plenty with the other side of the family, now after over five hours of travel, ready to feast with us.

They stayed for three nights and we spend the middle two full days relaxing and working our way through the leftovers and platters of food they had contributed and those I had readied for the visit. When I was a small child, we were urged to eat everything on our plate with references to “the poor starving children in Biafra”. When I consider the food consumed over those few days, I should be ashamed when I think of Biafra, and all the other Third World countries whose inhabitants would be grateful for even a full bowl of maize porridge, let alone wilting salads and sugary offerings.

We did head out for a picnic “to the beach” and while most in our location would have headed eastward along the northern side of the Whangarei Harbour, perhaps to Ocean Beach or the more sheltered McLeods Bay, or even Pataua, we headed south and out to One Tree Point which lies just inside the southern head of the harbour, that which is home to the log port and oil refinery. Classy, eh!?

Picnic tables were few and shelter from the breeze sought, eventually within view of the refinery chimneys, across the entrance from the towering peak of Mt Aubrey, under young pohutakawa trees. The company and food was good, the sunshine bright and warm although nothing much could be said for the background hum and hiss of the industry about us. Please be assured, the Whangarei Harbour is lovely; this is just not the particular spot you should come looking for beauty.

Once sated, we drove on round to Ruakaka Beach, where we found the long expanse of surf beach, sparsely populated by beach goers and much more to those heralding from the surf beach of the Bay of Plenty.  Only Larissa was keen to venture into the surf, but was then discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm from us others. We all piled back into the car and headed home for another round of food and drink. Christmas, eh?

But none of this really qualifies for this travel blog, only our short trip of over a week ago, when we took ourselves north to Kerikeri in search of a piece of artwork for our upstairs lounge wall. I wrote about a year ago of the Packhouse Markets of Kerikeri, when I went for a day trip there with my mother and sister; this time it was a first for my husband. 

Contrary to the several hours we “girls” had spent poking about nearly every stall, and savouring the coffee and cake, Chris and I “did” the market in less than an hour, the only thing particularly catching our fancy, the live performance by an excellent modern jazz band called Thelonious Punk. We stood for a while listening to them and watching what appeared to our untrained eyes, all properly trained musicians. But unlike the Matakana markets where there is facility for listeners to just hang about enjoying the music, the only seating here seems more for those who are eating and drinking their purchases from the stalls, and as we had done neither, we moved on.  I am beyond standing for hours without a wall to lean on or a bench to sit upon. 

So we headed to the supermarket, bought decadent pastries and parked up down by the Stone Store before setting off on a walk out to the Kororipo Pa site, which sits out on a promontory  surrounded on three sides by water; that which is the Kerikeri Basin, more famous for the Stone Store than anything else.

However in pre-European times it was an important sea port for the Ngapuhi tribes, and according to one of the signs, Te Waha o te Riri  which means the “gateway of war”. They were a fierce lot, the Ngapuhi of the North who ventured south often to defeat enemy tribes. But by the 1820s when the missionaries lived in the basin, they were more co-operative, and let’s face it, the missionaries wouldn’t have lasted two minutes without the hospitality of the Maori people.

By the 1830s Koropiro was deserted and today it is more a regularly mown Department of Conservation reserve with some good interpretative panels and a palisaded lookout which adds character and serves as a very good vantage point over the Basin.

From the pa site we walked back across the area now bordered by large stands of gums, which was once the kainga, or village, between times of conflict. Gorse competes for space on this hill and it’s only the regular mowing that keeps it to a walk friendly level. We looped around back to the car park, and then up to St James Church.

This is a charming wooden structure that looks as old as the Stone Store, but the signage indicates otherwise. The first building for Christian worship in New Zealand was erected on a spot behind the current church in 1824. Five years later that was replaced by a lath and plaster structure on the current site.  The existing church was opened in 1878 and is dedicated to St James the Great of Compostela. I do get confused with all the saints and tend always to think they are all Roman Catholic, even after my three years of travel education in the United Kingdom, and while I think of St James the Great of Compostela as very much being a Catholic saint, this is indeed an Anglican church.

We ventured in and had a poke about, and were duly charmed, but even more so outside by all the old graves and the names of the folk, so many of whom have gone on to father (and mother) the settlors of the North. 

We’d spent the previous night at the NZMCA Park near the Rainbow Falls and walked down to the base of them to examine the duck weed and the ducks enjoying that weed, and the swimmers, not so much.  It is a lovely spot and I had then thought we would walk down the river while staying there at the park, however we decided after mooching about the Basin the next day that we would head out to Waimate North and stay at the Bay of Islands Showgrounds, one of our favourite spots. 

There between the exhibition buildings and under the fine old puriri trees, we were met by dozens and dozens of feral rabbits, bold as brass, who claim this park like area as their own domain. Apart from these cute little (much-hated-by-farmers) critters, we were quite alone. We paid our fee in the honesty box, but did not plug into power which the tariff had allowed for. Chris was keen for us to spend this time away as a good test for the now rectified electrical set up of the van.

The next day we headed back home but by a rather convoluted route, via Ngawha to the east of Kaikohe where we checked out progress on the thermal power station and the springs.





The Ngawha geothermal field covers an area of around twenty five square kilometres, a fact (or statistic) that surprised me. The springs have been in use for both therapeutic and pleasure and are made up apparently of sixteen separate pools rich in ammonia, bicarbonate, boron and mercury, which is not typical of other springs in New Zealand. The facilities are very basic but entry fee is very modest, so one should not feel ripped off as can happen elsewhere; you are more likely to simply feel dirty and stinky when you come away. Years ago I had a client who suffered with a stubborn skin complaint and she used to drive up from Whangarei to partake of the waters, or more correctly mud. If she called on me on her way home, I was always appalled at the smell and discolouration; perhaps she made little effort to wash after, hoping the residue would continue the cure? 

There has been an operational power station here since 1998, another fact that surprised me, but it is the expansion we were particularly interested in. In 2008, the station was expanded enabling it to produce 70% of Northland’s electricity. I think I read somewhere recently that the current project should cater for 100% of the region’s electricity needs, but don’t quote me there. Great swathes of excavation and construction are within sight of the road; that work begun in late 2017 and hoped to be completed by 2021.


Returning to the main road, emerging near the Kaikohe A&P Showgrounds we saw the local Polocrosse Club was in action; we were glad we had not decided to stay there the previous night, the extra horsey campers would not have been as quiet as the rabbits.

We shopped for even more decadent pastries at the great little New World in Kaikohe, gorged ourselves and then headed south down Highway 15 as far as Pakotai then turned off and headed through to Tangowahine via the forest . I remarked to Chris that I had enjoyed this latter part of the route more on a northern direction rather than the southerly we were taking that day. He suggested it could have been because of the dry countryside; perhaps there was merit in that. The countryside is apparently on the brink of an official drought.

Emerging onto Highway 14, that between Dargaville and Whangarei, we headed for home, and back to our more anchored lifestyle.