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.