16 March 2018 - Kaikohe A&P Showgrounds, Northland

Another month has passed with little to interest a traveller. We have spent the intervening weeks settled into life with fellow gypsies at the Whangarei Central Holiday Park, dealing further with property maintenance issues which further raises the question as to whether ‘tis better to be poor and investment free, relying solely on the goodwill of the government’s charity. My mother’s health issues have improved only marginally, although I am at this point in time more comfortable with the fact that we are heading off shore again for a lengthy absence within the next two months.  

We did venture south for a long weekend to visit our daughter and her family in Waihi Beach, again making use of the hospitality of the RSA Club perched on the hill above the village. My husband spent the greater part of the two days assisting with landscape work, while I attended to the more mundane chores of kitchen and laundry, all finishing our evenings with over-full bellies and heads that were less clear than they should have been. 

On our return north on the Monday we caught up with our youngest son in Takapuna, where he descended from his high-rise office to lunch with us in our humble home-on-wheels and share his life’s ups and downs in a more frank manner than he could when he was younger. This is one of the bonuses of having adult children; they eventually realise that nothing they do can shock the parents because they, the parents have experienced it all before too. They start to understand that the “words of wisdom” imparted during those formative years were wise after all.

Ex-cyclone Hola passed down the eastern side of the North Island, with less force than prophesied, but then one should never dismiss the warnings of the weather geeks. We did spend a whole day holed up in our motorhome, peering out at those less fortunate than ourselves but none requiring our assistance. However we were still able to head off as originally planned on our short sojourn around the north of the province. 

Walking through Trounson Kauri Park

After dropping our car off at my parents, a trial run for the six months storage they have offered while we are away in the UK, we headed westward toward Dargaville, lunching beside the Wairoa River before heading north thirty kilometres or more to Trounsen Park. The Chauffeur had expressed a desire to stay at the DOC Camp and I was happy to go along with that, although I had been thinking it would be nice to detour to Kai-iwi Lakes and swim in the shallow waters, hopefully warmed by the many months of summer. However when push came to shove, and when we charged past the turnoff and he asked if I still wanted to go, I could see that the idea was one sided and the skies were still dim with the residue of the ex-cyclone, and did I really want to swim?

So we carried on north up through the Kaihu Valley turning off toward the 450 hectare Trounson Kauri Park, which had been cordoned off to the public when we had last passed through. When we did drive into the camping ground, sporting our NZMCA / DOC Pass and considered that we would pay the difference between the non-electric and the electric, just $3 per person, we thought we had better read through our Pass conditions once more. The small print revealed that this park was excluded all year rather than just the peak summer holiday period, which meant we would be up for $36 for one night (with power). Looking at the facilities (or the lack thereof) we decided that this was a total rip-off and drove around to the day visitor park instead.

One of the dying giants

From here we walked about the forest circuit, now a single route, allowing for no deviation. The kauri die-back disease, more correctly the pathogen named phytophthora agathidicida, has been slowly attacking New Zealand’s giant trees. It was only discovered in 2009 and it must have been soon after that we first saw reports of it on DOC signs about the country. It affects the roots of the tree and for that reason, the custodians of the forests, the DOC and Regional Park wombles, would prefer to exclude the public from the forests entirely. The compromise is to limit the number of public tracks through the vulnerable areas, and have those walkers who do persist with their activities, to wash and brush their boots with special cleaning products. 

While I have sat outside the growing commentary making scoffing comments of my own, our wander through the Trounson Forest brought home to us how serious the problem really is and it was with great sadness we observed the number of dead and dying kauri within view of the path.

Views up the Hokianga Harbour

The walk through Trounson is quite lovely and I realised too that it was many years since we had actually come through here. There is a huge variety of flora throughout but I was most aware of the kauri, of course, the kiekie, the nikau and pungas. Fantails flitted about and tuis and bellbirds called from high up in the canopy.

A quiet night at the Kaikohe Showgrounds

Back on the road, we continued north through Donnelly’s Crossing on gravel road, emerging at the southern edge of the Waipoua Forest, and followed the Twin Coast highway through the same, navigating the twists and turns of the slow sealed road from where we could see more of those grand trees denuded of their vegetation, skeletons awaiting the next violent storm for their last hurrah.

We did not stop to see Tane Mahuta, the largest kauri tree in the country; it seemed there were plenty of other tourists to ooh and aah as we have done so often in the past. On we went until we came up over Pakia Hill from where one has marvellous views over the Hokianga Harbour and across to the expansive sand dunes. Just below the summit we turned toward the coast on a short road out to Arai – Te – Uru Recreation Reserve, site of an old Signal Station over the harbour entrance. A short walk out to an elevated point offers even better views than those from the top of Pakia Hill and I was glad we had made the detour.

Rainbow Falls

We returned to the main highway, if “highway” it can be called, and continued eastwards along the southern reaches of the Hokianga, past numerous Maori settlements, as close to one another as English villages are, and most of these here watched over by little white steepled wooden churches, their porches at one end and roofs so red as to suggest regular maintenance.

We spent the first night of this little trip parked up on power at the Kaikohe A&P Grounds, an excellent posse made available to financial members of the NZMCA all for the modest fee of $10 per night. We found ourselves alone, which for some travellers in this area, especially those familiar with the crime and dependency so pervasive in this part of the north, might be a problem. We reckoned the proximity to Ngwha Prison was probably a deterrent to would be mischief makers.

Wharepoke Falls below the Kerikeri River

Our following days turned into a history pilgrimage, following the advent of Christianity in New Zealand and the lives and times of the Maori who were subjected to this. I have been to the Bay of Islands many times over my life, and to many of the historical sites we visited this time round. I have also read both fiction and non-fiction about these times, but perhaps it is only now that I no longer have to retain so much extra in my head to provide a living, that I am able to collate and understand better the history of my own country.

Kerikeri Basin

Over three days we visited the Stone Store and Kemp House in Kerikeri, Pompallier House in Russell and Te Waimate Mission at Waimate North. There are two other places that should be included in such a task: Mangungu Mission on the Hokianga open only through the summer months and Rangihoua Heritage Park where Samuel Marsden’s first missionary onslaught began and ended soon after, now a series of information signs on a wide expanse of bare land.

Kemp House

At Kerikeri, we stayed at the NZMCA’s own park over property and found it busy with fellow members, all lightly packed into one small corner of the large area. The ground was boggy and ready to entrap foolish vanners. As a result we spent the night parked up far too close to our neighbour than I like.

But from this wonderful camp adjacent to the Rainbow Falls, we walked the four and a half kilometres down to the Kerikeri Basin where we were then able to enjoy New Zealand Heritage’s treasures, all freely accessible to us when we waved our English Heritage membership cards. The guide and the museum were wonderful and it was well on in the afternoon that we extracted ourselves and headed back up the river to camp. As a result we arrived late home and ate our own versions of BLATs for dinner, washed down with a good bottle of red. 

Sailing from Paihia

At Paihia we caught the ferry to Russell; lunch packed in the backpack, in training for our imminent return to the UK, and joined a midday tour of Pompellier House. We were too early, so climbed up the hill through the lovely gardens and sat eating our sandwiches with superb views out over the bay. 

After yet another excellent history lesson, we made our way through Russell and found ourselves in the thick of the BDO Tour of Northland, a cycle race made up of four stages making up a north-west-south-east circuit of about 250 kilometres from Whangarei to Whangarei. We watched as many of the almost three hundred contestants came in over the finish line, each contestant with their name and age group spelled out on a “bum-bag” arrangement, confirming the entrants to be aged from fit youth to fit young over-70 year olds. As we sat eating our ice-creams, nursing our gout and dodgy backs, we considered ourselves decidedly inferior specimens of the human race.

Peaceful Russell

The ferry back was laden down with tourists and cycling contestants, and piles of bikes both fore and aft.  Paihia would be busy that night even if the revelry might end earlier and less drunkenly than with other like-minded crowds. We decided not to stay in town, even though the car park of the RSA probably would have been available to us. Instead we headed out to Waimate North, west of Paihia and backtracking some of the morning’s route. We set up camp at the Bay of Islands Pastoral & Industrial Showground, amid expanses of green and a multitude of mature trees.  As with the Kaikohe Showground we paid the modest fee of $10 for the privilege of peace and power. Here it was the magpies that woke us in the morning with their melodious song, although never as melodious as their Australian cousins.

We found the Georgian Mission house just up the road, most impressive; Chris particularly taken with the smoothness of the pit sawn kauri interior walls. In fact he wandered about the whole place, including the cellar, amazed at the workmanship. It was interesting to learn that Charles Darwin spent the Christmas of 1835 at this model farm and mission station in the heart of this Ngapuhi land. However he would not have found it to be as attractive ten years later when the retreating British forces came through and caused mayhem and desecration.

Pompallier House

Off-loading cycles and cyslists

Over those educational days we learnt more about how the position the missionaries, both Anglican and Catholic, was considered by the “natives” who were more interested in learning about the world beyond these South Pacific shores and how quickly they could stock pile firearms in return for sacks of potatoes, with a view to blowing the heads off their enemies. That latter statement actually demeans the grasp of the written language and of English the Maori were so motivated to master, and master they did. That crop of New Zealanders, albeit a bloodthirsty lot, were a whole lot smarter and ambitious than those that may or may not have completed the census a couple of weeks ago.

Did I mention the census? Probably not. Earlier this month we had both the obligation and opportunity to complete the countries five yearly census, and this time we were here to take part. (last time we were part of the grey nomads drifting about Australia). Of course the census is very important, not least of all to keen genealogists such as myself who use past documents to understand those that came before. It is also a tool here (and no doubt in most countries) to ascertain the health and other social services required to cater for the aging and growing population. This year there has been a push for the census to be completed on-line, easy enough for us and even my parents who are fast approaching ninety. But for many languishing in the remote corners of Northland, who choose to spend their welfare surpluses on dope and other mind numbing substances, instead of joining the modern digital age, they will not be counted and we will be short changed on hospital beds. We will cry out in frustration when our day arrives, forgetting it was all our own fault.

Waimate Mission House

And continuing on a note of lament, news of the Syrian War continues. It was seven years ago when I started my travelling blogs and made mention of this and still nothing has changed! Is it any wonder we tend to shut off from the horrors of the world? But this has also been the week that Stephan Hawkins and Ken Dodd died. What a strange and various world we live in.

But back to our own gypsy life, we are once more back at the Kaikohe Showgrounds, this time in the company of five other vans; safety in numbers so they say. The weather forecast for the next week is not great but we do not need to be back in Whangarei for another six days. I guess we will decide which ways to steer the motorhome wheels over breakfast tomorrow morning.

13 February 2018 - Whangarei Central Holiday Park, Northland

Here we are back again at one of our many bases in Northland, just having paid for a further week in our formal surroundings, in as much as a “budget” camping ground can be considered “formal”. The camp has been busy over the past week as the country has undergone a series of rain storms, all at odds with the dry weather February usually offers in this part of the world.

For all those readers who may feel sorry for us holed up in our motorhome in such inclement weather, we have been even more sorry for those travellers who hole up in far less sophisticated cocoons: little pup-tents, whizz-bank vans with little ventilation and cars with even less. Rain free spaces in the mornings see colourful collections of bedding and clothing hung on makeshift lines and fences in rather futile attempts to dry. How glad we are to have our space and our ventilation hatches; everything is relative.

But with the warm temperatures, still not a patch on those being experienced on Australia right now, comes incredibly high humidity and this seems to be nationwide; the sort that makes a shower all rather pointless, rendering one as wet with perspiration or even more than when one stepped into the cubicle.

We are no further to leaving Whangarei for even the briefest of tikki tours, as the leak problems at the Big House are no further resolved than when I last posted. The men with their fancy cameras came and hovered about, clocking up their chargeable hours, then left with no resolution and yet with no invoice. That is a little joy we may still anticipate.

However we did manage to track down the son of the people who built the house, then sold it to us over twenty years ago. He was but a young single apprentice then, now a tradesman in his own right. While he had no magical answers, he was able to speak with authority about the building process and offer new insight into forward planning. As a result of this, my husband, who is not as young as he used to be, spent the greater part of yesterday digging coffin-depth trenches beside the house, and has a plan which he hopes to have endorsed tonight when yet another “expert” comes to inspect the problem. Oh the joys of property ownership! Oh the joys of relying on others who prove to be no cleverer than oneself!

Speaking of coffins, I had the opportunity to “holiday” away with my parents for a few days, travelling south to the King Country for the funeral of my mother’s older sister. Perhaps I should say “her last sibling” because that is the sad truth; but an innings of nearly ninety eight years is more a matter of celebration rather than tragedy. It was yet another opportunity for family to come together, travelling from all over the country and one from the other side of the world, a reunion of cousins, most of us a little greyer but more determined to make the most of the time left for us. Plans are being made for a pilgrimage to the sisters’ childhood stamping ground around ANZAC time, so many of us will reconvene around a country lodge dining table after a day in the wilderness sometime soon.

My parents and I spent a couple of nights in the little motel in Piopio, the only accommodation aside from B&B’s further out from the township. We were one day late for the proprietors’ wedding which was just as well as we surveyed the chaos still being sorted late the next afternoon. Considering all that, we found the accommodation quite acceptable, although we were disappointed a team of cyclists saw fit to consume our bread, margarine, yoghurt and milk; no one had explained to them that the contents of the communal fridge were not so communal. Still we did not starve and made up for the scant breakfast with a massive morning tea at a quaint little tearoom beside the Waikato River at Taupiri on our return north.

A fine resting place

Piopio and the surrounding district is my father’s hometown, if you disregard the fact he left the area when he was barely of age, but it is where his whanau have dwelled for the last one hundred and a bit years. It is also where many of his family are buried, and where he and my mother will end up, hopefully later than sooner. While we waited for the hearse to arrive with my aunt, Dad showed me their plots and I had to agree that it will be a delightful spot to rise up in the morning and watch the sun come over the limestone cliffs, if you believe that sort of thing.

Mum and I went for a wander down Piopio’s  main street, and she pointed out the blacksmith (now the museum, open by appointment) where she, and presumably her siblings, used to ride their horses in from Waitunguru, a distance just short of thirty kilometres by road these days. Funny to hear about such things because I’d never really thought of my mother as a horsewoman; that moniker was given to her sister.

Way back in history, Piopio itself was never a significant Maori settlement, although there were plenty of Pa nearby that were. European settlement came in the very late 1800s, swelled by the rehab sections that were balloted out to returned soldiers, first from the Boer war, then the World Wars that duly followed,  including that taken up by my great uncle. He soon died and it was his father , my great grandfather,  that soon busied himself with establishing a school and stirring up community matters. So it is no surprise that I too have ties with this little village.

Piopio's "Green"

I spent two years at the school here back in the sixties, and then the town had a post office, banks, shops, doctor’s surgery, chemist, and everything else a thriving settlement might boast in those days. But these days the locals commute into Te Kuiti for their groceries and probably on further to Hamilton for their fancy clothes and consumables. Piopio is just hanging on with about four hundred inhabitants, my elderly uncle one of them,  and the few food outlets closed on Sundays. The Cloverleaf Dairy is open on Mondays and does excellent fish and chips.

There is also an excellent little craft shop that sells handmade jewellery my mother struggled to resist. She has already accumulated a little trove of treasures from here and surely will add to it next time she is down.  I could easily have been tempted but for lack of space to squirrel such gems away.

Piopio is undergoing rejuvenation, fuelled in part from hosting Tolkien fans; part of the Hobbit films was set just up the road in the Mangaotaki Valley and cyclists obviously see this as a good place to pass through if you’re on a big cycling safari.

Back here, The Boss’s ribs are healing well which is just as well, with all this digging on offer, and did I mention it? We have booked our flights to the United Kingdom. My husband decided it was probably better to fly direct rather than detour through the USA. I told him that was a good idea. Perhaps he is learning to read my mind?

23 January 2018 - Whau Valley, Whangarei

We have temporarily settled ourselves in the centre of the city, just metres away from a busy intersection of the main highway north and the main arterial route to Kamo. We intend to only stay little more than a week, readying this rental property for reoccupation; a little gardening, a few paint touch ups, the tightening of door handles here and windows there, the unplugging of drains, the sort of thing that landlords do when they have the opportunity to note there is a need and the time to personally attend to these sundry maintenance matters. Fortunately for us there is space to park our motorhome although we do not have the advantage of double glazing that graces the road frontage windows of the house; city traffic, even in this regional back water, is more than we are used to.

Having said that, we thought we would miss the wonderful birdlife of Parua Bay; the wood pigeons, the tuis, the silver-eyes, quail, kaka, fantails, pheasants and so on, but the garden at the rear of the property, surrounded in fine specimens of native trees is full of many of these same birds. And even here in the city, the possums create havoc;  I found the plastic rubbish sack holed after the first night and this morning discovered a road killed glossy coated possum cozied up against our road side fence, a rather dignified death scene although by tomorrow no doubt odorous. I did ring the council who expressed a willingness to come gather the corpse, but they have yet to turn up.

It’s been a strange month since I last considered posting. Christmas Day passed rather pleasantly as guests of our older son and his family. We ate well and enjoyed the family atmosphere and were still both sober and sensibly fed to enjoy a light evening meal with my parents. And while this all may have caused me to be drawn back into the family fold for future Christmases, I still reckon our best Christmases have been those spent in the bush, just the two of us cooking a chook in a dodgy gas oven, a few bottles of the  grape and no one else to consider.

My husband continued to procrastinate regarding the repainting of the Big House’s roof, and I felt as if we were hanging in a limbo state. Finally he took the plunge and risked his aging body on the multi-tiered roof, et voila! All was done. But while we have in the main enjoyed an excellent summer here in the north, we have also had a few extreme rain storms and these have played havoc with the drainage system of that same house. Some years ago we had similar problems and my very clever husband dreamed up a pump system to deal with the excess water, but even this has not been  able to cope with the extreme rainfall from a certain direction and I guess with all this Global Warming going on, it will only get worse. So this is an issue we are currently dealing with apart from luring a suitable tenant to caste us from our current camping spot.

The highlight of our recent life, having little to do with travel on our part but more to do with that of our children, was to arrange a get together of our entire progeny at this address, making the most of having a suitable venue, for the first time in more than eight years. Needless to say, the youngest of our grandchildren was not even born then, so we have grown by one in number since that last gathering and in size by too many kilos.

Our children, their partners and our grandchildren with us

We dug furniture and sundry chattels from under the Big House and engaged the assistance of a caterer to add a classy edge to the feast, and were duly rewarded. We spent two wonderful days enjoying our family and most of all for me, delighting in various members touching base with each other and hopefully rebuilding relationships that have sadly been neglected for too many years.

It all coincided with our daughter, the oldest of the tribe heading further north to enjoy a week in Paihia with her family, so it was not too much of an imposition to swing by us here in Whangarei. The youngest and his family came up and “glamped” on site with their fancy airbed and the middle “child” drove across town to complete the scene. On the Sunday when Larissa and her crew had moved on to enjoy their holiday in the Bay of Islands, my parents drove across town to join us for brunch so we had yet another family group together and a long overdue catch up there for the Auckland family and their grandparents / great grandparents.

The brunching brigade

This really was such a delight to both Chris and I, although marred by a silly accident in the week building up to the event. We were parked up out on our section, with our “front entrance” a rather steep affair with steps balanced on timbers and rubber mats. Our caterer called by to confirm certain points which we discussed over a bottle of wine, reminiscing past acquaintances and mutually attended events. Heavy rain started to fall and it was time for the lady to depart. My husband, always the gentleman, stepped out to help her down, and slipped on the wet mats and came down hard on the step. He had in fact broken a rib in his back, but he continued on over the next few days until the surgeries reopened after the weekend when pain and sleepless nights drove him to seek confirmation and a bottle of more effective painkillers. And in the midst of this, on the Sunday morning while sampling one of his delicious bacon croissants, he broke one of his front teeth. Alas he is falling to bits, which is all most inconvenient; we have so many places yet to go, too much living to do, and still a room or two here to repaint, and hedges to be trimmed at the Big House.

My adoption of the term  “Big House” has arisen from comments made by one of my dear friends who came for lunch subsequent to the Big Party weekend, to help us hoover up the leftovers. She referred to the home we previously lived in prior to taking to the road as the “Big House” and I thought this was all so very appropriate, because as the centre of our earlier family life and memories, and the fact it is at least three times the size of any other properties we own, it is so very appropriate. Hence I shall refer to the house on the hill at Onerahi as the Big House from here on in.

The last couple of days have been taken up with babysitting our local granddaughters, such well-behaved delightful children, who fill our days with their laughter and beauty. There is one day left of this “task” and we have volunteered to repeat the exercise in a couple of months. Our efforts are but a drop in the ocean compared to their other grandparents; I should feel guilty that we have so little input, but I am so aware that the years are slipping by and we have a diminishing number of years to pursue our travelling life. Hopefully these little girls, even grown, will choose to remember us. Thus speaks a very selfish grandparent.

So while we are yet to add to our travel diaries in any meaningful sense, we have progressed  beyond the stalled mentality we were suffering in our own ways, now intending to set off north as soon as this central city property is let and the residual problems and rampant flora at the Big House have been attended to. And of course we have yet to book our return flights for the northern hemisphere.