Cruising Along the Kauri Coast

Kia Ora!

Date: 13-14 March 2010

Since the Kiwi Consort has most weekends off, we have taken advantage of the time to explore this northern part of North Island. We went north up the east coast (Paihia and Witangi), then south to the Coromandel Peninsula's east coast (Tsunami, et al). Most recently we traveled north again, but on the west side of the northern part of North Island. (Are you following all this geography?)




Our first stop was to the tiny village of Matakohe and the Kauri Museum, highly recommended by locals. The kauri is a large tree heavily used by the early European settlers for buildings, ships, and furniture to the point of depletion. Only a few of the giant trees remain. Their size and age was impressed upon us immediately. The kauri trunk in the photo was harvested in 1963 and estimated to have sprouted in 1100.These are long-lived trees!

A massive undertaking, the museum presents a comprehensive picture of settlers' lives in early New Zealand. I was quite impressed with the size of the place. A complete working steam sawmill has been moved inside and rebuilt as well as an electric milking parlour complete with a cow manikin. Press a button and the machine starts milking the cow, yielding a white substance that courses through the tubes to the creamery can. Sorry, I just have a photo of the sawmill and not the cow.

To depict how people lived in early NZ, an entire boarding house was moved and rebuilt inside. The sleeping rooms open to picture windows featuring life-sized dioramas of the many types of people who used boarding houses, some as their domicile and others as travelers-sawmill workers, seamstresses, contractors, bankers, salesmen, and more.




 The manikins demonstrating the activities of the early settlers are strikingly realistic. The museum is supported by many of the descendants of the original settlers, both monetarily and by volunteer labour, and they are honoured in an unusual way. The living descendants became models for the Kiwi artist who sculpted the manikins. By each manikin was a small sign that indicated the person represented and detailed their family tree back to the immigrant ancestor. Note the realistic appearing sweat on the manikin of the labourer in the saw pit (one of the few Maori represented).

After a night in the unimpressive village of Dargaville, we drove north along the west coast and the longest sand beach in New Zealand. We resisted the temptation to visit the beach and stayed on target, to see some of the remaining live kauri trees left in the Waipoua Kauri Forest.


The walk into the bush to visit Te Matua Ngahere (The Father of the Forest) took about 25 minutes. As I came up on the clearing, I was totally gob-smacked. With reputedly the largest girth of any tree in NZ (over 5 metres), the tree filled the entire visible space ahead of me. Compare the tree's trunk size with the couple with the umbrella in the lower right and note how it dwarfs all other trees around it.



 Further up the road, we stopped to see Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest). At 51 meters high, this tree towers above Te Matua Ngahere, but doesn't have nearly the girth. Can you imagine what this part of the country must have looked like when it was dominated by the kauri forests? Here is what it looks like now.

New Zealand has become a dairy country. Sheep are not forgotten but are far less agriculturally important than in a previous time. As we traveled south on a pass between the mountains we were reminded of this when we were stopped by a herd heading home for milking. The cheerful farmer escorted our car right through the herd.




 

 Our first day out we stopped for a delicious lunch at the Sahara Cafe, located in the former bank of tiny Paparoa. On our way back we stopped there again for afternoon tea and stayed for evening "tea" (supper). We should have quit while we were ahead. Supper was a disappointment!

Cheers and aroha!

Kiwi Traveler

Whitianga and the Tsunami

Kia Ora!

Date: 28 February 2010. We drove to the east shore of the Coromandel Peninsula on Saturday and stayed in a motel in Whitianga, a tourist destination for its beaches and mountains.

Sunday morning at 7:35 AM, there was an unexpected loud knock at the door. By good fortune, I happened to be dressed and making a spot of morning tea. Our motel manager was at the door, looking quite serious.

"Turn your TV on to Channel 1," he said, "there's been a large earthquake in Peru and we are on a tsunami alert! The tsunami is scheduled to get here about 10:00AM. If you hear the town sirens go off, get in your car and head into the mountains."

We sipped our tea while calmly organizing our things with an ear to the TV broadcasting updates every 30 minutes. The water was rising in a report from the Chatham Islands. New Zealanders were warned to stay off the beaches. Fishing fleets did not go out, though some vessels deliberately left for sea where they can safely ride out a tsunami.

We decided to move everything to the car now so we could leave quickly if necessary. We had a good two hours of grace. The morning was sunny, warm, and quiet - a contrast to the chaos that had erupted an ocean away. We walked two blocks up the main street to find a place open for breakfast and leisurely ate. We returned to the motel about 9:30 AM and decided it was time to leave this beautiful town perched on the edge of the ocean at sea level. We headed up into high ground toward the west coast of the peninsula, the coast away from the Pacific Ocean.

The excellent road wound in hairpins and esses through the mountains. At one point, we stopped at a lookout and gazed toward Peru with a prayer in our hearts for the suffering there and wondered what was going to happen to the coast in New Zealand and the surrounding South Pacific Islands.

Later I heard that indeed the siren sounded in Whitianga as the tsunami rose about one meter, not really threatening anything yet. The alert continued throughout the day since a tsunami can grow larger beyond the first wall of water. The highest level reached in some places of New Zealand was 3 meters. Fortunately it did not reach damaging proportions.

We drove back on the coastal road along the west side of Coromandel Peninsula, close to the shore. The water didn't seem high and we were never in danger.

Cheers,
Kiwi Traveler