Out and About – Napier to Kidnappers

We walked out along the foreshore part way to Cape Kidnappers, (first place on the planet to see the sunrise) on a grey day with a howling wind for company. Through a caravan park at the end of the road, which had been rebuilt and chunks of roadway now laid on the narrow beach. Pigeons are nesting in the cliffs closer to vans. There is a skull and crossbones flag flapping, and I swear strains of duelling banjos are audible. “Wish I’d known it was all along the beach,” says Rod.

“I did tell you.”

Grey on grey – Kenny in the shadow of Cape Kidnapper’s cliffs

“Would have gotten organized and gone the whole way.”

Hopefully the day would have been prettier, and the wind less the sort that was set on tumbling us head first onto the sand. Waves biting into the already heavily eroded shore. Waters are churned so much that it look like miso soup.

It’s all very different from the solitary ranger’s hut, where you registered your walk and were warned if it was too close to the incoming tide. Now there are two caravan parks, albeit basic, substantial café and wineries in the area offered accommodation. There were several tours, but as usual we opted out, and were just doing our own thing. It all seems so ‘big-business’ to look at Gannets. “Oversized sea-gulls,” Rod calls them.

Famous birdlife on Cape Kidnappers

Several vehicles passed by, quad bikes, trail bikes, 4 WDs and small tractors with backpackers perched behind drivers. Awesome cliffs totally dominate. Wind forces us into a lean forward posture. Stronger gusts lift any loose sand, the back of our legs are grit-bitten. Recent rock fall and pine trees litter the scene, with giant rubble heaps. (Mccarthy’s The Road – ish) Water flows from under boulders, some gargantuan versions sit on the beach and we are sure these were washed there rather than fallen from above.

One overloaded tractor could not make the incline through the pebbles off the beach. So eventually everyone had to dismount and walk. Made for some interesting photographs with a half bogged tractor.

What do you do when the tour vehicle gets bogged?

I release some stones from being trapped on the beach.

“Don’t you think the tide would have done that?” Says Rod.

“Yes, but I got there sooner.”

Motor Camp Rules

I find this article in our travels and are taken by it so much that it gets repeated here.
Mike O’Donnell from the business section of the Dominion Post. 18th January 2014. In my mind he captures much that is unique about the East Cape
My family and have just got back from our annual holiday at the North Island’s East Cape. It’s a place that seems to have a slippery relationship with time. Love that phrase, another less cliché way to so that time has stood still here! Once you get North of Gisborne (he is travelling up from Wellington, whereas we are going the other way: Keep the water closer to the car, all the way) the human and physical geography seem remarkably close to what Bruce Mason chronicled so elegantly in “The Pohutakawa Tree”.

In flower

I find an obscure NZ literary site that finally tells me something about this tale – turns out it is play, which is why I haven’t been able to find it in any library catalogues. Further references to the writer are about his work in the 1950s and 60s, and that he was one of the first to deal with Maori and cultural themes.

More artistic, still in flower

THE POHUTUKAWA TREE by Bruce Mason. Price Milburn, Wellington 7/6. Reviewed by Earle Spencer.
The Pohutukawa Tree by Bruce Mason, is a play about a widow of sixty, Aroha Mataira, who lives with her two children Queenie and Johnny, at Te Parenga. As her children grow up Mrs Mataira teaches them to believe in their Maori-tanga and in the Christian religion.

Māori tanga

When the play begins, Queenie is seventeen and Johnny is eighteen. The family works for Mr Atkinson who has fifteen acres of the best land in Te Parenga laid out as a citrus orchard.
The story is simple enough. Queenie meets a young man and falls in love with him. After three months she finds that she is going to have a baby but he refuses to marry her because she is a Maori. Mrs Mataira sends Queenie away to her people, the Ngati Raukura, at Tamatea, to have the baby. Johnny reacts violently to the family’s unhappiness. He gets drunk and taking a taiaha, goes to the Church and smashes the stained glass window of the Light of the World behind and above the altar. He is charged with wilful damage and sentenced to three months’ reformative detention.
The play makes it clear that the young ones, Queenie and Johnny, will outlive their troubles, but the double disgrace kills Aroha. The people of the community who know her and respect her cannot comfort her. She wills her death rather than have anything to do with their cheap alternatives. She is found at the end with the taiaha by two old Maori women dressed in black with black scarves around their heads. Ka to he ra, ka ura he ra.
The play was first produced in 1957 by the New Zealand Players Theatre Workshop at Wellington and Auckland. It has since been produced in 1959 on the B.B.C. Television Sunday Night Theatre series and in 1960 in New Zealand by the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, and recently, most successfully in Wales. Aroha Mataira and her children, the farmer Atkinson and his wife and daughter, the Reverend Athol Sedgewick, Claude Johnson, the land agent, and the others in this play have been introduced to millions of people. These people have seen and heard Mr Mason describe things as they are.
Roy McDowell, the grocer’s son who refuses to marry Queenie, the daughter of twenty-five generations of the Ngati-Raukura, says, “Aw, what does it matter to my Mum that Queenie comes from a long line of chiefs. She’s just a Maori to her.”
When Mrs Mataira is mortally sick Mrs Atkinson, the farmer’s wife, says, “For nearly twenty years I patronised her, thought of her almost as a servant…. And when it comes to a crisis what do I do? Snip flowers.”
Clive Atkinson has a rough affection for Mrs Mataira but he wants her land. Johnny at eighteen loves horses and reads comics. And then there is Aroha Mataira herself, who minds her own business and who will not listen when the Reverend Athol Sedgwick says to her, “Forget greatness; forget history.”
Mr Mason has dedicated the book to the Maori people with these words, “Nga mihi me taku aroha ki te iwi Maori.”
I recommend it to you. If I could just find a copy somewhere.

But back to that news article:

The people are warm, and are happy to have social interactions that last longer than they absolutely have to. A far cry from city life where people seem to be looking for a way to end conversations rather than prolong them.
About six years ago we discovered little motor camp secreted right on a deserted beach; the camp was rudimentary but the beach was pure picture-book. The camp was run by an Ngati Porou couple; she beautiful but fiercely effective, he a gentle giant easily 18 stone but sweet natured.

Could be her?

Sure he is not this scary

When you checked in the moku’ed matriarch gave clear instructions that it was a family camp and not a place for parties.
Our first night there we noticed a campsite a few down from us didn’t seem to have got the message. While they weren’t rowdy or rude, there was a bit of music and some sounds of spirited consumption. But not more than you’d expect from some folks enjoying their holiday. Next morning at 7am a huge John Deere tractor pulled up in front of the revelers’ caravan. The gentle giant knocked on their door and said, “the wife says you’ve got 10 minutes to pack up; then I’m pulling youse out to the road, this is a family camp”.
The ensuing 10 minutes of hungover chaos was funny to everyone except the hastily packing partiers. Ten minutes later the big diesel tractor starts up and the van is pulled out to the road, awning akimbo. The event became instant folklore, but the message was clear: you obey the rules or you get tossed out. Rules were clear and justice was swift.
The journalist was using this recount to open a discussion about how money, power, connections and a long list of sundries can get the rules bent in some way. I can’t help but agree with his argument that this is a bad social trend.
One of our observations while travelling was the way social attitudes towards consumption of alcohol, especially by Maori groups were being attacked. The message is protecting your ‘bros from the evils of how did O’Donnell put it – ‘spirited consumption…’ in all sorts of ways

Out to the east continued…

Hick’s Bay is the next populated stop. Largely unchanged since my previous visit in the 1980s. A few more rooms in the Motel, where we find evidence of a famous marathoner who was born and lived in the area, no surprise, you could run endless km here. The restaurant has posters and shirts showing a 2:11:04 Boston Marathon time.
…Dinner at Six, an institution of Hicks Bay Motel since 1960, is served at the 60-seat restaurant The Finish Line, named after motel owner and New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games representative John Campbell, who is New Zealand’s Boston Marathon masters champion and record holder after nearly 23 years. The bar was named 2:11:04 in recognition of his 1990 winning time…
From the top of the cliff motel level you can walk the trails down to the beach, 30 minutes on the Zig-Zag, which has a warning; at your own Risk. Apparently there is a glow-worm grotto down this track. Instead we drive the still unsealed roads down to the pier, turning back when they have degraded to a point where we don’t feel safe. But we are able to look across white beaches with the East Cape accessory of storm blown timber strewn along the sands.

Their land – do not enter without permission

There are signs that indicate tracks lead to ‘Private Beaches, no Access’, or ‘This land is the property of Marae Taonga’. While this gave slight hints about some of the race problems. We are reaffirmed by media reports that one of these Marae gave accommodation to a visiting Ugandan Cricket team. Then the winner in the steaks of road-side signs – Pig Dog Training & Book Binder. Serving to remind us that we are travelling through serious hill-billy-ville.

Marae House.

Once we start to encounter those locations that the Lonely Planet referred to as missing out on quainttillator there are still interesting curios. Such as the 1910 Bank of New South Wales building in Tokomaru Bay, that is what Wespac used to be called for those too young to know.

Quaint or not?

Ok the towns aren’t cute but they really do have wilderness ambience. Peeling paint, just audible strains of duelling banjos and rails to tie up your horse for example. Can you have both quaint and wild-east together? Out east has a strange ring to it, when every other notion of such a wilderness includes all things westerly. But we do see the sort of things that offer confirmation of this wildness, like someone moving their cows on horseback.
By the time we are near Tolaga Bay the sky begins to divide into storm coming and summer blue. Eventually the grey dominates and it begins to rain. We wanted to get out to more of the piers along the way, but either unsealed roads or this serious change in the weather put us off.

Long Jetty – storm coming

We stop at Te Araroa to visit the Manuka Oil shop. They are mulching branches to extract the oil which fills the air with a pine-like aroma.

Smell the tea-tree

What a pity I can’t blog aromas; on second thoughts that might not be such a good thing. The tiny flowers which provide not only the medicinal oil but a very popular honey remind of Geraldton Wax blooms.
Another stop along the way was at Te Waha o Rerekohu to see the world’s biggest and oldest Pohutkawa tree. We walk around the sprawling canopy that could be like Hanging Rock, hide all sorts of secrets.

The mother tree

One tree – ancient

The distances are like back home, 440km to Cape Regina was encountered. But the road winding in and out along the coast and eventually through the grey rain was nothing like an Australian Road trip.
What I remember of the 1980s was that this whole area was undiscovered. Locals had secrets, lived simple lifestyles, grew things fresh, picked, hunted or swapped to get by. Now there are three different tour companies offering options, cafes selling essential equipment, and even the most isolated area is open to mountain bikes, kayak and rafting. At least you can still see a sign that says: Don’t shoot my pigs!

Driving and Extremities

At Whakatane there are vendors offering all sorts of trips to White Island. You can fly, which we felt was beyond our budget, but not until we arrived did we realize that boat trips were on the offer. A lunar landscape with constant sulfur fumes, and the chance that at any time the whole thing or major sections might erupt, hmmm not high on our lists.

White island, clear day

I found information about disasters on White Island, 10 miners missing without a trace, when the supply vessel arrived there was no response to their signals, they found ‘the landscape rearranged…’ the only survivor was Houdini, the cat. Anyway after the day trip to Rotorua and milling around the area there was plenty to keep us occupied for the allocated three days in Whakatane.

I did the Kohi Point track, something Rod felt was beyond his capabilities at the time. Around the headlands from Ohope Beach back to Whakatane.

Soon no hand rail

The trail was along the ridge top for a section, with steep sides where I could look down on the town and out to the East. Also along to Otarawairere Beach, not a sand beach, but instead tiny fragments of shell and rock nibblettes, soft with silica, I fill my pockets to bring Rod a memento of the walk. The rocky outcrops along the coast remind me of similar walks near Port Macquarie. But nowhere as steep.

Rocky headlands- head spin ..

About 40 minutes along the trail, and after having to rock-hop along the end of one beach, (the tide hadn’t gone out far enough) I’m thinking, well I’ve had enough now, but I still have to get back to town. In the middle of nowhere I come across someone working, repairing steps and replacing sections that are worse for wear, always knew that must happen just never encountered any work in progress. He seems to have minimal equipment, only a small hand saw. Suppose that is logical, having to walk in, you wouldn’t bring a workshop. The walk is documented as 2 ½ hour but I finish in exactly an hour. Could have gone horribly wrong though, I approached another couple from behind, and scared the ‘be-jesus’ out of them by actually saying something and they directed me to the branch back towards the town. Where they had started an out and back walk, if not I’d probably have wound up somewhere much further away from the Captain’s Cabin.

As we leave town I’m sure White Island can be seen out there on the horizon, this being the clearest day so far. Previously any scanning the horizon had been through haze or low clouds. We’ve heard bad reports about the Pacific Coast Highway, but compared with something more familiar like the Grand Pacific Drive, or the Pacific Coast highway in USA the road is pristine. And improvement work is in progress. We constantly turn “oh Wow!” corners, the sort where a new spectacular view was encountered.

Grand Pacific Australia

Pacific Highway USA

And NZ, which is best?

It’s low tide as we go around the Ohino harbor and the oyster farms are visible. Every little bay and inlet seems to have at least one campervan. It is Christmas holidays after all and it appears that the East Cape is the new go-to for family camping adventures. Our last chance to detour and take a major highway was the intersection of National highway 2 and State road 35, but we already discussed the short cut, being influenced by the Lonely Planet …has long been somewhat of a rite of passage road trip for New Zealanders, but overseas visitors could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about…between Opotiki and Gisborne the Pacific Coast is far away beyond the hills and the road snakes through farmland that missed its makeover by the quaintillator…What would they know? Let’s find out for ourselves, this way we can keep the West and East Coast thing happening.

Not Quaint?

Besides which we have a room booked in Gisborne, so getting their early isn’t a priority.

There seems more farms and crops than the tag of isolated East Cape might suggest.

We make Te Kaha our early morning cappuccino stop, a ritual that is becoming a bit of a tradition in 2014, a bit like the Hobbits suggesting second breakfasts. This again seems out of place on what is supposed to be an unpeopled cape.

Tiny coves and isolated bays

The resort

Some three stories, built in concrete, but tasteful resort hotel complex. So out of place compared to the squat cream walled, red roofed buildings of the towns we have been passing through. According to a family member on-site to help our managers during the busy time the complex was a re-build after a fire destroyed the pub. She tell us that most locals, ‘holiday in February and March, as the weather is more settled.’ (a major storm rolling in later upholds those comments) I take her presence here as anecdotal evidence to support the NZ’ers a nation of sojourners theory.

Looking back I have seen how long this blog was and decided to make it two separate pieces.

Bridges 3

The long drive around the isolated East Cape NZ included some stunning bridges, firstly near the mouth of the Motu River – The Motu River flows through the rugged Raukumara Ranges near Opotiki on the East Coast. This totally unique river is renowned for its unspoiled beauty and isolation. Rod remarks, ‘A real river, a real bridge.’

The Motu River is the North Islands last remaining wilderness river, protected as a “Wilderness Zone” through an act of Parliament.

I find lots on Wiki about the Motu – Forging its way through the vast Raukumara wilderness, the Motu (meaning severed- is that about cutting a path through heavily forested hills?) is the most isolated and untouched of all the North Island rivers. It was the last area of New Zealand to be mapped and still remains much of a mystery. Without a doubt, this is one of country’s finest river adventures. Must have been the case when it was only possible to cross by ferries pulled by horses. I find several historical accounts of some dreadful losses due to flash floods. Or accident victims that died because they could not receive care because they could not cross the river.

Now everything to be said about the Motu relates to rafting, fishing, or wilderness adventures, but not so much about just driving over it. Too tame, too simple I suppose.

I had to hand in my department Lap-top and with it went some saved pictures which included images of the Motu River and bridges. They are sitting in a nice file titled ‘pictures’ but shifting them to another format, still out of my skill-range. I have not yet mastered the art of adding photos from anywhere else than the sky-drive with this new surface. If anyone out there can help me manage this technology, I’d love to hear about it. But in the mean time I will keep taking photos of bridges and waterfalls on the phone, and add them to entries. As you might be able to tell I think I’ve found out how to do this.

So I will try to give you the image of the sight of this river….Wide rocky river bed, where the water can select its favoured course, changing with run-off, shifts in the river bed and probably the tide. Crystal clear green river water twisting below, shades of the trail of the rainbow serpent. The colour can really be seen as a reflection of the surrounding tree-fern forests. Not a building, lamppost, street sign or any other evidence of civilization.

Ah ha, I have learnt a new skill! Feel Ike Tom, Hank’s character on Castaway want to dance around Maccas’s saying “ I have made Fire!”

So you can see, what the Moto is like.