Tongaporutu - part 2

Well, after a time of wonder, I have organised the photos for this post. I am not sure how life goes so quickly now I am almost officially retired, but it does. Perhaps life has stayed at the same pace, but I have slowed down ...

Anyway, enough philosophising. On to photos of one of my favourite places. I will try to get them in chronological order as that will keep the story they are telling more logical.

Day one:
Arrived about 6pm, and pulled up next to a LARGE motorhome and caravan. Very lovely people. While I faffed about with sorting food and drinks, David went down on to the riverbank and took photos for me.

The large hill is on the Gibbs family farm. We used to climb to the top of that and explore. It has the remains of old hangi (cooking pit) sites and lots and lots of pipi shells, discarded after eating the small shellfish inside them. If you consider that the pipi were harvested from in the sand down on the beach and then carried back up the hill for cooking or eating raw, it's easy to see that there was significant effort involved in feeding the extended family (hapu) that lived there.  The hill used to have steps carved in the left hand face, and this is the hill we slid down on cardboard. It now looks EXTREMELY steep to me!  In the foreground are the rocks that have been in place for some years and protect the bank from spring tides. I used to bounce up and down them, but not any more...

Day Two:
We got up early and went for a walk around the front beach - actually the only beach, but as kids we spent most of our time on the river, so the beaches had to be differentiated. But we never called any of the river banks beaches - beaches connote sand, and most of the river covers mudflats - or it did throughout our time there. Much more sand visible now from this point down to the mouth. Walking across here used to be an exercise in mud between the toes and little crabs scuttling away underfoot ...

Looking out to the river mouth as the tide was going out.

As they got older, our kids used to come down and explore this northern piece of coastline - accessed either by dinghy rowed the mile from the bach, or by car and a climb down a steep path from the farm above. In recent years the farmers opened up a paddock to campers. A wonderful (and iconic) spot to view the sunset from.

Patangata Island, formerly a fortified pa at the river mouth, used to watch for and repel invading tribes from the north in the main, I think.

One of the new 'sisters'.  I love this photo.

Two of the remaining old sisters, plus what remains of Elephant Rock (shown closest to the cliffs). The sisters are a few hundred yards north of Elephant Rock, even though it doesn't look like it here.

In the foreground is one of the new sisters formed by the erosion. However, I don't think it'll last terribly long as the erosion is much more severe and fast moving over the last 20 years or so.

The little 'sister' second from the left has already worn away

Two of the 'original' sisters. Terns nest on the top of them. At times it was a race to get past so you didn't get divebombed by them protecting their babies in the nests - how the hell they thought we were a threat given they can fly and we can't ...

Looking north, with Patangata Island and the northern coast and farmland in the background.

This is what remains of Elephant Rock - we couldn't get closer to check out whether it was the back legs or the trunk that have been eroded/fallen away. When we were kids it was a great place to explore as it had long crevices in the rocks that housed very large red crabs ...

Part of the slips from the cliffs on to the beach. Farmland being eroded quite rapidly.

The root systems of trees don't save the cliff from the battering of the sea - but the trees just slid down still in situ.

And a section of the bank near the river has fallen away here, most likely from heavy rainfalls creating gaps and weakening the bank until it fell. I would like to know what created the rock that was in that large round hole. If anyone has any info, please let me know.

And here's the round rock - it didn't look any different from the other lumps of papa on the beach apart from being spherical, which is unusual.  So why so round? Why so distinctive in a cliff that is usually in strata not spheres?

The oyster-catcher prints as we approached the campsite again.

OK, that's enough photos for this post. I am going to have to do a third one! You have been warned ...
Just so you know though, I am mainly posting these because I want my two kids to see them now that they both live overseas (but spent much childhood and a fair amount of adulthood time here), and I need the visual memories intact and in one place. We have well over 20,000 images on the computer, and while they are easily accessed, we very rarely flip through them like we would through a photo album. So this blog is my version of that.