Back to the travelogue: Rawene and points south west

Mid February: After Waitangi, and based on looking after my neck and shoulders we decided not to head further up into Northland - it is a long way and the additional driving is a bit of pain - literally.

So we headed for the west coast, with our day due to finish at Rawene. We have never been there but we know of it as friends used to live there. 

They never told us it was comprised of hills, hills and more hills!

And the holiday park is at the top of what felt like the highest one. The GPS said turn left, turn right, turn left and the entrance is 200 metres on the left. What it didn't say is that I would need to get down into 1st gear to get around the right-angled corners that involved continuous increases in altitude! And it didn't say that the entrance was also around a corner with an altitude increase!

The office was at the top of the hill, and our powered sites were part of the way down the other side - and around a right angled corner (on a downhill this time) just before the swimming pool... David got out of the motorhome and walked down - a man of no courage. But I did feel the need to engage the lowest gear that's only for use on steep downhill pieces.

But the view was wonderful! 

Natali, who lives in Parkwood, tells me that she lived one bay over from where we were, and this was her view too!

We were the first ones there and could choose whichever sites we wanted; so naturally we chose the ones with the best views - looking out over part of the Hokianga Harbour. The harbour is huge!!

The Hokianga Harbour covers a total intertidal and water area of 11,065 hectares, making it New Zealand's fourth-largest harbour. The massive tidal inlet spans a navigable length of roughly 30 km inland from the Tasman Sea, splitting into the Waihou and Mangamuka Rivers near Kohukohu. 

Intertidal Composition: The harbour hosts over 2,371 hectares of mangrove forest and roughly 850 hectares of pristine saltmarsh.

 Geographic Feature: The inlet is a classic drowned river valley system, formed approximately 12,000 years ago as the last ice age receded and sea levels rose. 

Anyway, back to the motorcamp:

 

You can see by the fact that the Holiday Park is in a white section of the map that it is very high up!

 We were joined later by about 4 other vehicles who didn't have such a lovely view - we three agreed that it pays to be early!

While I did a bit of work, Julia and David took a walk down (and I mean down: right down to sea level) to the town with a short list of things to purchase from any grocery store they could find. They came back looking remarkably fresh considering they had been playing the part of mountain goats, and declared that before we left the following day we needed to go down so I could see it for myself. 

 We were off to bed early, and when I woke the next morning, I found Julia sitting on the outer deck at the bench - she was happy to receive her coffee there while she caught up on line with her UK-based entourage.

Leaving the site was just as spectacular as arriving - down down down through the bushclad driveway, with caravans and campers dotted in between the trees. And then down down down to the town where I successfully parallel parked on a slope. Handbrake firmly on, reverse gear selected - there is no Park option in a Fiat Ducato.

We checked out the shops and the one I was particularly keen to see was the Puzzle Shop that Natali from Parkwood had told me about. What a beaut place - small and very full. I bought two jigsaws - one for my sister Dee who loves jigsaws. This one was quite diabolical as it has a picture on both sides, so every piece needs to be sorted and determined for its up or downside! Mean, eh? And the front and back pictures were very similar ... The other puzzle was for the Lodge residents here at Parkwood. It had tulips and looked beautiful.

The couple who own the shop have been there for many years, and they remembered Natali, as well as remembering our friends who taught there way back in the late 60s and 70s. 

We bought some fruit and veg at a very Julia-type shop and then headed away. 

Natali had also told me we needed to stop at Omapere and at the entrance to Hokianga Harbour, and also at Manea Footsteps of Kupe... So we did sightseeing and the countryside is beautiful. Roads are narrow and winding so you need to take care.

We stopped at Omapere School and saw the pou carved by the children. Very impressive and after our visit to Ruapekapeka, we are very keen on pou!  

The pou at Omapere School

This korowai was made and donated to the school. It is displayed in the admin area. I had gone in just to let them know we were admiring at the pou. FYI, most schools in NZ are wide open to visitors. None of the high fences and locked gates!

We wanted to visit the Footsteps of Kupe exhibition but there was a one hour wait and we needed to keep going so we could visit Tane Mahuta and the Kauri Shop at Kaihu. We did stop at the Arai Te Uru Reserve and walked to the Signal Station Lookout at the southern entrance to Hokianga Harbour.

 

Our intention was to go and see Tane Mahuta in the Waipoua Forest. It's amazing how the terrain changes suddenly from hilly and farmland to kauri forest - and that is just beautiful. Intense, deep and amazing. What is terribly sad is that most of the countryside was formerly kauri forest - but such a huge amount of it was chopped down. 

The forest floor here in NZ is very different from English woods. The undergrowth is dense here.

Not the best shot. However that is Tane Mahuta from about 100 metres away. It is enormous. It is not the largest kauri in the forest, but it is the tallest.

 

As we drove away I got David to take this photo of two kauri, one either side of the road. This forest used to be full of them, as did a significant portion of the countryside around here. It was ruthlessly cut down and milled in the mid to late 1800s. There is a Kauri Museum in Matakohe - David and I visited it last time we were up here and I cried at the loss.

We stayed a couple of nights at a motorcamp in Dargaville. It was a lovely place - very clean and the sites were spacious. And we got all the laundry done while we were there! There were very few people in the place which is a shame. The problem is, I think, that Dargaville is not a tourist place so people tend to stop off to shop and then drive on. We wanted to stop because we needed to pace ourselves and not be driving such long days. While I did some work one day, David and Julia went to visit the Dargaville Museum - apparently it was pretty special. But quite a long way away from the centre of town - up on top of a hill. It was a museum of machinery, farm and forestry, I think. Julia said that our mutual friend John would have loved it.

We headed then for Matakohe, the township with the Kauri Museum that David and I went to last time we were up in the north. This time, I just would not go. We told Julia about it, but she turned it down too.

However we met Leslye there. Leslye is Melita's mum and we had lunch together in the cafe before she headed back to Tinopai. I have a feeling we blobbed that afternoon... It turned out that the man who now runs the motorcamp also owns the one David and I used to stay at in Tauranga when we visited Barry and Pauline.

We had decided that we would cut short our trip north of Auckland - having not gone further north than Waitangi, we had cut a fair few days of travelling. So we organised to return Julia's camper (Bessie) a few days before the due date.

So that we could deliver Bessie back to Whitford, we needed to find somewhere to stay that was north of Auckland city and within easy reach for a Sunday return across the Harbour Bridge and with no rush hour traffic. Do you know how hard it is to find a place that meets those criteria - almost everywhere seemed to be a regional council property and they were closed for reservations over the weekend and inaccessible by phone.

Definitely worth staying here, even though it looks a bit dodgy when you go in.

 

David who has much more patience than me, surprise surprise, took over the search. He found the Auckland North Shore Motels and Holiday Park, between Hillcrest and Northcote. I phoned and booked and thought it sounded rather casual. When we arrived we thought it was a strange looking place, crowded entrance, lots of terraced cabins/motel units around the outside and caravan/motorhome sites in the middle.  There were lots of permanents living in the cabins and a number of them in caravans too. It looked like a place that people came to live if there was no social housing available and rents out in the private market were out of their reach. They were all very friendly and while it was a bit spooky at first, we soon got over ourselves and had a very peaceful night. Cleanest bathrooms we saw all trip, Julia declared.

The next day was Sunday and we headed across the Harbour Bridge - no trouble with staying in the correct lanes this time... and on to Whitford where we emptied Bessie of all Julia's guff plus the bedding we had provided. Somehow while David was putting stuff in my clothes locker  he knocked the wiring for the rear vision camera so it stopped working - aaarrrggghhh! We had a fiddle with the wiring and the connections to the monitor in case it was either one of those moving parts that aren't meant to, and hey presto, it started up again! Phew! I can drive without the rear vision monitor, but it is much more comfortable to have it working!

So then it was on to Hamilton. and definitely away from the Northland and Auckland regions. 

More later. But hopefully not such a long break next time.