Kia Ora

Kia Ora from Aotearoa.  Hi from The Land of the Long White Cloud.  G'day from NZ.


We had an uneventful flight from Sydney to Auckland on Saturday 24th March.  We left Sydney about 20 minutes late and landed in Auckland about 20 minutes early, thanks to a hefty tailwind.  We picked up our hire car just as it started to rain.  After a slight  directional mishap on our way out of Auckland (i.e. we got lost and were helped on our way by a very nice lady who was heading our way so we were able to follow her to the motorway), we were on our way to Northland - the spiky bit on the North Island.  We drove in the rain for 2 1/2 hours to Whangerei (pronounced fong-a-ray)  and booked into our home for the next 6 nights.  We have a very nice "tourist flat" at the Alpha Holiday Park.  We'll probably stay in tourist flats for much of our holiday in New Zealand; they are like a self catering motel with separate bedroom.


Day One, we decided to orientate ourselves and see the sights on Whangerei.  First stop was the Whangerei Falls, a 26m high waterfall.  This is a very popular picnic and walking spot and there were plenty of people about.

We walked the 30 minute loop walk to the bottom of the falls through the rainforest.  It was like walking through Middle Earth and we could imagine hobbits and elves hiding amongst the trees.  The well kept path wove past tree ferns and huge kauri trees. There was a group of people abseiling next to the falls.

After the falls we drove to the nearby AH Reed Memorial Kauri Park where we walked among the canopy of the forest to see the giant kauri.  In a race to get to the light, climbers, vines and epiphytes grow on the trunks of the trees and tree ferns.

Then it was off to the Parihaka Lookout to get some panoramic views of Whangerei.  The war memorial is also at this lookout and there is a walk to a maori pa site.  A pa was a maori village, built on several levels with each level heavily fortified.  A pa was almost impenetrable.

Monday 26th March we decided to drive to the Bay of Islands, about 75km north of Whangerei.  Driving in New Zealand is slower than we are used to in Australia.  Even though the speed limit is 100kph, we seem to average about 60kph unless we are on a motorway.  The roads are generally narrow and winding. We took the "scenic route" rather than the direct route north.  We were able to get views of the islands along the way.  We drove on to the town of Russell for lunch.  Russell is a small tourist town with a population of about 1,000.  There's a small museum and a passenger ferry to Pahia on the other side of the bay.  We had fish and chips for lunch at "the best fish and chip place in New Zealand".

Today we headed to the west coast.  We drove the 70km to Dargaville.  This small town has an impressive museum with extensive displays.  We saw a short video about getting kauri from the swamps.  There is speculation that the forests were flattened by tsunami action over the period 900 to 50,000 years ago.  Most of the trees rotted away forming peat bogs.  The kauri wood was preserved by its high resin content.  Some of the recovered logs are 3metres in diameter.  This area also saw extensive digging for fossilised kauri gum.  The museum had several displays covering all manner of collections.  One which really impressed us was a display of piano accordions.  There would have been over 100 accordions stretching from more than 100 years to present.

Our return trip was a drive north to Hokianga Harbour through the magnificent Waipoua Forest.  This was dense native rainforest.  We stopped at the lookout at Opononi where we could see both the Tasman Sea to the west and Hokianga Harbour to the north.  The northern shores of the harbour are immense sand dunes.  Then it was back to Whangerei.