Three Great Camp Spots

Over the last three nights we have had three great camping spots.

Manganese Point on the Whangarei Heads. 
This site belongs to the NZMCA and is one of the nicest we have stayed in yet. As I have mentioned before, it is because that we are travelling in winter and are not having to share the facilities with lots of others we are seeing this areas in a whole different light if we were there in mid summer.
This site took us down to the water's edge in an area surrounded by bush. To our east we looked out across the bay to the Marsden Oil Refinery, and to the west back down the harbour to Whangarei.

Snells Beach East
This one is listed in our Travel Directory, as well as a new facility I have come across that helps you find all sorts of places and services in an area - Campermate, a free app that you download onto your phone.
The Snells Beach area is definitely a motorhome friendly town, with several designated areas that allow you to camp for a maximum of two nights provided you are certified self contained.  We parked in a reserve on the waters edge. It was very popular with the locals and many were taking their morning walk or out exercising  their dogs.

Gulf Harbour, Whangaparoa Peninsula.
This is a very popular spot with motorhome owners and even at this time of the year we have shared the spot with at least a dozen campers. According to one chap Stephen spoke to, it is camping jowl by jowl come summer. Our park for the night looked across the harbour to Auckland city with the Sky Tower visible on the horizon.
Another point in this camp's favour is all the flash shiny boats in the marina beside us. Very tempting for a lad who loves his boats.

Unfortunately not a good photo but  
Auckland is in the distance.

Bay of Islands

I have never been further than Whangarei before so was very keen to see the Bay of Islands. Over the years I have had lots of friends who have holidayed here and always loved it.

We had a couple of days in Kerikeri before moving onto Paihia. This area is truly beautiful. Plenty of blue water, lots and lots of bays, sheltered waters with a resort feel.

We had three days exploring the area which included our fishing trip. Also on our list of places to visit was The Treaty House at Waitangi, and a trip across to Russell. From Paihia there is a car ferry that crosses every 10 minutes and took us there for $12. Both places are well worth a visit and are full of NZ history. The Waitangi grounds take pride of place in the area, looking across the expansive lawns and down to the waters edge. The flag staff can be seen from all around the bays.

The Flagstaff at Waitangi.

The Treaty House

Across the water at Russell we saw another flagstaff. This one has even more history with it being the one Hone Heke cut down four times as a protest about now the Treaty wasn't delivering on its promises. We climbed the hill to this site, for our morning exercise.  We found the historic part of Russell a very interesting place to visit. The buildings are all restored and the locals are very friendly.

The infamous flagstaff.

One of the many historic buildings in Russell.

A view from the top of a lookout we walked up.

Paihia is well developed to cope with both the tourists and local holiday makers alike. There are lots of bars and restaurants along the water front. We sampled the hospitality of one of the newest establishments late in afternoon one day. Built out over the water next to wharf it was the perfect place to enjoy and drink a watch the sun set behind the hills. This is certainly an area we would like to return to one day for another holiday.

The Paihia Library - the restored house of the Williams
family who were early Missionaries in Paihia.

Heritage NZ

We have been members of Heritage NZ, formerly known as NZ Historic Places Trust, for several years now. It is an especially good membership to have if you are traveling overseas, in particular to the UK as we have full reciprocal entry rights to all UK National Trust properties. With an annual family membership cost of $69 it doesn't take long to recoup your outlay.

It is much the same in NZ if you are moving around like we are. We have made excellent use of our membership this week.  Northland is one of the places that Heritage NZ have several properties that you can visit.  By visiting these properties we have learnt a lot of history about early NZ in the area.   We hope to make use of this membership in both Auckland and Wellington too.

Kerikeri Mission Station
This was the first Heritage NZ property that we visited.  Our membership gained us free entry to the all of the Stone Store and a tour of Kemp House. The Store has been open for trading since 1836 and still has a large range of goods available to buy. The upstairs area of the Stone Store has an excellent museum type exhibition of the history of the early missionaries and their life as it is entwined with the local Maori history.  Looking at the building and reading the stories it really makes you realise how difficult the lives of our early pioneers must have been, and how good our lives are today!!

The tour through Kemp House has a two fold purpose. Not only do you hear the stories from an experienced guide who has a wealth of knowledge, but it means that the exhibits and house are not subject to any damage. This house is NZ's oldest building and first substantial European building. It was built in 1832 for the first Missionary in the area, including James and Charlotte Kemp. The Kemp family lived in this property until 1974 when it was then gifted to NZ Historic Places Trust.
Stone Store and Kemp House

Stone Store, Kemp House with Anglican Church in the distance.

Kemp House

Te Waimate Mission
On our way to Paihia we did a slight detour and went to visit the Te Waimate Mission House. This property is NZ's second oldest surviving building as well as supporting the remains of the earliest farm established in NZ.  It was developed by the missionaries to bring European style farming to NZ as well as trying to provide enough food for all the people arriving and living at the mission. Te Waimate was also the place of the second signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.  
The house is well worth a visit. To have built such a substantial house back in the early 1830s is testimony to the tenacity of these early pioneers.
Te Waimate Mission

Te Waimate Mission House

Pompallier
Our visit to Russell took us to this property.  We realised it had a strong French connection but not much else. This building differs from the other mission houses we have seen and is instead made of 'rammed earth' walls. By the time this building was built in 1842, timber was in short supply and becoming too expensive.  It was built for the French-Marist mission and included a printery and tannery. It was here that over 40 000 books were printed in Maori.  Once again an excellent museum is housed in the upstairs part of the building, while downstairs is still a working printery.  Tours are available but we chose to explore the building and surrounds on our own.
Pompallier

A Day Fishing

After watching numerous fishing programmes in the Bay of Islands areas we decided that a fishing trip might be a good idea. A quick search of the internet found us a reasonably priced half day trip out of Paihia so we booked ahead for this Sunday. The small print said we would get a full refund if the weather didn't permit the trip to go ahead.  Today dawned sunny and calm so there were no worries there.

Fishing Trip link

Our trip was on a 30 foot aluminium launch with 3 others plus our skipper Rob. He took us well out in to the Bay looking for the best spot to catch  a snapper or two.  Unfortunately today wasn't going to be the day any of us landed a trophy fish but we did enjoy ourselves. It wasn't long before Stephen had his first fish - a blue cod. Can you believe we came all this way to catch Southland's favourite fish?
It was some time before I got my first fish - they were all very much cleverer than me and got off with the bait more times than I kept count.  However I did eventually catch several snapper, as did all of us, but unfortunately most of them were undersized and were returned to the sea.  Stephen did manage to land a snapper we were able to keep, so we had enough fish to have for our tea.

Snapper, blue cod and kumara chips for tea.

Rainbow Connection

We have seen several rainbows lately. Of course this is because of the inclement weather patterns. One moment the sunshine is shining and the next there is a 'sun shower' as referred to by some of the locals.
On consulting our 'Our Drive scenic NZ book' for the Matauri Bay area it said a must see was the memorial for the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace flag ship that was bombed by the French way back in 1985. Our trip to Kerikeri took us to this bay (30km north) via a coastal tourist detour and it gave us fantastic views across more northern parts of parts of the Bay of Islands. As we are travelling in winter we had the car park to ourselves and our exercise for the day was to walk to the top of the hill that is home to the memorial. We had to walk through the camping ground which we understand is home to thousands of campers in the summer. Yesterday there were just a handful of campers, and a dive school class setting of for a lesson.

Spot the bus in the car park.

It is quite a steep walk up the hill but well worth the effort. The views from the top look out to the Cavalli Islands and back down and over Matauri Bay with its one kilometre of white sand and of course our lonely bus in the car park. In the distance - a rainbow!

Cavalli Island in the distance and the site of the
Rainbow Warrior wreck.

The memorial is made from locally sourced materials and represents a 'black rainbow'. On another rock is a diagram indicating the location of the final resting place of the Rainbow Warrior tucked into the Cavalli Islands. It has become a living reef,  attracting marine life and recreational divers.

It was lovely to be able to enjoy all of this without the thousands of others who will be there in the summer. One of the many bonuses for travelling at this time of the year.

Links for further reading if you are interested in this piece of NZ history.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matauri_
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_(1955)

Posted with Blogsy

Fire Fire

Our Travel Directory takes us to all sorts of wonderful spots and places to camp for the night.  Last night we chose the Mangonui Fire Station. They are very happy to have you park out the back of the station and according to our friendly volunteer fireman, there are many campers parked on their grassy grounds in summer. Of course it being winter and all grass and soft ground up this way being 'soggy' we are very conscientious of keeping the bus wheels on the hard ground.  This safe spot is all for a $5 donation to the Volunteer Fire Service.

Now we have never had 'a fire' incident in the bus to date other than the smoke alarm sounding at the slightest overheating such as cooking toast. So it was extremely embarrassing this morning to find that I had left a towel on the gas hob and it was still on!!!  Of course the smoke alarm failed to sound and suddenly we were aware that there was lots of smoke with flames about to ignite. It was quickly dispatched outside onto the ground and stamped on, and the all the bus fans turned on to rid us of the smell.

Just as I was suggesting to Stephen that we get rid of the evidence, our friendly fireman turned up for a good morning chat!! Oops. Just as well we were able to cope with the situation ourselves. A lesson well learnt as we have found it is very easy to leave the gas hob on the low setting and not realise it. Also a valuable reminder to continue  our practice of turning the gas tap off at bedtime, when travelling or when away from the bus.

All the way to the top!!

We had discussed early on in our trip that if possible we would do a bus/tour trip to the very top of huge North Island. It would mean that Stephen would be able to sit back an relax as well as hopefully getting to drive along 90 Mile Beach. Some research on the Internet showed us that we should  be able to get one for about $50 each.  So on arrival into Kaitaia we headed in the Information Centre to book our seats. We had checked the tides and thought that Tuesday would allow for a beach trip. We were offered three different companies and we almost thought we were jinxed when the first two weren't running that day. However how luck wasn't completely out when the third company Dune Rider had seats for us.

Our 'off road'  and well-decorated bus.

A view of 90mile beach through the front window
with our driver Paul in silhouette. 

The price was $55 and it turned out to be excellent value for money.  It included entry to the Historical Gumdiggers Park, a drive along 90 Mile Beach, stops for photo opportunities, sand boarding on boogie board down the giant sand dunes, walk to to the Cape Reinga lighthouse,  a sit down lunch and an excellent driver commentary pointing out points of interest along the way. We left Kaitaia at 8:45 and were taken to the Ancient Kauri Kingdom Shop to meet up with another group from Pahia making our group 14 for the day.  We were returned to Kaitaia about 4pm having had an excellent day, and would recommend a trip like this (especially with Dune Rider) to anyone wishing to go All the Way to the Top.
Some links.
Dune Rider
Gumdiggers Park
90 Mile Beach
Ancient Kauri Kingdom

A kauri log that had been buried for thousands of year.

The origin of the 'gum' boots - once belonging to a gumdigger.

A scene in the Historic Gumdiggers Park.

 

Me sand-boarding down a sand dune.

Where the Tasman meets the Pacific.

The end of the road.

The iconic photo - this time in the north.
It matches our southern most one at Slope Point over
two months ago. 

The Mighty Kauri

Heading into Northland from Auckland around the Kaipara Harbour you soon start to see the evidence that the Kauri played in the lives of our pioneer families.  Our first encounter was at  the Bushman's Memorial Park just north of Paparoa. This took us a couple of kms up a narrow gravel road to a small stand of kauri and a quick 15 minute walk around the track.  Although the trees weren't huge it did give us a taste of what was to come.

The next stop in our 'Driving Guide to Scenic NZ' was the Matakohe Kauri Museum. Our book said to allow at least a couple of hours to view this major drawcard for the area and it wasn't wrong. Although we initially thought the $25 entrance fee per person was a little steep we would have to say that it is excellent value and that this would have to be the 'best' museum we have been to.  Your ticket entry is valid for 24 hours so that means you can come and go during that period of time. And the bonus for us is that it is listed in our travel directory as POP so we were also able to stay the night in the car park, and view some of the displays outside of the main galleries the next morning. 

This museum has an excellent website if you want to look further:  Matakohe Kauri Museum

or better still put it on your list of 'must sees'.

The museum has a focus on just three feature areas The Kauri tree, the timber and gum, and the early pioneers.  The displays are divided into a series of halls and galleries, each depicting an aspect of the tree feature areas. Whole scenes were set up to give an almost life-like look that included mannequins that represented local settler families. It was this particular feature that gave it authenticity and a very real link to both past and present families.  In the photos below these scenes are 'real' with the mannequins in them - not just a mural as it seems to look.

Next stop was the Trounson Kauri Park, that was by way of a  alternative road to S12 and a place that where we could have lunch and a 45 minute walk. Unfortunately the heavy rain in the area over the past couple of weeks meant the track was flooded and impassable.  We could see that it would be a very popular site under dry conditions, as adjacent was a DOC camp.

Tane Mahuta, that giant of a Kauri has always been on my list of 'must sees' and it can be found in the Waipoua Forest, which S12 passes through.  But before we got to that tree, we stopped one km south to visit some other famous trees. By this stage the rain was relentless but out came the umbrellas and gumboots and off we walked to visit the two closest, the Four  Sisters and  Te Matua Ngahere.  The Four Sisters is a rare example of four trees sprouting from one base, while Te Matua Ngahere is the second largest kauri still standing. It is a huge tree with a 16.4m circumference. 

Down the road we walked the 5 minutes to Tane Mahuta.  This tree rises 51.5m  and is often referred to the Lord of the Forest.  Standing as close as you can (barriers keep you back from the base as their root structure is very close to the surface) it sure makes you feel small.