Not wishing to grow old in Sydney's Transit Lounge we took a 'redeye' direct from Melbourne, arriving in Auckland at 2.30 a.m. and grabbed a few hours sleep at a nearby motel. We had located a cheapo hatchback on the Net at $24/day all-inclusive, half the rates of Budget &c. but they still came and picked us up from the motel and gave us a free upgrade to a 4-door Corolla. Go A2B Rentals! Within half an hour we were on the freeway heading North out of town. Doubtless Auckland, City of Sails, is an attractive place but we have plenty of cities at home...
Taking the first side road that seemed to lead towards the West coast, we were soon in rolling green countryside not too different from where we live. The first thing we noticed about NZ was the extraordinary amount of roadkill. Something addles the brains of animals in NZ. There were 5 or 6 freshly dead possums per kilometer, interspersed with hedgehogs and a disturbing number of birds, native and otherwise. At least this carrion supports a vast army of birds of prey.
I don't think I'm excessively burdened with testosterone, but I couldn't just drive past this mini-Matterhorn. Joc valiantly accompanied me to within 150 metres of the top, but by the time I rejoined her it had started to rain :( We picked our way carefully back down the slippery rocks.
We took a quick side trip to see the Tasman at Baylys Beach (a gazetted highway...) but there was only miles of sand dunes and thundering surf, the same old boring stuff we have to put up with at home :) We were actually headed for the Kauri Museum at Matakohe which turned out to be most interesting. Kauri is a huge tree long logged to oblivion which supported both a large timber industry and an army of 'gum diggers', mining the ground for its amber-like resin. This was exported for everything from making varnish and linoleum to jewellery and dentures. The examples of kauri furniture were particularly beautiful and the steam-powered sawmill and early photos of the frightful conditions were fascinating, at least to me.
After an unmemorable night in Dargaville we headed up the West coast road towards the remnants of the kauri forests. I had a mistaken idea that NZ bushland was scrubby but we stopped for a walk in the Trounson Kauri Park, one of only 6 'Mainland Islands' of native forest in New Zealand where the DOC is actively trapping and baiting pest animals in a desperate attempt to save e.g. the kiwi and NZ wood pigeon from extinction.
It was lovely temperate rainforest, with epiphytes, palms, lianas and all the 'jungle' attributes we should have expected from a warm and wet climate. There is very little of this forest left, as of course about 95% of the North Island has been ruthlessly cleared for pine plantations and sheep farming.
The environmental record of New Zealanders, Maori and otherwise, is appalling and even this fragment of forest was donated to the public by a philanthropic landowner. It contains some superb tall, straight kauris and if you ever wondered how a stone age people made giant canoes, these huge trunks provide the answer. Surely too the bark markings were the inspiration of many Maori designs.
DOC noticeboards recount a litany of ongoing environmental destruction. A rogue domestic dog killed over 800 brown kiwis, a significant fraction of the North Island's population. The 70 million Australian possums, introduced for a trivial fur industry, consume 22,000 tonnes of vegetation per night in addition to the eggs and nestlings of native birds, and an array of stoats, weasels, cats, rabbits, hedgehogs, deer and other foolish introductions takes up the slack.
We admired the grossly underfunded DOC's rearguard action to save the remaining native species, and made our own small contribution by only buying DOC postcards.
Further up the road in the Waipoua Forest Sanctuary there were a few remaining giant trees. We had seen their cross-sections painted on the (2-story) end wall of the museum, compared to the records of even bigger specimens which had been cut down or burnt in the past. Some were one or two hours walk into the forest, but the largest was only a couple of hundred meters off the highway.
When you turn the corner on the path and first catch sight of Tane Mahuta, Lord of The Forest,
it is so startling that the brain briefly cannot grasp what the eye is seeing. Then the specks of movement at the base resolve to waving tourists and the scale becomes apparent.
To see the first branch in a camera viewfinder it is necessary to back off about 80 metres into the forest. There was no way to photograph all of this tree.
'Awesome' is a much-misused word which should be reserved for sights like this. We have seen big, old conifers and eucalypts, but there is something else about a rainforest giant reaching up into the sun. Having seen the extraordinary grain and colour of the timber the day before, gave us an even greater appreciation.
Heading North we left the remaining West coast native forests, finally reserved from logging in 1952 after public protest, and after passing through vast pine plantations descended back down to the sea at Hokianga Harbour just as the mist and fog was clearing.
This area is relatively sparsely settled and has continued to attract alternative-lifestylers since the hippie invasion of the 70's. The sleepy twin harbourside towns of Omapere and Opononi were briefly famous for 'Opo', a wild dolphin who swam and played with children and became a celebrity. Alas our language has become so stunted that no-one could see why this sign in the fish-and-chip shop gave me the giggles.
We had the choice of continuing on up the coast to Kaitaia and Cape Reinga at the Northern tip of NZ or cutting across to the Pacific coast. Both routes to the far North, up the 90-mile beach and the last 30 km of the road up the desolate Aupouri Peninsula, were forbidden by our hire-car contract. More relevant however was the fact that we would have to retrace our steps 116 km back down the peninsula road, which I hate doing while on holiday. We decided to cut across to the Bay of Islands.