New Zealanders trim the lower branches of their pines, even in windbreaks, presumably to reduce knots and increase the value of the timber. The result is often an oddly formal 'European' landscape, though the effect is somewhat diminished by the inevitable modest weatherboard or fibro-cement farmhouse.
Although much of the farmland has been cleared with a zeal bordering on the fanatical, the resultant landscape is still most attractive, at least to us and especially where replanted with shady deciduous trees, which were just coming into leaf while we were there. We loved the crooked stone walls and the way the trees followed boundary lines up hills and along ridge lines.
We called in at a small dairy advertising home-made produce and found a Dutch family selling waxed-rind cheeses. The farm lady offered me a slice, but being familar with the bland, rubbery and sweating stuff that goes under the same name in supermarkets, I declined and told her that my benchmark for taste was vintage cheddar. She laughed and produced from under the counter a wheel of 24-month aged Gouda which was indeed delicious, and we went on our way armed with several lunches' worth of this.
All of a sudden (about 3 hours) we had crossed new Zealand and were entering Paihia. It was a Labour Day weekend and everywhere was buzzing. The weather had improved, the bay and islands were lovely, and everywhere were sailboats and big-game-fishing boats and beachgoers and hundreds of tourists sitting on balconies and sidewalk cafe chairs enjoying themselves.
After the peace and tranquility of the West Coast it was all a bit much for us, so we drove 8 km further to Opua and straight on to the Russell car ferry - which left 40 seconds later! New Zealanders turn everything into an 'adventure' and on the way we passed one of their monstrous jetboats powered by a plane engine, which bounds around the islands full of shrieking passengers.
'Romantic Russell' sits away from the hurly-burly of Paihia on its own peninsula protected by 40 km of winding gravel roads. It is a quiet and attractive place with many fine historic buildings and beautiful gardens. Many of its shops, hotels and cafes open directly on to the tree-lined beach, separated from the water only by a narrow shared vehicle and pedestrian walkway.
After a leisurely dinner one street back from the beach, we took in the sunset along the esplanade, strolled out onto the jetty and did some window-shopping. As it was a holiday weekend we were probably lucky to get a quiet motel room whose booked guests, crew of an Auckland-to-Russell yacht race, had failed to appear due to poor winds...
The following day we checked out the local church - the oldest in New Zealand and complete with bullet holes in the doors from the Maori Wars. Some of the more valiant and respected Maori chiefs are buried there as well. The Russell Police Station, still in use and with resident policeman, sits at the end of the esplanade, right on the beach. The tree next to it is not bad either.
Then we hit the shops and galleries - it is that sort of place. We chatted to an old seadog who whiled away his Northern Hemisphere Summer nights on a historic wooden sailing ship chartered in the Baltic Sea, whittling traditional Maori tikis and carvings from bone and greenstone for sale in the gallery during the (SH) Summer. As he was no more Maori than I, and his wares were indistinguishable from those costing one tenth the price elsewhere, we refrained from buying any, but Joc could not help but buy a very unusual woollen top to wear.
After a late morning coffee we left Russell via the 'back' road, intending to stay as close to the coast as possible whilst heading South. The road wound around the bays and headlands, each new turn revealing a scene even more idyllic than the last.
As you can see, 'beach frontage' in NZ is a literal statement, not a form of Real Estate Agent newspeak.
Around lunchtime we took a dead-end road to Rawhiti, a lovely quiet settlement with a Maori
meeting-house (marae) and the starting point for a hard 20 km trek to the isolated Cape Brett.
We passed on the trek, but the diversion was well worth while for the scenery and we ate a delightful lunch of freshly baked bread, tasty NZ tomatoes and our super-tasty Gouda right on the beach, where Joc could not resist collecting the abundant pointy spiral shells.
Further South the Poor Knights Islands are a Marine Reserve and supposedly a scuba divers' paradise. They weren't bad just to look at, and it was easy to see why this part of New Zealand is such a favourite playground for the city-dwellers of Auckland, a mere 2 hours' drive away.