The coast by coach

 
November 7th

If you don’t have your own car, pretty much the only way to get to Cape Reinga at the tip of NZ, is to join a coach party. The 500km round trip starts out along the western coastline and passes many attractive inlets and the dramatic Doubtless Bay, named by Captain Cook who was the first to chart the coastline of North and South Islands. After a hasty coffee stop, to beat the incoming tide, our coach abandoned the tarmac road, and turned onto the beach for the next 60 miles. The erroneously named 90 Mile Beach is a public highway, but can only be negotiated at low tide. Fortunately our coach, a converted Scania truck, had no problems, but the metal carcasses of several cars jutting out of the sands showed that wasn’t always the case. For several years the hard sand base provided a landing strip for small planes carrying post from Australia, and was used to set the first land-speed record back in the 1930s. Our driver seemed intent on setting his own speed record as we zoomed along the waterline.

Behind most of the beach, sand dunes have been planted to prevent erosion, but at the far end the dunes build up to create mountainous slopes, just made to slide down. Climbing up with a boogie board tucked under your arm was hard work, but the ride down was definitely worth it.

From here it was a half hour drive to Cape Reinga, where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and where Maori legend says the spirits of the dead leap off the rocks to join their ancestors. It is certainly an awesome spot. The government are working to re-establish native plants at the Cape so I planted my very own manuka. And even got a GPS location so I can check its progress on google earth!

Much of the Northlands is now given over to agriculture and grazing – we saw the first of NZ’s 30 million sheep – but before the Europeans came, it was known for kauri trees. Related to redwoods, the slow-growing kauri grows tall and straight. The longer they are left, the broader the trunk. The maori hollowed them out for their war canoes – the example at Waitango was around100ft long, and required 80men to handle it. They made perfect masts for European ships, and housebuilding, furniture making, just about anything you need timber for. There are so few left, they are now a protected species. But ancient kauri trees - preserved in the peat marshes for 40,000 years – are still dug up and used for furniture making. So there are some old things in NZ.