Donna Blaber - Visions of Northland (Visions of New Zealand series)

By Donna Blaber

10 outstanding travel articles highlightingNorthland's places, people, lifestyle and food

Copyright 2012:

Text & Photographs - Donna Blaber

Maps - Rupert Shaw

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About the Author

Northland is the perfect destination to takea road trip and this book provides you with a collection of 10articles by award winning New Zealand journalist, Donna Blaber. Aswell as firmly grounding the reader in Northland by providing areal sense of place, she highlights some of the best scenery, foodand attractions to be found.

Join Donna and become inspired as sheexplores the beauty of Northland, meeting quirky local characters,and revealing all her favourite places to eat and rest, both on andoff the beaten track.

The content of this book provides idealbackground reading for anyone planning to visit the Northlandregion of New Zealand.

Cape Maria Van Diemen from Cape Reinga

There's a magnetic quality to New Zealand'sFar North. The people and place exude a raw energy that seems astimeless as the primeval landscape. It's something more spiritualthan simple polarity, but as powerful as gravity. For thetraveller, the journey to the point where two worlds meet callswith an insistence that cannot be ignored, and every encounter onthe way brings unexpected sights and friendships that are somehowdeeply familiar.

Eerie and unforgettable, the land is shroudedin ancient legend, but as each day breaks, the glorious sunrisesbring clear skies and subtropical warmth, soothing the senses anddrawing one inexorably onwards to the pulsating heartbeat of thismystical place. According to ancient Maori traditions, the souls ofthe dead gather at the tip of windswept Cape Reinga before leapingfrom an 800-year-old pohutukawa tree to begin the voyage back totheir final resting place in the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki.

This passage to the afterlife begins atTe-oneroa-o-tohe, more commonly known as Ninety Mile Beach. Spiritstravel the length of its sands, bearing gifts of regional tokenssuch as fern fronds or a manuka cutting. These offerings are placedon Te Arai Rock near the Bluff, and then the journey continuesinland at Twilight Beach towards Cape Reinga. A stream marks thecrossing over: those who do not drink from it return to the body,while those who choose to quench their thirst continue on to thegnarled pohutukawa tree, and leap, descending through its tangledroots to the seabed. From here they travel to Ohau Island, thelargest of the Three Kings Islands (seen on the horizon on a clearday), where they resurface to bid a final farewell before returningto Hawaiki.

Legend it may be, but something or someone is definitely in the air as we begin our travels. Crossing abridge at the base of the Aupouri Peninsula near Waiharara, ourleisurely pace attracts attention.

"Kia ora!" some young Maori kids yell, beforedisappearing over the edge one by one into the water.

We turn off towards Kaimaumau, a smallvillage of baches bordering the azure blue Rangunu Harbour, andhere we meet Northland lifestylers, Rosco and Raewyn Pennell, whosay they initially made do with a caravan while they built theirdream home and established an alternative lifestyle farming ostrichand emu. Today, the couple produces all of their own meat, andthey're almost entirely self-sufficient, farming chickens, ostrich,emu, and pigs, plus tending to an enormous vegie garden, and ahouse cow (a beast supplying their daily milk requirements).

From what I can make out all the vegetablesgrown here in the Far North seem super-sized. We pull off the roadand park beside a simple roadside stall, to buy an enormous bunchof grapes for a paltry $2.

A fifteen-minute drive later, accompanied bydelicious mouthfuls of sunbursting flavour, we turn into HouhoraHeads, where a caf and campground in the best Kiwi tradition takeprime position on the water beneath Mt Camel's brooding gaze.Behind is the Subritsky Homestead, built to last in 1860 fromswamp-kauri floorboards, walls of rock and wood, and plaster madeof powdered seashells.

"There's no foundation to speak of," wheezesa grizzly-looking old timer, seated on the well-worn thresholdsoaking up the sun. He tells us the row of Phoenix palms out frontwere planted for their unique root structure, which holds the earthand makes caves, which were apparently "once good for smuggling but they only ever found stashed food."

Back at the harbour, a fisherman pulls agood-sized snapper onto the beach. There are lots to be had, hesays, both in this sheltered harbour and on the West Coast, a mere20 kilometres away.

"This is a real twin coast," he says, tearingout the snapper's gills. "You'll see sharks on the west coast, orcaon the east they chase those darned stingrays that keep tanglingmy line."

Following his directions, we cross thepeninsula to Hukatere, where a hill gives a fine view of NinetyMile Beach, a magnificent unbroken arch of white sand flanked bythe Aupouri Forest. There's no sign of sharks but I spy a band offine-looking wild horses roaming free on its sands. There's a taletold in these parts that these are the descendents of thoroughbredsthat escaped a ship wrecked off nearby Cape Maria Van Diemen.

Back in the old gumdigging town of Houhora,we call into the Houhora Big Game and Sports Fishing Club. Theharbour views are awesome from here, and there's an impressiveline-up of trophies, including black and blue marlins and blue fintuna. Here we meet Murray Rae, a charter skipper of Te Wairoa, whois also a member of the club and vice president of the coast guard.He says he's had a love affair with this place since he first cameas a kid in 1956.

"The road was so bad then between Kaitaia andHouhora that all our supplies were ordered in Auckland and broughtup by boat. We got here in a Model 8 but we had to know where everycreek was along the way for the radiator!" he says.