After a very comfortable night in our bed and breakfast, we set off to drive back towards Auckland by way of the Kauri coast - the west coast of North Island. To do that, we first had to cross from the east coast to the west coast. Again, we found ourselves in wonderful countryside with superb panoramas of rolling green hills and darker green forests, deep valleys and high sharp volcanic peaks. And the best views were always in places where we couldn't stop. Whenever we came to somewhere where we could stop, the view was obscured by trees or high banks.
Paul particularly wanted to see the Wairere Boulders, a wilderness area visited on some backpacker tours. It certainly IS a wilderness area. It was 14 km from the main road, most of it on an unsealed logging road, where there were no other vehicles or people. I just kept hoping we didn't break down!
The boulders are an enormous number of huge rocks in the middle of what is otherwise clay. They are the eroded remnants of a basalt layer; the erosion is very heavy, and is believed to have been caused by rain accumulating acid as it dripped through the canopy of kauri trees, dissolving the rocks below.
You couldn't really walk about to see the boulders without the wooden walkways which have been constructed.
We pressed on further towards the west coast, then took another detour towards Rawene, a tiny village on what is called Hokianga Harbour. Hokianga Harbour is the drowned valley of the Waihou river, and reaches far inland from the west coast.
Like the Bay of Islands, it was very important for trade, not to mention whaling, sealing and logging, in the early 1800s. Also like the Bay of Islands area, it declined in importance after 1840, when the capital moved to Auckland.
The village is the site of another historic house, this one having belonged to James Clendon, who functioned at one time as the first US Consul in New Zealand and was at one time wealthy and important.
His first house was near Russell, and the government, intending it to be used as Government House, bought it from him for £15,000 pounds which they never paid. It burned down shortly afterwards - we visited the site of it last night. Now considerably poorer, and married to a second wife about 40 years younger than he was, he became Hokianga's Resident Magistrate and also ran the post office. The house was worth about £340 - a far cry from £15,000! Although small, it contained some nice possessions, which remained in the house until it came into the possession of the Historic Places Trust. This was the dining room, with some lovely china.
We carried on along the coast, with some terrific views. These are the huge sand dunes near the mouth of Hokianga Harbour.
Somewhat further round the harbour, there are superb views of the inlet
and the surrounding volcanic hills.
At this point, I had to start flogging Paul who kept stopping for landscape photos. I was worried we wouldn't get sufficiently far south for an easy journey into Auckland airport to return the car by 11 am.
We drove on to Waipoua Forest, a forest which contains three quarters of the remaining kauri trees in New Zealand. It also contains the largest kauri tree in New Zealand, Tane Mahouta or Lord of the Forest. The tree is at least 1500 years old, some say over 2000 years old.
It is hard for a photo to convey the tree's size, I put Paul in the picture but you can't get very close to it, so it isn't a good comparison. The girth is 13.8 metres, or more than 45 feet. Using my school maths, I calculate a diameter of over 14 feet, so it would almost fill my sitting room!
We drove on through the kauri forest, hoping to see the Kauri Museum, but it was after 5 when we arrived so we were too late. We drove through a succession of small towns, where everything was shut and it was so quiet I thought they might have rolled up the pavements. I began to worry about finding somewhere to stay, so at 6.30 we stopped in a small place called Wellsford where there was a motel. We need to make a fairly early start tomorrow.
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