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Published: November 18th 2008
Coastal view, Coromandel Peninsula
Heading north along the west coast
(N)
Now into the final week of
Auckland Heritage Festival, the most tenuously-linked event (but one of the best) that we attended was the
Heritage Pub Tour. Described as a visit to some of the city’s oldest pubs, we considered it unmissable. Starting off at
The Drake, the house pub of my favourite NZ beer
Monteith’s, we learnt that in the old days before land reclamation, it was right on the waterfront and had a reputation for ill-repute, and is said to be haunted by a 17-year-old Maori girl.
The next stop was
Galbraith’s Ale House, the grand building that was formerly a library and which is now a great pub, where they brew their own beer. A roaring fire accompanies the drinkers, and the bar is made of an ancient piece of tree trunk carbon-dated to 40,000 years ago. They took us around their tiny brewery and even lifted off the lid of the metal tuns so that we could smell the beer that they had been brewing earlier that day.
There was one final pub stop, I think more may have been planned but the logistics of marshalling a large bus-load of people (some of whom
Paula & guide
Rangitoto Island were Irish) meant that our final stop was
The Empire Tavern which was fine but nothing special. We didn’t even have to walk between these places, a bus was provided - not any old bus, either but a big old red Routemaster from London with ‘Elephant and Castle’ written on the black sign above the doorway! With commentary from Mike, an affable local DJ.
We saw our musician friend Chris Sanders playing some great covers at Brooklyn Bar later in the week, before going for a run on Saturday morning to prepare for the upcoming Auckland marathon. We’re not running the full monty, so to speak, just the quarter marathon (10km) thankfully. There is a fantastic jogging route near our place, along the bay, you run along the water’s edge, with green hills and cones in the mid-distance and past fishermen waiting for a catch. The weather was good so we had lunch at the harbour later, and then caught a film which was part of the current Italian Film Festival.
Around midday on Sunday we caught a ferry to the volcanic island of
Rangitoto, about 10km and 25 minutes by ferry from downtown Auckland. It’s one of
47 islands in the
Hauraki Gulf, and was formed only 800 years ago, erupting up from the sea and witnessed by Maori on neighbouring Motutapu Island. Several layers of lava formed the symmetrical cone that makes up the island today, most of which is jagged black rock, with hardy trees and bushes growing all over. The British, in their own special way, bought the land from the Maoris for £15 in the middle of the 19th century, and by the start of the 20th century it was public recreation space.
People began to build basic holiday homes in the early 1900’s on Rangitoto, each one known as a
bach, short for ‘bachelor’, it was originally the name for a place where blokes went for a brief holiday to do fishing and the like but now is just as likely to be a family holiday home. The reason we went to Rangitoto this weekend was for one of the final events of Auckland Heritage Festival, a guided walk around some of the baches, which are spread out. The government at the time used prisoners who were nearing the end of their term as labourers on the island, who built some
community buildings, small roads & pathways, a swimming pool and even painstakingly cleared & flattened a large area of volcanic ground for tennis courts which were never built.
The walk started with a bit of botany, through
Kidney Fern Glade, so called because it was through a glade of kidney ferns...these plants curl up when they are dry (and presumably straighten out when all moist). We soon passed the clearing which had held the prison camp, but all that was left were a few volcanic rock walls. The corrugated sheds where the inmates slept had been appropriated by bach owners when the prison was closed, and converted to tool sheds and other outhouse uses. Overall the landscape was black, similar to Lanzarote.
The first bach we saw was a small, single-storey pink weatherboard house formerly owned by a lady known as ‘Aunty Vi’, who apparently taught loads of the kids who came to the island how to swim. She was quite artistic and had left poems on plaques in the garden, one of which lamented how the possums always ate her vegetables.
We visited several other baches, most of whose current owners were not present, and saw
Outside Bach 38
Rangitoto Island that several features were the same: an outside toilet, single glazing, interiors furnished like the middle of last century (simple and homely), water collected in outside tanks, beach-combed items in the garden, the simple life. Several places even used a box dangling from a tree as their fridge. We were fortunate that one owner, Stuart, had hung around to show our small group the inside of his place, which was quite luxurious in comparison, with its gas cooker and electrical generator. His place was also built in the early 20th century, firstly as a boatshed, then it was extended to become a very small working men’s club, and finally a home.
There is actually a preservation charity on the island, the
Rangitoto Island Historic Conservation Trust, which has its centre in “Bach 38”, a bach built as retirement cottage for the island’s first caretaker in 1930. It took the charity 3 years to restore it to be their small HQ, being completed in 2004 and has just won a prestigious
2008 Asia-Pacific Heritage Award.
On a sporting front, at work, we have started playing in an evening 7-a-side league, although 3 of the players have to be female which keeps
Quad bike with view
Nick's work's team building day things interesting. It is a watered-down version of the beautiful game (think “touch rugby” applied to 5-a-side), I keep getting into trouble with the ref for tugging on opponents shirts when chasing the ball or sliding tackles, which are both against the rules, but when you have been using the same rules for 25 years, it’s difficult to change. But I did manage to get a goal in the second week, it flew in off the right post…nice to know I still got it (yeah right!).
We also had a great work ‘team-building’ day out in October, involving archery, quad bikes to a spectacular mid-forest location with views to the sea, volleyball and a delicious BBQ.
(P)
It was dressing-up time as we were invited to the birthday party of D’Aguiar, a beauty salon owned by friends Rachel & Chris (Chris incidentally is from Crosby near Liverpool and often plays his guitar at gigs we’ve been to in bars around the city). We were welcomed with
42 Below cocktails, the major NZ vodka brand, with two common flavours round these parts:
honey (Manuka honey is very popular and is often taken for good health) and
feijoa (a
common fruit here that tasted like a blend of kiwi/banana/guava). There was a special guest appearance from a would-be
Austin Powers (his singing and dancing was spot on, mind), a raffle where I won a
BeesOnline set (with honey soap and several different varieties to eat). By the end of the evening at least one of us was ballroom dancing…
Unfortunately due to catching a nasty cough, grand plans for cocktails and dinner out to celebrate my birthday were postponed until another day. But thank you kindly for the e-greetings, cards and gifts from across the seas! I humbly received some lovely presents: some clothes, a Japanese cup with real green tea (leaves, not those poor tea-bag imitations) and two tickets to see the Phantom of the Opera.
Cake appeared in the form of chocolate cheesecake, delivered by Nick, which took us both a week to get through!
With a Bank Holiday Monday off work for Labour Day, despite promises of downpours throughout the weekend we set off in good spirits from Auckland’s metropolis southeast-wards to discover the
Coromandel Peninsula. The motorway traffic was certainly calm by British standards and often there was a clearing several metres wide
in the central reservation filled with calm-inducing wild flowers such as lavender.
First stop was
Thames (pronounced by Kiwis as “Teems”), formerly a Goldrush town and more populated than Auckland soon after gold was discovered nearby in the mid-1800s; we saw its fame still evident in a pub called
The Golddigger on the main street. We were curious to catch the Saturday Morning Market in full swing and - in between showers, we ambled by the pavement stalls of locals selling second-hand books, curios or their own produce, ranging from chutney to soap. The street still sported a post box with vertical slits towards the top, so people on horseback in bygone days didn’t have to dismount when posting their letters!
We nearly continued straight up northwards and stopped at the
Matatoki Cheese Farm. Just on cue the clouds parted, the sun was out and we were served a lunch platter featuring a selection of the farm’s own cheeses, and it was clear we had made a good call. An article posted on the wall told of the owner who followed his calling to start a cheese factory after working in the corporate world “left him feeling like
a dried hunk of parmesan”! Our joint favourite bite was the
Ramata - a soft and creamy mild-flavoured cheese dotted with peppercorns.
Now heading northwards, we passed fleetingly through
Coromandel Town itself, a highlight of which we had noted is a Smoking Factory Shop (of the fish kind) where I purchased some lemon and pepper-infused fish for a good old-fashioned breakfast the next day. We continued as far as the road took us, to
Fletcher Bayat the top of the peninsula. The mostly single-lane road hugged the coastline for almost the entire way and the absence of beach for the most part meant we were rarely sat more than a few metres away from the waves of the ocean. Apart from a house or two here and a campsite there, cows and sheep dotted about the hills and a slight hold up caused by a herd of goats crossing the road, the place was our own. Having reached Fletcher Bay, we appreciated our location from the black sand and pebbly beach (not the most picturesque one we’d seen that day) and greeted the hardcore souls already camped out on the shore despite intermittent rain showers. Nick excellently navigated more
than his fair share of unsealed roads and we made it by nightfall to our accommodation on the east coast, a stone’s throw from
Hot Water Beach. Our flat at
Auntie Dawn’s B&B Place was bigger than our Auckland flat (!) and had a wide veranda with grape vines. A chicken was asleep in the hedge (preferring there to its own barn) and flat instructions stated “Don’t let hens inside” (they’re not toilet trained)!
Hot Water Beach is known for its small geothermal system, if you must know it’s a small reservoir of superheated water escaping to the surface, a volcanic by-product. The water springing from this beach has a maximum temperature of 64 degrees Celsius. Our flat welcome booklet also included instructions on
How to build your own spa pool: “At low tide, walk across the sand. When it feels hot beneath your feet, get digging. When the hole you have dug fills with water from beneath, slide in and relax. Voila, your very own natural spa!”. When we got there, the rain was really heavy and the small beach crowd was sharply divided between those who were making the most of it and others who definitely weren’t
Coastal view, Coromandel Peninsula
Heading north along the west coast
enjoying themselves. We were in the former camp, and patience was rewarded when the sun came out later.
Later we called in on a nearby
Macadamia Orchard where we learned that the fruit stays on the tree all year round, is all hand-picked then dried for 3 months before it is ready to eat. Cooking oil made from Macademia nuts tops the list as the healthiest and with the highest levels of good fats, apparently. We purchased some freshly jarred macadamia nut spread which the lady labelled for us there and then.
We felt it would have been rude to pass by the small rural
Purangi Winery, where Danny gave a warm welcome and promptly poured us a taster of 7 or 8 of their offerings. They included fresh-tasting feijoa liqueur and a single estate gin (perhaps unique in the world?) with juniper, lemon and angelica. All the ingredients in their drinks - even ginger and cherimoya - grow in their garden.
From
Shakespeare Cliff we looked down onto
Cooks Beach and over
Mercury Bay, so called because Captain Cook (then only
Commander Cook) saw the planet Mercury transit across the sun from there in 1769. On
Garden at "Aunty Dawn's B&B"
Hot Water Beach, Coromandel Peninsula our way back, several produce growers had put a table outside their front gate with some wares and an honesty box with a note beside such as: “Avocados $1 each. Thank you.” ($1 = 40p)
Back at Auntie Dawn’s Place, we were coerced (quite easily) into sampling some of her husband
Joe’s home brew, then took our torches on a stroll down the road and along a dark forest path where
gloworms are often spotted. Apparently about the size of mosquitoes, I thought we’d be lucky to spot even one, but after a few minutes a cluster of near to 100 appeared on the bank to our left. It was pretty cool to see them, glowing blue just like little Christmas tree lights.
[You may find it interesting to learn that gloworms are the larvae stage of the fungus gnat. Their light attracts unsuspecting insects which get caught in the gloworm’s thread, are reeled in and eaten. You should not shine a light directly on them because it dims their glo-light and so they cannot attract food for a few hours. The adult emerges not long after the gloworm has grown to about the size of a matchstick,
Cooks Beach
Coromandel Peninsula but only survives a few days because it doesn’t have a mouth, alas.]
Next day we munched through a breakfast of freshly laid eggs from the very hens running and clucking about our feet, and toast with topped with marmalade made from the oranges growing in the garden. We had a tour of the vegetable garden, the possum traps, orchid plants, pohutakawa trees (the national tree) and picked a souvenir of mint leaves to take home. A little further up the Coromandel’s east coast, along from Hahei beach,
Cathedral Cove was every bit as picturesque as in the brochures, but you had to earn your view by trekking half an hour or so to get there.
Heading south, we topped a peak at
Tairua that gave rewarding views of the surrounding estuary and beach. Upon Lonely Planet’s recommendation, we made a dinner stop at
Whangamata for Craig’s Takeaway Fish & Chips, doing the holiday town thing by eating them sitting on the beach. We then passed by Karangahake Gorge and Ohinemuri Winery - not enough time to stop so we have promised ourselves a weekend there another time. Last stop before returning to Auckland was
Paeroa, the home
Paula overlooking Coromandel Coast
On way to Cathedral Cove, Coromandel of a Kiwi soft drink called Lemon & Paeroa - “World Famous in New Zealand” as its catchphrase goes, just managing to fit in a cheesy photo.
*****
(there are 3 pages of photos in this month's blog)
*****
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