2006/05 NZ trip - Tiritiri Matangi island |
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This was to be mainly a driving day as we were headed back to the Auckland area, mostly on the main road, Highway 1. This is a motorway in Auckland, but it soon becomes a two lane road once it leaves the city. The terrain is very hilly, with lots of tight corners and little villages, so most of the traffic is going slowly, below the 100 kph speed limit. Our campervan feels ready to explode at high 
speeds, so travel takes a while.
We stopped for lunch at Whangerai Falls, a really pretty park in a suburb of Whangerai, the only city north of Auckland.
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Whangerai Falls (4.14) |
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Then we were passing through Bryngwyn, where we’d driven a week ago on our way north. We’d planned to stay at a campground at Waiwere Hot Springs, but our destination for the next morning was Gulf Harbour so we went there first to check the route out.
The harbour is at the end of the Whangaparaoa peninsula, about 30 minutes drive through heavy traffic from Waiwera. This was where we would take the ferry over to Tiritiri Matangi island, a wildlife reserve in the Harauki Gulf that forms Auckland’s harbour.
We found Gulf Harbour and booked up for a trip on the Kawau Kat catamaran the next morning. The young lady said, “Why don’t you camp on the quay? “ This sounded a lot better to us than fighting the traffic and paying for a camp 
site, so we parked there, looking out over the harbour towards Auckland on the horizon. There were hundreds of beautiful boats in the harbour including the Atuaropa One, adorned with Maori carvings. We felt pretty secure in our camper surrounded by all those million dollar yachts!
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Gulf Harbour (1.45) |
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Saturday May 20th
We had a calm and pleasant evening but a wet and windy night. The fisherfolk (with illuminated and probably illegal lures ) stayed around until midnight and then some more came in at 5 am and woke me up.
Later that morning we loaded onto the Kawau Kat, a big catamaran. This being a Saturday, many of the passengers were the volunteers that are restoring the island to its original state. They had heaps of luggage, including bird houses and trays of seedlings. It was a very rough crossing, with the boat pounding into big waves. We were sitting in the front seat and got the best view but the worst of the pounding. Sandie didn’t enjoy this much and was munching her emergency crisp supply and trying to drink airborne coffee.
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Tiritiri Matangi (11.50) |
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At the island, 'we were told all the dos and don’ts. Four of us, including a young couple from Victoria, BC wereassigned to Alex, our young volunteer guide from Moscow. He was supposed to take us on a guided walk up to the lighthouse where we’d have our lunch and then see the rest of the island 
and the wildlife by ourselves. Instead, Alex adopted us for the day. With our questions and his long answers
, and long sessions looking for birds, it took us four hours toget to the lighthouse and our lunch. For a foreigner, he was a mine of information about New Zealand’s plants and wildlife.
The island was originally home to a couple of warring Maoritribes, then it was a farm, and now it is a wildlife refuge. Predators introduced from England have alm
ost wiped out the native birds in New Zealand, and there are just a few islands like this one which have been cleared of cats, rats, dogs
, stoats, and mice to give the birds a chance. The volunteers have been planting the original native shrubs andtrees, and building habitat for the birds.
We saw parakeets, saddlebacks, stitchbirds, and robins, as well as the more common pukekos, tuis, bellbirds, and fantails, but the most spectacular were the big blue and redbilled takahes, flightless birds that were believed to be extinct until rediscovered on a remote island. The takahes seem to be thriving on Tiritiri. They mostly ignore the people but have big arguments with each other. See the picture on t
he this page.
We’d had a number of showers on our walk, but the ride back was calmer and in sunshine. It was too late to find 
another campsite so we set up a little further around the harbour, away from the fisherfolk. Our two nights of free camping just about paid for the boat trip.