The Far Side

We hadn’t booked any excursions for Boxing Day, so we decided to take the hire car and drive over to the west coast of Northland. There were a few places we wanted to visit, and we thought it would be a good idea to get them all done in one trip.

We started off by going back to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, to finish off the tour that we started on Christmas Eve. We took in the Treaty House, which was originally the first official British building in New Zealand, belonging to the British Resident, James Busby. Most of the building was made in Australia and shipped to New Zealand to be fabricated here. In the garden we found fantails. I had another crack at wildlife photography, but the little blighters move too fast!

A somewhat blurry Fantail

We also caught the end of a tour of Te Whare Runanga, a Maori meeting house or marae, that was built as part of the centenary celebrations in 1940. The carvings inside are from different Maori tribes throughout New Zealand, and we heard explanations of what some of the different symbols meant – why the tongues are out and what it means when they are pointed in different directions.

Next stop was to head south to go and visit the glow-worm caves, but as it turned out, we couldn’t get in because (a first in our experience) they didn’t take card payments, and we didn’t have enough cash on us for the entrance charge! Never mind, we’ll head back down there another time, making sure that we have sufficient change in our pocketses!

We decided to drive straight over to the west coast, get some lunch, and then make our way back stopping off at the various places that we wanted to see. This was easier said than done, as it took us a little effort to find a café that was open. We eventually found one in Waiotemarama.

The scenery along the coast is spectacular, with some enormous sand dunes and great surf waves crashing into the beach. But the main attraction in this part of Northland is the Kauri forest. Kauri trees are native to New Zealand, and some of them grow to be very big indeed. The Waipoua Forest contains the largest and oldest of these. The pictures don’t really give you a true idea of the scale of these trees – the largest one, named Tane Mahuta (Lord of the forest) is 14 metres in circumference. I’m standing quite a way in front of it!

Tane Mahuta 

We also saw some of the "smaller" trees including the Four Sisters.

The Four Sisters

After that we headed to the Wairere Boulders. These are found up a gravel track and are the only basalt boulder valley on a clay base in the world. The boulders have been eroded by the acid content of the Kauri forest that used to surround them, into flutes and folds known as karst.

Look at that fluting!

That was about it for the day’s adventures – it was late afternoon and we headed for home.