World Travels: Western Northland

In Russell we said goodbye to Matt, Denise and Neta. How grateful we are to Matt and Denise for all they have done to make this such a good trip for us. Lyall, Clodagh and I were to go across to the western coast, staying the night there before travelling south back to Auckland.

We first called at Kawakawa, famous for its artistic loos! Here they had indulged a local artist, who produced this unusually designed public convenience.

And some street furniture.

We drove across country and came to the Hokianga river with its wide inlets and bays and took the ferry across to Rawene, where we had booked accommodation at what described itself as a 'boutique hotel'. If 'boutique' means large, rambling, rundown, stuffed full of dusty, old furniture and effects it's a fair description but not quite the way it appeared on its website.

The rest of Rawene looked equally rundown with almost every other property up for sale. They looked as if they had been on the market for a long time and probably had no chance of finding a buyer. The elderly couple, who run our boutique hotel and whose two sons have fled to Australia, must feel trapped there. The best part of Rawene for me was a walk along a path through mangroves on the edge of the river.

The only place to have dinner was the other hotel (up for sale), where we suffered very slow service and a poor Sunday roast. The owner couldn't take the pressure of a dozen diners. We couldn't get out of Rawene quickly enough and left before 8.00 next morning, declining the offer of breakfast.

We drove across to the coast and followed it south and through a long stretch of the Waipoua forest, passing large tree ferns and massive kauri trees. A good link, because later we stopped at the impressive Kauri museum in Matakohe. There we learned of the long life span of the kauri tree, displayed by this example, which was 860 years old when it was cut down in 1960.

But very many have been cut down earlier than that and the museum records the devastation. It also demonstrates the methods and equipment used to turn logs into timber in the Steam Sawmill with moving saws, belts, pulleys and steam engines.

There are displays of ancient pieces of trees carved and polished to works of art...

...fine Kauri furniture...

...and Kauri gum carved and polished to portray a Mauri chief. The gum seeps from the trees over many years and was an important element in making paints and varnishes. The museum portrays the rough, tough industry that developed for digging out the gum, which in some cases had seeped out of earlier generations of Kauri forests, which had died down and new ones grown and died down several times over millennia.

We left the fascinating Kauri museum and drove back to Auckland where Lyall dropped us off at our hotel. We redeemed from their storage two cases full of unwanted items including winter clothing for our flight in a couple of days time to Vancouver.