Tag Archives: New Zealand

On To Hobbiton

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Sunday 15 February 2026 – Our eventual destination for the day was Rotorua, well-known for being smelly and overrun by seas of boiling mud. On my previous trip to New Zealand, way back in 1988, the boiling mud thing was just about all I knew about Rotorua (and, let’s face it, the whole of the North Island, being, as I was, vastly ignorant about almost everything back then), so I found some boiling mud and judged the expedition a success before heading back to Auckland. This time we’d be staying in Rotorua for a couple of days so were fairly sure that another dose of boiling mud would be easy to find. En route, though, we had an appointment with a place which I had more than a nagging suspicion was going to be naff but which Jane absolutely insisted be on our schedule – the Hobbiton Movie Set, near Matamata. Jane is well versed in all things Hobbit-y and Middle Earth-y, having read and, as far as I can tell, memorised JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

We had a booked entry time of 10.40, and John (of Kiwi Dundee) had warned us that we’d better make sure we were on time, as he said the place is pretty fully booked most of the time. Given that we had a three-hour journey, that dictated a brisk start to the day, so an 0600 alarm reminded us that we were travelling, not having a holiday, OK? The journey was uneventful, leading us past some more great scenery on the bottom end of the Coromandel Peninsula

before entering the large plain that lies to the south of the peninsula, which is really very flat indeed.

Being flat, it lends itself to dairy farming, and we saw huge numbers of cattle grazing on fields beside the road as we went. The Hobbiton Movie Set is clearly a Big Deal, as signposts to it start some way out. As one gets closer, the wording on the signs is, I think, a bit enigmatic.

Do they farm tourists on the movie set? Breed them and then set them free to roam the world on vast great cruise liners so that snobs can tut about tourism ruining all the nice places?

We arrived in good time, and were actually offered an entry time ten minutes earlier than our booking, which we accepted. I’m glad we did because it meant we ended up with a guide around the site who did an excellent job.

The Hobbiton Movie Set is not like the Harry Potter site near Watford in the UK. There, one can wander at will; on the Hobbiton set, one is shepherded from place to place as a group, with a guide giving talks at various places around the set; one is strongly discouraged from independent wandering. This goes against the grain for me, but actually, since groups arrive with guides every ten minutes, there really is value in going round with the group. as the information dispensed is very interesting.

The group is shepherded on to a bus to take people from the entry and car parks to the set.

There is a welcome video shown on the bus to give some context to what’s going on, and it’s at this point that one begins to get an insight into the scale of the operation. A bit of history:

The set was originally built in the 1990s for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. It is located within a large farm, owned by one Ian Alexander, and was found by a location searcher on a flight over it; it has many of the right characteristics – undulating hills, a lake and so forth – for creating Hobbiton in The Shire for the relatively small amount of time that it would figure in the original trilogy. It was built according to typical movie set rules, i.e. largely faked. The filming was done in about three months and the set broken down and returned to farmland. The story gets more interesting when Peter Jackson, the producer of the Rings films, decided to make a trilogy of films based on Tolkien’s prequel, The Hobbit, some twenty years later. He returned to the Alexanders and between them they decided to make something that was a film set first and foremost, but particularly could then be used as a visitor attraction. A lot more care was put into building the Hobbit holes and associated buildings and the whole thing was put together with a great deal of attention to detail and longevity.

The Hobbiton Movie Set, then, is a 125-acre plot within a 12,50 acre farm – so about 1% of the total area. Small as that percentage is, it still makes the Hobbiton set the largest movie set in the world. It’s clear, from the entry and coach ride over, that there is a vast amount of sheep farming going on.

and one gets the very first glimpse of the set on the bus ride over.

We then got the initial briefing from Rob, our guide (amazingly enough, originally from Guildford, a few miles from where we live in the UK – and he had lived in Knaphill which is the next village to Chobham! Small world…).

He gave us some preliminary information and made it clear that we were expected to stay with the group. Most people in the group had seen the Rings films and quite a few had seen the Hobbit trilogy; but apparently some 40% of visitors have not seen the films – but still they come.

There’s the formal entry point, with its inevitable focus for group photos

and then we got our first view over the film set.

Rob then led us on a route around the place, stopping to give us lots of background information about the creation of the set, and some of the things they had to get up to to make it look lifelike, such as false perspectives to underline the difference in size between four-foot high hobbits and 7-foot high wizards. To be a hobbit extra in the film one only had to be no more than of 5′ 6″ tall and have curly hair; apparently a lot of local farmers suited these criteria.

The tour round offers a view of more hobbit holes than one can shake a stick at; some are built to different scales to aid the false perspective mentioned above

and the main one was, of course, Bag End, where Bilbo Baggins lived, at the highest point of the set.

One could see that a lot of care and attention had been paid to detail and, where possible, to what Tolkien’s vision was for the village to add verisimilitude to the scenes,

even to the extent of ensuring that nasturtiums were growing outside Bag End, as described in the books.

A lot of thought had been put into planting a variety of flower species, some from middle England, where Tolkien lived, and some natives from New Zealand to give the place a sense of being otherworldly. Where clothes hung on lines, these had been put up and taken down every day so that paths were worn through the grass to make it look realistic.

The huge tree above Bag End was the subject of another interesting story from Rob.

It’s an oak tree. For the Rings films, a real, live oak tree was chopped down and erected there,. which in itself must have been a huge endeavour.  But it was propped up there without roots, and so by the time of the Hobbit films it was dead. So it was replaced by an entirely artificial tree – scaffolding poles and other materials make up the trunk and branches. At first, it had 370,000 artificial silk leaves attached to the branches. This was fine up to the point where there was a hiatus in the filming through Peter Jackson’s illness.  When they resumed, sunshine had discoloured the leaves. How to deal with this? Employ four art students, who hand-painted each leaf a different colour each side! The leaves we see today are different – there are only 200,000 of them and they are made out of some kind of polymer. But what an astonishing approach to take to getting verisimilitude.

Another staggering example was how they got Ian Holm (the original older Bilbo Baggins in the Rings films) into the films, as he couldn’t travel to New Zealand. So a replica set for the inside of Bag End that had been created in Wellington was transported over to Pinewood Studios in the UK in its entirety for the filming and then transported all the way back to Wellington.  Now that all filming is finished, it is apparently in Peter Jackson’s home as a guest suite.

Most of the hobbit holes (including Bag End on the site) consisted of frontage only, but two had been set up with complete interiors so that visitors could actually walk through and see what a “real” hobbit hole looked like inside. Jane went through one

and I went through the other.

Standing at the highest point of the set, outside Bag End, one could get a sense of just how the set fits into the vast surrounding farmland;

and could also get a view of the lake, with the mill and the Green Dragon pub,

and that was the last destination on the tour,

where Rob served his group with free drinks

in the pubs beautifully set-up interior.

Outside, beside the bridge

the mill had a moving water wheel

and one could sit outside and look back over the movie set towards Bag End.

We were then bussed back to the entry point where it only took us about a quarter of an hour to find the car among the car parks.  It really is quite an operation: every ten minutes a tour group of 40 guests goes round the set – that must be over 2,000 people a day, and it’s busy every day. My low expectations turned out to be wrong. OK, I still found it endlessly enraging that people consider a scene to be acceptable only if it includes them in it, which makes my photographer soul die a little every time I see it; but I found the whole thing really interesting, and quite heartwarming to see the care and attention that had been paid to making it as good an experience for as many people as possible.

We completed our journey to Rotorua past more great views and a sense of some incoming weather.

At one point we drove through a torrential rain storm, which, it seemed, followed us into Rotorua – we watched the rain lashing down as we settled in to our accommodation.  Our hotel was the Millennium Hotel, which seems very posh. Mind you, our room wasn’t ready when we got there, despite it being after official check-in time (but they gave us free coffee whilst we waited) and there’s a rather complicated relationship between the fridge in our room and the cabinet into which it just fails to fit. But there is a kettle, and a hot tub outside on a little deck for Jane, and seems very comfortable.

We have a couple of full days in Rotorua and a few Things To Get Up To. Stay tuned, and you’ll find out all about it!

A Damp Day in Coromandel

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Saturday 14 February 2026 – Apropos of nothing at all, today is the 37th anniversary of the day Jane and I got together, when we were young(ish), ambitious and employed. These days? Not so much. More “getting on a bit, retired and travelling while we still can (afford the insurance)”. In those days we were driven; these days we are more likely to be chauffeured to the airport.

Anyhoo…

Today was billed on our itinerary as a full day guided tour: Nature and Coast, provided by an organisation nattily called Kiwi Dundee. We were to be met on the Other Side, which was not a spiritual thing, but a short ride on the shuttle ferry.

This took us to Ferry Landing, whence we could just about see parts of Whitianga through the rain.

On the wharf at Ferry Landing is a representation of a Polynesian Star Compass

which the Māori navigators use in conjunction with memorised positions of stars in the sky so that they can navigate safely and surely.

After a wait of a few minutes, our guide, John, arrived to take us on the tour; alongside us were a nice couple from Upminster called Sue and Peter, who were on their penultimate destination in New Zealand having done pretty much the reverse of our itinerary. John explained about the destinations of the day, starting top left and working clockwise and down.

The first stop was Cook’s Beach, which, to be frank, looks nothing special, particularly not in the rain that began to fall as we visited.

However, the beach is sufficiently significant to be given Cook’s name, because although it wasn’t Cook’s first landing on New Zealand soil (that was at Gisborne, further round on the east coast), it was the site where he had a meaningful welcome meeting with a Māori chief, Te Whiti, involving the exchange of gifts (Cook gave seed potatoes, thus introducing the vegetable to New Zealand). It was also the site where he viewed the transit of Mercury across the sun, hence giving Mercury Bay its name. John explained a great deal of the background of that 1769 date with history. Cook travelled to New Zealand from Tahiti and, in a stroke of genius or possibly dumb luck, brought with him a Tahitian linguist, Tupaia; it transpired that he understood the Māori language, which must have made things a lot easier all round.

John also explained why the transit of Mercury was such a big deal. Cook had arrived explicitly to record it; it was an event that lasts for just two days, so timing was crucial. The location has a memorial statue.

The reason it was important is that Cook, by recording the exact time that Mercury started its transit, could identify the exact longitude of New Zealand. In those days sailors could measure latitude exactly using a sextant, but longitude was guesswork unless one had a sophisticated and expensive gimbal clock on board; HMS Endeavour did not, so the datum was of great importance, and enabled Cook to (eventually) draw a detailed and surprisingly accurate map of New Zealand as he circumnavigated it. There is a copy of that map on an info board on the site.

The lump at the bottom is actually Stewart Island. Cook knew it was an island, but disguised it on his map so that those damn’ Frenchies, who apparently were sniffing round the area for lands to claim, wouldn’t come and have a go there. His accurate placing of New Zealand enabled the guesswork of Abel Tasman, who had placed it near South America, to be corrected. Tasman, a Dutchman, was the first European to have sighted New Zealand, and thus gave it its name, but the locals were hostile and so he didn’t land.

Our next stop was a headland overlooking Hahei beach, which could just about be made out through the rain, which was pissing down by this stage.

Amazingly, people were walking along it, despite the weather. We took a short walk up the headland, called Hereheretaura, which gave us some decent views on those occasions when the clouds cleared momentarily,

and allowed John to explain that the rocks of these cliffs were rhyolite, and relatively junior, being only some 8 million years old. The headland is actually the site of what was once a Māori village, and John showed us where the chief’s house would have been, as well as other key parts of the village.

John’s background is that of a park ranger – he spent some years in the UK doing that work – and as the day wore on, it became clear that he had a great knowledge of the geology, flora and fauna of the area, as well as its history. We passed a New Zealand Flax plant, not to be confused with the plant we know as flax and an important resource for the Māori people, as its seeds could provide food and its leaves could be used for a multitude of purposes. He demonstrated how to get the fibres from it

that could be made into rope or even woven into cloth for items like sails.

Our next stop was Hot Sands Beach, which, honestly, doesn’t look much,

but the car park was full and there were lots of people around, so Something Was Clearly Afoot. In fact, John bade us remove our shoes and socks so that we could walk on the beach, entrance to which was guarded by a stern warning!

We walked along the beach for a while

and it became clear that Something Was, Indeed Afoot, further along.

People were approaching this group bearing shovels

and it soon became clear why. John had timed our arrival to be at low tide, which is the time when it’s easiest to experience the water that wells up through the sand from an underground lake which is heated by volcanic activity some 3km below. We stood in the sand and could feel that warmth – indeed I had to move at one stage because it was too hot to stand still. And the groups of people were making the most of the low tide to construct informal hot tubs.

John showed us something that no-one else was bothering to look at.

This is a lump of ignimbrite, with distinctive marks showing where Māori people (probably young men) had used the rock to sharpen spears.

We headed back to John’s van and, given that by now the main Thing That Was Afoot was sand from the beach, we used the facilities there to rinse our feet before getting back into shoes and socks. Then we headed off for some lunch at Calenso Cafe.

This is a cafe where they grow and use as much of their own produce as they can, and source the rest through local suppliers. We had an excellent lunch there – hot smoked salmon and salad – before moving on to our final location, considerably south, in Puketui Valley, part of the Coromandel Forest Park. The site we visited was called Broken Hills, and it is part of the local history of gold mining. There are some parts of New Zealand where one can pan for gold. The Coromandel Forest Park area is not one of them. There’s gold in the quartz to be found there; but this has to be extracted via a mining operation and the gold extracted via an industrial process. John briefed us about what was once a town on the site that supported several hundred people. You can tell what the weather was doing at this point.

He showed us a photo from 1907 and pointed out where different parts of the operation would have been sited.

The town burned down in 1921, and that was the end of any significant mining activity. But there are still elements of the town to be seen, and that was the route that John led us along. But first we had to clean and disinfect the soles of our shoes

because there are Kauri trees in the area, and it’s important to keep them clear of the pathogens which would otherwise destroy them.

We stopped at the entrance to the mine

or, rather, an entrance – the mine itself operated on several levels both above and below where we stood. You can see the rails on which wagons loaded with extracted quartz rocks could be wheeled away.

We peeked into the mine entrance,

and a couple of things can be noted. On the left is the patron saint of mining, Saint Barbara

and dead ahead you can see the warning about cameras. In fact, this mine is still officially active, in that someone has a licence and pays to maintain his claim. His doing this actually serves to protect the area from any further exploitation, even if he doesn’t (he says) do any mining because (he says) there’s no gold left there.

John took us on to the area where the extracted rock would have been processed.

To the right is where a water wheel would have operated, powering various operations. One of these would be the other construction, which was a series of hammers (a “battery”), used to pound the rock into a powder. The hammers were driven by a cam powered from the water wheel. The powder was then agitated under a flow of water on a grooved slope, which sometimes was anointed with mercury to assist the extraction. The heavier particles (i.e. the ones with gold in them) would fall into the grooves, and the rest would be washed away. The gold-bearing powder was then treated with, for God’ sake, prussic acid (that’s cyanide) to dissolve the gold, which was then extracted by evaporation on to zinc before the zinc was dissolved away in sulphuric acid. All these noxious substances, allied with the toxic silica dust, represented a huge health threat to the workers, but they were well-paid and this pre-dated today’s enlightened health & safety ethos.

One of the reasons John brought us there was to show the power of the forest. The mine, for which considerable logging and clearing would have been undertaken, ceased operation a century ago, and in that time, the forest has reclaimed the area entirely. A huge variety of trees, ferns and mosses have taken over, including the world’s largest moss.

There are tree ferns of various sorts throughout

and the whole place is a vast battleground between trees of different species as they compete for the light. In only 100 years there is not yet much of a forest canopy and the race is on for trees to outgrow their neighbours to become dominant. Here for example, is a group of six Kauri trees, all silently trying to outdo their neighbours as well as a Rimu tree, which is the one least likely to succeed.

The biggest Kauri there (on the left above) is 100 years old and if it wins the battle will continue to grow, slowly, for maybe two thousand years. John demonstrated how thick the trunk will be by that stage;

it will extend from where it is now, on the left, to where John is standing in the picture.

As well as a host of plant info, most of which I have to say I have forgotten, John showed us into a couple of caves. We had to go into the first one in complete darkness – hands on the shoulder of the one in front – in order to see what John wanted to show us; the larvae of fungus gnats. The reason we had to do this in the dark was so that we could see their feeding strategy, which involves attracting prey by glowing.

Not a brilliant picture, but a tribute to the power of a mobile phone to capture some kind of image in almost total darkness. So, the glow attracts prey, but then the gnat larvae trap it through a curtain of sticky threads

into which prey becomes entangled so that the gnat larvae can suck the juices out of them. Nature, eh? Such a thing of joy.

We went into a second cave, again in darkness, and paused at the far end. When we turned on our torches, we could then see

insects called Weta, specifically Cave Weta (well, we were in a cave, after all). They’re quite large, but not as large as the Giant Weta, which is about the size of a mouse. We won’t see any of them, though; apart from on some islands, the giant ones have been driven extinct by introduced predators – weasels, stoats, cats and rats. New Zealand’s ecology evolved over millions of years with almost no mammals (there are two native species of small bat) and thus no mammalian predators and so birds, reptiles and insects were entirely unprepared when such were introduced, and they have a disproportionately large impact. There are programmes to try to cull them, but it’s probably an impossible task.

Another tree that is found throughout this forest, as well as in many other places across New Zealand, is the Manuka or Tea-Tree, which is well-known via the honey that can come from it, which has anti-microbial properties. The oil and sap have the same properties, of course. On our way back to the van, wandering along being deafened by the cicadas all shouting at each other, we passed a set of beehives in a grove of Manuka trees.

It’s not honey-producing season right now; if it were, there would be dozens more beehives. But there was still a lot of apian activity; I was hoping to catch the hum of the bees, but I think that the shouting of the cicadas wins.

And so ended an absorbing, if rather damp, excursion into the Coromandel Forest Park. As we headed back to the van, of course, the sun came out… We bade goodbye to Sue and Peter and John dropped us back at Ferry Landing. We headed across and took a final (excellent) meal at Salt before heading back to Beachfront (where the view from our balcony looks lovely in the late afternoon sun)

and preparing to leave tomorrow. Bugger!

Because tomorrow we head further south on the North Island. Our eventual destination is the smelly city of boiling mud – Rotorua. But we have a couple of things to see on the way there, so stay with us to find out what.

Transfer to the Coromandel Peninsula

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Friday 13 February 2026 – Jane had ensured that the room we had at the Auckland City Hotel had a kitchenette, which gave two advantages. Firstly, of course, we could prepare mugs of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey* at times of our choosing; and secondly, we could prepare our own breakfast, since the buffet at the hotel was OK but short on fruit and not particularly good value. As well as the longed-for dental gear, we’d also stocked up with fruit and yoghurt so that we could breakfast at leisure and reasonably healthily.

The mission for yesterday was simple – check out of the hotel, pick up a hire car and drive to our next destination, Whitianga, on the Coromandel Peninsula. We manhandled our bags for the 10-minute walk to the car hire office. It’s actually an 8-minute walk, but one tends to spend a lot of time standing around waiting for the lights to change at busy and large intersections. On occasion I’m tempted to ignore the lights and just walk across if it’s obvious that there’s no reason to wait. But four or five lanes lugging baggage encouraged caution, so I waited for the lights with barely-concealed impatience.

At the Budget offices, the hire process appeared to be going smoothly until Kevin, the chap sorting us out, queried the end date of the booking, which he had as 22nd March. This is, indeed, the end date of our trip here, but we only need this car until we get to Christchurch on the South Island, at which point we hop a train. We were supposed to have a booking for a new hire car for when/where we disembark the train and thus the rest of our stay, and it seems that the local agents for Discover The World hadn’t twigged this.  Fortunately the sainted Kevin (he of the arcade?) and his boss, Sue, sorted the situation out for us and we’re grateful for their staff work. The queue of customers building up behind us probably weren’t, though.

So we took possession of a brand spanking new Mitsubishi ASX, with just 35km on the clock, which will be our steed for the next three weeks or so. It’s a bit larger than I’m used to (though not the utter monster we got in A Coruña when we walked the Camino Finisterre) so we started a bit gingerly whilst I got used to the car. Being Japanese and in New Zealand, the indicators and wipers are the other way round from UK cars, so driving round roundabouts with the wipers going will be a feature of the next few days – and the first few days of driving back in the UK, no doubt.

Anyhoo… our exit from Auckland was smooth and through only slightly congested traffic, and then we had the decision to make as to whether to take the more direct route to Whitianga or go the pretty way. We decided on the latter. And it was a very pleasant drive, through lots of typical North Island landscapes.

We (of course) saw sheep.

New Zealand is often quoted as having more sheep than people, and ChatGPT tells me that this is still true, though not as much as in the 1980s, when there were some 22 sheep per inhabitant. These days it’s nearer four or five.  What surprised a little, though, were the numbers of cattle.

The area we were driving through, round the bottom of the Firth of Thames, being flat, was obviously very well suited to either dairy or beef farming.  I read that there are about half as many cattle as sheep on the island, and they’re split roughly 60-40 in favour of dairy animals.

I guess many people will have read of the enormous amounts of rainfall that have been suffered in the North Island, and saw for our own eyes some evidence of its effects.

We stopped for coffee (OK, yes, and ice cream) at The Pink Shop at Kaiaua,

which is a very individual kind of place, serving as cafe, ice-creamery, eatery, corner shop, post office and second-hand bookshop.

They claim to serve the best coffee in Kaiaua, and I think this might be because there isn’t another cafe there, but it was a welcome break on the journey and the ice-cream was very good.

A little further along the road there actually was another cafe, but we decided not to stop there.

We carried on, through ever-impressive New Zealand landscapes but darkening weather.

After one leaves the flat plains south west of the Firth of Thames and starts up the Coromandel Peninsula, the roads become quite twisty, with climbs and descents, so sometimes one is by the coast

but more often into more hilly countryside. As one might expect, this gives rise to some more handsome scenery, and the roads feature lots of places where it’s safe to stop at the side to take photos.

It really was lovely scenery and it made the journey a pleasure.

We arrived at our accommodation, the Beachfront Resort in Whitianga, at around 4pm yesterday, and were greeted very genially by Paul on the reception and taken to our suite, which is comfortable and is set up entirely for self-catering. So we had a cup of tea, obviously, and then headed out for the fleshpots of Whitianga in search of (a) understanding where we had to get to for the items on our itinerary whilst we’re here, (b) sustenance for the day and (c) breakfast for the subsequent days we’ll be here.

Our schedule includes a couple of planned activities: a half-day cruise around the local coast and an all-day hike. In both cases we have to get to the local wharf, and for the hike we have to catch the shuttle ferry across to the other side (a place engagingly called Ferry Landing).

Having understood how all that worked, our next priority was to find a restaurant for an early dinner. Jane has good instinct for these things, and so, despite the fact that it was raining, we made our way past several eateries in order to get to a place called Salt,

which is a cocktail bar and restaurant. And a very good restaurant, too: we had a great meal based around snapper (yes, I had fish’n’chips) for outstanding value. Whilst we ate, the rain came lashing down, right through the screen that was supposed to protect us,

But it was only a shower, albeit a biblical one, and it was interesting to see the screen once the gusting wind had cleared the rain.

All we had to do then was to find a supermarket to get comestibles for the morrow, and there’s a substantial Woolworth’s in the town so that bit was straightforward.

And that was yesterday sorted.  Today we were supposed to be going on the cruise, but it, sadly, fell victim to the windy and wet weather,

but the hike should go ahead tomorrow, and can maybe be engineered to see on land some of the sights we would have seen from the boat. The practical upshot of this is that much of today has been a day (thus far) of splendid relaxation and further trying to get over jet lag (I’m getting there, slowly).

However, sloth for an entire day is not an option (I’m told. In no uncertain terms); we are travelling and so we Can’t Just Sit Around All Day (bugger!). What do you do on a rainy day? You go to a museum. Fortunately, Whitianga has one. What luck!

Whitianga might be a tiny place, but the area has some significant history. Just around the corner – the other side of that ferry journey – is Cook’s Beach, where he moored the Endeavour in 1769. He witnessed the transit of Mercury whilst here, and hence gave the name of Mercury Bay to the area. He also attended a powhiri, a welcoming ceremony with a local chieftain, where they exchanged gifts (Cook donated the potato to this new land) and established a meeting of minds between the two nations. The interpreter, by the way, was a gifted local linguist.

The museum covers the period from 950AD when the first humans, a Polynesian called Kupe and his crew, set foot on New Zealand; but it wasn’t until 150 years later that Polynesians came in numbers to colonise the new land.

Obviously, there’s Polynesian history figures in the exhibits, with models of the boats they used

This is a model of a 20m replica, Te Aurere, built in the 1990s to demonstrate the voyaging capabilities of these boats.

and examples demonstrating the skill in carving.

There’s a lot of information about Cook, of course, and a rather uninspiring display about HMS Buffalo, a convict and timber transport vessel which was wrecked in Mercury Bay in 1840 (the year of the Treaty of Waitangi), It gave its name to Buffalo Beach, beside which I am typing the very words. Other things covered in the museum include: inevitably, the Kiwi

among displays of other local birds

including, let us not forget, the Giant Moa

an enormous (extinct) bird with an improbably small head; information about historical aspects of the area, including mining; and information about the Kauri tree, an important conifer, particularly to the Māori, who historically used its timber in boat construction (pub quiz fact: it’s the only native timber that floats) and its gum for a variety of purposes. A European-driven industry grew up around it in the 1800s, similar to the Huon Pine we saw in Tasmania, and by the 1930s most Kauri forest had been logged. It’s also significantly threatened by Kauri Dieback, which is transmitted via tiny spores, very often carried on the soles of shoes. This kind of ecological threat explains why biosecurity is taken so seriously on entry to New Zealand.

There is something of a disconnect between the opening hours of the various establishments in Whitianga; the museum stays open until 4pm, but the restaurants, as far as we could tell, don’t open until 5pm (and the cafes closed at 2pm). So we pottered back to our accommodation for a couple of hours before venturing once more into town.  Having looked at the options, we settled on a place called Get Stoked and headed there through some reasonably heavy rain.  It turned out to be a cheerful and slightly noisy place, and provided very tasty salads and fish, though a Greek would not have immediately recognised the salad bit. We ended up chatting to a couple of old codgers on the table next to us for a few minutes before we left. It was a swift but very amiable meal and the pissing rain had stopped by the time we left, which was a plus.

We’re on a tour involving some hiking tomorrow, on the Cook’s Bay side, and have to get across the ferry betimes to meet our guide, so we’re back to early starts for a couple of days. The forecast is basically damp – anything from showers to deluges, temperatures in the mid-20s and humidity in the mid-90s. I hope we don’t get too badly drenched, but you’ll have to come back to find out how the day unfolded.

 

 

 

 

*  To their credit, the Auckland City Hotel provided Earl Grey tea in the room and large cups from which to drink it. It wasn’t Twining’s Finest, but it was perfectly decent; evidence, should one need it, that New Zealand is a civilised country.