After leaving Nelson Lakes National park I head towards Golden Bay, which is the large coastal area at the top left-hand corner of the south island. On the way I break my journey with a short stop at the popular seaside resort of Kaiteriteri. Although the day is showery, the beach is pretty busy at the safest swimming spot; with families doing the beach thing with picnics and buckets and spades on the sand and inflatables in the water and further along the beach some have noisier toys of power boats and jet skis. It is a very scenic spot, with a couple of beaches across a small headland and several small islands just off shore.
Beach at Kaiteriteri
The road into Kaiteriteri crosses a bridge over the river, just behind the beach and there is a collection of teenagers gathered on the bridge. They are taking it in turns to jump off the bridge on the river side and be swept under the bridge by the current to emerge on the beach side.
Boy jumping off the bridge
After Kaiteriteri the road climbs steeply uphill, winding from sea level to about 1000m as it crosses Tarkaka Hill, which separates Tasman Bay within the Nelson region from Golden Bay. The road disappears into low cloud and unfortunately the various look-out points along the way don’t look out onto anything today, only into mist. On the far side of Tarkaka Hill the flat plain of Golden Bay becomes visible, as the road twists and turns slowly downhill.
I have booked accommodation in Collingwood, which is the last place along this coast heading north that can call itself a town. It is a small sleepy place nowadays, but in the early settler and gold rush days it had grand designs of becoming the south island capital. This was never to be and the gold rush of the 1860s came and went very quickly before the town plan that was drawn up was ever realised.
The town sits at the mouth of the Aorere River on the west side of Golden Bay. The bay is very shallow here and the tide goes out a long way, leaving mud flats that suit the bird life.
Waterfront at Collingwood
The wide main street is all of 200m long, with a post office, café, supermarket and bar.
Collingwood main street
There is also a small museum displaying old photographs and artefacts from the pioneering era. I particularly like this one of the Collingwood baby show of 1896. Imagine trying to keep your baby still for as long as necessary for the photograph to be taken. All but one mother managed it, with the poor baby second from the left in the back row being condemned to being a smudge in perpetuity.
Baby show
Collingwood has had 3 major fires over the years. The worst one was in 1904, when the whole main street was destroyed. Here is a picture which is displayed on the wall of the fire station, taken just after the fire, which shows the only things left standing are the brick chimneys of the buildings.
1904 fire
The hostel I am staying in is a lovely old building, with wooden floors and a veranda which looks out over the church to the estuary. When it was built it had two storeys, but for some reason that no-one seems to know, or remember, in 1924 the top storey was removed and transported by boat along the coast to become someone else’s house. It still sits there today, but has gone down in the world even more and has now been demoted to a garage.
Views of the hostel
The church sits on the hill just below the house. It was built in 1873 and, presumably due to the town fires, it is the oldest surviving building in Collingwood.
Collingwood church
Church window
If you look at a map of this north west corner of the south island you can quite easily imagine that the shape of the land here is reminiscent of a kiwi. The long sand spit of Farewell Spit is its beak, the Wainui inlet on the west coast makes the shape of its head and the shading of the mountains shows its breast and wing.
Back at the hostel there is a lovely smiley Japanese girl called Maiko who is living and working here for a few months. She tells me she would really like to visit the Lake District and I am intrigued as to why she has such a specific wish. She tells me that she really loves Beatrix Potter’s Tales of Peter Rabbit. She grew up with the stories as a young girl and loved reading about naughty Peter in his little blue jacket and Mrs Tiggywinkle. She liked the pictures too, because they were so different from Japanese illustrations. She loved Peter rabbit so much, she persuaded her parents to let her have a pet rabbit. She desperately wanted to call him Peter, but her parents named him Lucky. Then when she was about 18 and learning English in high school, the class studied the life and work of Beatrix Potter, which is how she learned about the Lake District. I recommend to her the 2006 film of Miss Potter starring Rene Zellweger and Ewan Mcgregor.
Maiko
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