Golden Bay - Cape Farewell and Farewell Spit

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; the shading of the mountains shows its wing and the pale low land of the valley, its breast.

Is it a bird? Is it a map?

The most northerly point of the south island is here and is called is called Cape Farewell, as named by Captain Cook when he left New Zealand at the end of his first visit. I wonder if he had seen it on arriving, he might have named it Cape Hello and presumably over the decades, in the way that language changes, it would now be known by Kiwis as Cape G’day.

Cape Farewell

I like the simple principles the explorers and early settlers applied to the naming of places: what am I thinking of now - as in Captain Cook’s case; what does it look like – as in Grey River; in honour of a famous person or event – as in Nelson; or to remember something from home – as in Ashburton. Sue, Keith and Andrew will appreciate these principles, as when we are walking together at home we chortle happily while looking for the property with the most obvious name, such as Church View, or Riverside. On the other hand, I think the explorers and settlers had an excuse for keeping it simple, in that they had a hell of a lot of stuff to name.

West coast view

Just south of Cape Farewell is a spectacular beach, which has managed to retain its Maori name – Wharaniki Beach. Here there are arches through the rock and in the calmer sea pools seals play and lounge round.

Wharaniki Beach views

Farewell Spit is the longest sand spit in New Zealand and is an important habitat for birds. The bay side of the spit provides salt marshes and mud flats and the ocean side, enormous sand beaches and sand dunes. People are only allowed to walk along the spit for 4km on each side, to protect the environment.

View of Farewell Spit disappearing into the distance

Bay side of the spit

Black swans in the bay

Sand dunes

Ocean side of the spit

Oyster catchers

Golden Bay - Collingwood

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

Nelson Lakes National Park

After waiting a week in Nelson, I get an appointment to see the podiatrist. He examines my feet and lower legs and criticises the flexibility of certain parts and the inflexibility of others. He displays his professional knowledge by using terminology and quoting scientific research, without concerning himself as to whether or not I am keeping up. He blames my parents for my unfortunate feet. He tells me to go and buy a squash ball to massage my feet; gives me some exercises to do and an appointment for 10 days’ time for him to make me some insole thingumies. I don’t like him much.

So now what do I do? I feel I have exhausted everything Nelson has to offer for now and feel like a change of scenery; but I also have to be back in Nelson in 10 days’ time. I talk over my options with the guy from the hostel and come up with a plan. I’ll hire a car and borrow a tent and drive off and explore the north west corner of the south island. I’ll go to Nelson Lakes National Park, where I can take in some different mountain scenery and do some interesting day walks, while I rest my foot; then go to the Golden Bay area, where there is stunning coastal scenery. I always feel better when I have a plan.

The next day I pick up my hire car, stow my belongings and borrowed tent in the boot and get ready to go. The roads are easy to navigate, as they drive on the left and everything is pretty familiar, other than they have a strange ‘give way to the right’ rule, which I’m not sure I understand. I make a trip to the supermarket in Nelson city to stock up on provisions and get tooted while driving round the car park. I think I got the ‘give way to the right’ rule wrong already!

The roads are straight and level along the valley bottoms and steep and twisty through the hills. They have helpful road signs alerting you to sharp corners, showing the safe speed navigating the bend.  After an hour and a half’s drive I arrive in the small alpine village of St Arnaud, which sits at the head of Lake Rotoiti and is a gateway to the Nelson Lakes National park. My campsite is a few kilometres from the village, on another part of the lake shore and I plan to stay here for 3 nights.

My camp

Lake Rotoiti

This area is the starting point for many multi-day tramps, but there are also shorter walks to do, which will suit me fine. In the afternoon I take a walk along the lake side, back towards the village to a busier area of the lake. From this beach people are messing about in boats and kayaks and water skiing. Some people try and swim, but the water must be pretty cold, because they mainly just stand in the shallows shivering.

Back at my campsite a guy called Terry, from Tiptree in Essex, has pitched his tent on the plot just across from me and we chat for a while. He is on holiday here for 5 weeks and has been coming here regularly for many years for cycling and walking holidays. We would both like to do some kayaking and as two people are needed we decide to try and join up for that while we are here. In the evening we share a bottle of red wine to seal the deal.

The next day the mountain tops are covered in cloud and bad weather threatens, so I decide to walk along the other side of the lake, through a beautiful beech forest and down to the lake side, where I get a great view of Mount Robert on the opposite side of the water, as the clouds clear. It makes me want to walk up everything I can see.

Beech forest

View of Mount Robert

The next day it is clear, but windy, and the lake is choppy, so still no kayaking today. I set off on a 3 hour walk up and around Mount Robert. First there is an hour’s climb steeply uphill through more beech forest, with occasional wide open views back to the lake and valley. I can see my tent from here!

Views from the Mount Robert track

After the tree line, the scenery changes and becomes alpine, with tussocky grass. It is exhilarating, and very windy, to be on the mountain top and a tempting track leads off along a bare ridge towards a tramping hut a few hours away. But that way is not for me today. I take another path which heads round the top of the mountain and starts to descend back towards the tree line.

The mountains on the opposite side of the lake form regular triangular ridges, covered with trees on their lower slopes, but with the mountain tops standing bare above the bush line.

Ridges on the mountain side

The way back down goes through beech forest again, then zig zags steeply across an open grass-covered slope and crosses occasional areas of scree.

The next day the lake is still too choppy and Terry and I are both leaving, so in a last attempt to get on the water we decide to take a look at the next lake over – Lake Rotoroa. This lake is much bigger than Rotoiti and possibly even more beautiful. The conditions look perfect for kayaking, with clear, glassy water - but no sign of any boats.

Lake Rotoroa

We find a small sign on a noticeboard advertising a Canadian canoe for rent and we go and investigate. We find Tony and Louise in a nice guest house just up the road and they have a canoe in the garage, which we can trolley down the road to the lake. Tony comes from Plymouth originally. He left there when he was 19 and came to New Zealand, married a Kiwi and has been here for 40 years. He has still got a Janner accent, mixed up with Kiwi. I ask him if he ever goes back to England and he says he has been back once 20 years ago. He is perfectly happy here going fishing on the lake, going out with his dog and hunting deer and pigs.

Tony from Plymouth

We take the canoe out for a couple of hours and it is the perfect way to see the lake.  We share the water with some girls who are doing some serious rowing training and from time to time we can hear the shouts of the cox carrying across the water.

Me in the canoe

Nelson

Initially I thought I wouldn’t bother writing anything in particular about Nelson. Then I changed my mind. I have been back here for a week since I finished walking the Heaphy Track and although nothing particularly interesting has happened in that time, I think the place deserves a mention, both on its own merits and also for claiming a week of my life.

I have stayed here a bit longer than I originally thought, as I have a bit of a sore foot after the exertions of my walk and want to have it checked out by a podiatrist before embarking on my next major tramp. Because of the Christmas and New Year holidays I can’t do this until 4^th January at the earliest. I just know he’s going to tell me it’s an age thing. Darn it.

It’s not a bad place to be stuck. I am in a cosy and homely backpackers’ hostel, just 5 minutes walk from the main city.

Tasman Bay Backpackers

The hostel is full over the Christmas and New Year period; mainly with young Europeans. The resident population changes gradually over the days, as people leave and arrive.  Some people stay a night or two and others stay longer; some leave, then come back again after a few days away. For the first time since I left home I have access to a kitchen and get to go to a supermarket and buy and cook my own food. The communal kitchen gets pretty busy, but everyone is very polite and we move around each other in a kind of dance, reaching for pots and pans and access to the cookers: ‘Excuse me, but could I just get in that cupboard?’ ‘Do you mind if I use that knife after you?’ ‘Is it Ok if I just move your pan over here?’

Kitchen

At 8.30 every evening free chocolate pudding and ice-cream is served and the residents form an orderly, but expectant queue at the kitchen door as the conversation revolves around quality of tonight’s pudding. Those of us who have been here for a few days know that although the recipe is always the same, the end result varies. Sometimes it is gloopy, sometimes solid and sometimes… just heavenly.

Chocolate pudding queue

New Zealand music plays from the speakers in the lounge and in the evenings the sofas are occupied by people reading, chatting and using computers.

Lounge

I am in a dorm room for 6 people and over the days people come and go. To begin with it’s all girls, then it gradually morphs and becomes a mixture of girls and boys and finally last night it is all boys and me. 3 new kiwi lads move in and dump their stuff, then don't reappear until 5 in the morning. I thought I had woken up in Snoresville-on-Sea, instead of Nelson.  Rather uncharitably I open all the curtains and windows and close the door none-too-quietly when I go out at 10am. 

As a bit of history about the place (courtesy of Wikapeadia and the town museum) I can say that the original European settlement of Nelson was planned by the New Zealand Company in London. They intended to buy 200, 000 acres of land cheaply from the Maori, which they planned to divide into one thousand lots and sell to intending settlers. The first European settlers landed here from England in 1842. Nelson received its name in honour of Admiral Horatio Nelson and many of the roads and public areas around the city are named after people and ships associated with the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The site of the settlement was chosen because it had a natural harbour protected by a 13km boulder bank. But unfortunately the area did not have the amount of suitable arable land the company had planned on and within a year settlers began leaving and by 1846 twenty five percent of the original 1000 or so immigrants had moved away. The pressure to find more arable land became intense and resulted in disagreements and fighting with Maori.

Nowadays the city and surrounding suburbs are clean, tidy and affluent-looking and easy to walk or cycle around, as they are laid out as a grid on the flat land between the sea and the surrounding hills. In and around the city there are many parks and open spaces. Blue and white agapanthus are blooming in gardens and along the sides of roads and the Pohutukawa trees are covered in red flowers.

Queen’s Gardens

Agapanthus

Pohutukawa tree

From a park at the edge of the city there is a walk to the top of a hill which gives a 360 view. The city is laid out below, with the waterfront to the right and the boulder bank visible just off-shore.

Views of Nelson

In the opposite direction the Maitai valley leads back into the hills.

Maitai valley

Down in the city the streets are wide, quiet and lined with trees.

Typical suburban street

There are many historic houses, which are very cutesy and in contrast ultra-modern houses dot the surrounding hills.

Restored settlers’ houses in South Street

Old-style houses

Modern houses on a hill

A modern cathedral sits on a mound looking towards the ocean from the end of the main shopping street.

Cathedral

Trafalgar Street

After New Year there is jazz festival in and around the city and as I wander around music comes out of restaurants and squares. I stumble cross this group playing in a shopping centre and sit and watch them for a while. A couple get up from the audience and dance a very proficient rhumba.

Jazz in the shopping centre

One day I borrow a bicycle from the hostel and cycle 12km along the coast to the east of the city to the end of the boulder bank, where the cliffs start.

Boulder bank beach

From here there is a path which goes steeply uphill, with far-reaching views back towards Nelson and across the bay to the Able Tasman National Park.

View towards Nelson

Self-portrait on a hill

I am surprised as I realise there is more potential for me to feel lonely here in New Zealand than in Asia. Perhaps it is because people’s lives in New Zealand are more recognisable than those in Asia. In Asia I was an observer of everyday things that bore little resemblance to my own life. Here people’s lives and the surroundings are familiar and maybe this highlights how far from home and family and friends I am. Or maybe it is because of living in a hostel and being aware of the transitory nature of relationships here. I have lots of pleasant conversations that include the same ingredients, but don’t go much beyond, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘How long are long here for?’ ‘Where are you planning to go next?’ etc. Or maybe it is just that I have been in Nelson too long, without any specific focus. It’s not a problem at the moment, but I am aware of loneliness possibly lying in wait, just around the corner, and I might bump into him if I don't keep a look out for him.