Lake Tutira Reflections

Before we left Napier David & I had wanted to visit Boundary Stream, a 702ha mainland island bird sanctuary & scenic reserve located on the eastern flanks of the Maungaharuru Range 60kms north east of Napier. The reserve is home to a number of threatened species including kiwi, kaka and kokako & the New Zealand falcon. You may recall back in February when we stayed at Glenfalls we travelled inland hoping to reach Boundary Stream but gave up after travelling over 10kms on a bone rattling & dusty corrugated gravel road.

We didn't leave until late morning & in hindsight we should have left much earlier to fit in one of the longer walks & a visit to Shines Falls which in the end we missed out on.  As it was we decided to stop & have a look at Lake Tutira on the way past, it was a brilliantly sunny & still winter's day & the lake looked stunning.

I also spotted a church up on a plateau that I wanted to take photos of & David also wanted to check out the fly fishermen we could see on the other side of the lake.

Is that the Loch Tutira Monster?

William Guthrie-Smith (an author, ornithologist & conservationist) settled in Tutira from Scotland in 1880. Tutira Station was once over 60,000 acres with 32,000 sheep, Guthrie-Smith subdivided some of his land after WW1 & gave it to returned servicemen. A man well beyond the times he wrote about the serious effect introduced species, both plant & animal, were having on native flora & fauna. Herbert Guthrie-Smith died on 4 July 1940 at Tutira where he is buried. The 2,000 acres that remained of the station were left in trust to the New Zealand public as an educational and recreation reserve. Thousands of Hawkes Bay children have many happy memories of Tutira school camps courtesy of Guthrie-Smith's generosity.

The Tutira Memorial Church had a prime position on a hill overlooking the lake, you can see the calm lake in this photo.

 

We arrived at Boundary Stream mid afternoon and chose one of the shorter walks to do, we hoped we'd have enough time to complete the walk & then drive around to the Shine Fall's car park 12kms away & do the short walk to the falls from there. It would have been a ten hour return walk to the falls if we'd done it from here & there was no way we had the time or the stamina to do that.

Boundary Stream Scenic Reserve

We met a DOC worker who was heading into the bush to do some kiwi tracking with his portable radio tracking device, if we had more time we wouldn't have minded tagging along to check that out. We completed the shorter walk & were pleased to see a falcon flying overhead & a number of rifleman, both quite rare. I didn't manage to get any photos though, it was just too dark in the bush & getting darker by the minute as storm clouds jostled for space in the the blue sky. Once we'd finished we decided there wasn't enough time to visit Shine Falls so we headed back to the main road & home.

Driving back past Lake Tutira, the lighting over the lake was fantastic as the setting sun was caught between the dark storm clouds & the high range it would shortly disappear behind. We drove around the lake edge to check out the DOC camp on the other side where we could see three or four vans parked up for the night.

It was the "right place, right time" for me to shoot a few dozen beautiful shots of the lake & the beautiful autumnal colours & the wonderful reflections. Within 10 minutes the sun had gone.

Here are a few for you to enjoy-