Mokau Landing- Lake Waikaremoana, East Coast

Catch-up

We left Lake Tutira Friday morning heading north up the East Coast towards our next stop. It's been a very long time since I've travelled SH2 north of Tutira, when I was younger it was the route to our family summer holidays at Mahia and I also used to visit a farm (and the Waikare Pub) at Putorino with friends whose family lived nearby. 

I was keen to see the familiar settlements along the way; Putorino, Kotemaori and Raupunga but most of all I was looking forward to seeing the Mohaka Viaduct again. And there it was as we rounded a corner; just as I remember it, one massive, slightly rickety looking viaduct spanning the mighty Mohaka River far below. 

With no lookout to stop at, it was a matter of grabbing a few photos as we approached the viaduct, went under it, then as we crossed the river and one last one just before we disappeared over the top on the other side. 

Once the 4th highest viaduct in the world and still the highest in Australasia, the 95 metre, NZ Heritage Grade 1 listed viaduct, was opened in 1937 and was in regular use until the Napier to Gisborne rail line was mothballed in 2012. Though, just in the last month or so, KiwiRail and the Labour Government have announced that towards the end of the year, logging trains will recommence using the line on weekends from Wairoa to Napier. That's going to give a few people who live along the line a bit of a fright as they once again get used to looking out for trains.

We stopped in Wairoa for a few supplies and then headed off to our next destination, keen to get there before the weather turned on us (it had been a dull grey day so far) and the weekend campers arrived. 

We were headed to the remote Mokau Landing DOC camp on the shores of Lake Waikaremoana, 77kms inland and deep inside Te Urewera National Park. We were holding out hope that the tarseal would last most of the way but it came as no surprise when it ran out with still 39kms to travel. 

Ignore the time to travel, there was a glitch in the system this day.

And now we wished it was raining, just a light sprinkle to deaden the dust! There were several short random sections of seal here and there though; some past farm homesteads for obviously reasons but others for no apparent reason. 

Much of the gravel road was deeply corrugated and I felt sorry for David as he cursed and mumbled under his breath. He'd spent the last few weeks polishing, painting underneath and cleaning the rig. By the time we arrived at the camp a thick layer of dust coated it  from top to bottom. 

There was no time to stop for photos at the top of the climb above the Tuai Power Station and Lake Whakamarino or looking down the other side to Lake Waikaremoana. I was hoping that I'd be able to return to Tuai at a more leisurely pace sometime during our stay.

Mum has a cousin, who with his family, lived at Tuai for many years. He was a local Maori elder/Kaumātua and a water taxi skipper for trampers on the lake's Great Walk. He was killed tragically in an quad bike accident a few years ago. During our stay I did manage to speak to several people who knew Noel well. Unfortunately I didn't get back to Tuai, the road and the weather kept us at Mokau.

Sign? What Sign?

It's 12kms from the Waikaremoana campground to the DOC camp at Mokau Landing. The road is even narrower and windier than we've already experienced. With very few places to pull over and many blind corners we were lucky to not have met anyone coming the other way.

This is State Highway 38 from Wairoa to Murupara and beyond. It finishes at Rainbow Mountain in the Rotorua District, a 200km long winding road, much of it gravel through a very remote and beautiful part of New Zealand. It's called the Te Urewera Rainbow Route and is touted to tourists as a stunning scenic drive. And it is. But I bet the tourists that drive it are very pleased when they reach the other end. You only want to do this road once in your lifetime. We have driven it- there and back- a very long time ago in our regular car. We have no intentions of repeating the exercise!

Finally we reach the turn off down into the Mokau Landing Camp. We're half way down the track before we realise that this is even narrower than the road. I got out to check around the blind corner, to make sure no one was heading up and when I looked back I could see David was suddenly more concerned with getting around the corner. There's no turning back now.

I needn't have worried about how busy the camp might have been over the weekend which was one of the reasons we left Tutira on Friday. Mokau is a large site with several areas to park- beside the Mokau Inlet and stream, at the back of the reserve, on the lake front or round the corner in a bush clearing tucked into another bay (a lovely spot but with no views of the lake). We set up right on the lake front and not far from the boat ramp.

There was one other couple and their caravan when we arrived and we had 3 or 4 others come in over the weekend and then we were on our own again for the rest of the week with the caravan couple (hi Chris & Bernard!) and one or two tourist campers in each night. Folk who just couldn't go any further after driving the Rainbow Road me thinks! So far we've seen none of the overcrowded camps in the North Island that many people have complained about. But then again, we tend to visit the more remote places or ones off the usual beaten track. We'll see how we go the further north we head.

Photos clockwise- Mokau Landing DOC Camp, Wairoa Anglers Lodge at the rear of the camp, lake front view, sunset at Lake Waikaremoana and a friendly White-faced heron/Matuku Moana who sunbathed each evening on a nearby clump of dirt.

The Panekire Bluffs are a prominent feature of Lake Waikaremoana and can be seen from many different vantage points around the lake. The Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk starts off to the left of the bluffs at Onepoto and passes along the ridgeline on the very first day of the 3-4 day walk. 

David had the Takacat up and ready to go not long after we arrived and contrary to a few comments from other fisherman about the fishing being hard, managed to catch four trout on two outings. Usually a catch & release fisherman, it was time to bring one home for dinner. In fact he bought two home in the end because I had a new recipe I wanted to try out. We smoked the other one. 

I went on a couple of exploratory trips with David in between his fishing...

...one to see a waterfall he'd found. He'd seen it in good light as the sun went down but by the time we arrived back, the sun had disappeared. And bobbing about in a little rubber dinghy is not conducive to getting a slow-mo shot of the water falling, but still, it was a lovely setting.

There was another reason we headed out in the boat several times with no particular place to visit; we had no cellphone or internet reception at the camp but if we motored out into the bay we managed to pick up a Vodafone signal. Normally having no reception wouldn't be a problem, we enjoy the break, but with two family birthdays during the week we were able to give them a call and wish them Happy Birthday while bobbing about on the water! (the red cord David is holding is the quick-cut line to the outboard).

On one trip we pulled onto this tiny beach to have lunch. David found quite a large abandoned camp site in the bush behind- grass flattened, neatly stacked woodpile, fire pit and a few missing trees; obviously a family has holidayed there over summer.

I thought I might like to walk a section of the last part of the Great Walk while David went fishing, but in the end I decided that part of the track wasn't too interesting though he did drop me off to check out the Whanganui Hut. Many of the Great Walk walkers get picked up by the water taxi near the hut and don't walk the last section to the road (you can see the road cutting around the bluff in the third photo below). 

I spoke to several walkers who had just arrived and I talked to a hunter who had returned to the hut with his catch; sadly an older fawn. He was a little embarrassed as he'd been after it's mother but instead shot the youngster when it stuck it's head out instead of the mother. The walkers were horrified that some one had been shooting nearby. He assured them that it was at least 500mtrs from the track as required by his permit but still, I'm not so sure I'd have felt safe with somebody shooting nearby. We're told that the Mokau camp is very busy during the 'roar' (April/May); can you imagine that! Not a good time to go camping if you don't like hunting.

Mokau Falls- this beautiful cascade of water is at the head of the Mokau Inlet, and feeds the lake via a short stream beside the camp. There's a viewing area back up on the road,  you can see the road bridge which passes over the stream on the other side of the inlet, in the photo.

The Mokau Inlet has a unique feature, there are in fact two waterfalls entering the inlet, the Tauwhare Falls are on the opposite side to the Mokau Falls and can only just be seen through the dense bush (not helped by the fact that the sun doesn't shine in there either). I couldn't see them but I could certainly hear them from the Mokau lookout. I had to drive over to the bridge to catch sight of them. That's the edge of the Mokau Falls at the bottom of the photo, a very cool edge for a waterfall. I wonder how many people have climbed down there and peered over the edge. 

Once I had finished taking photos of the waterfalls, I drove up to the top of the road hoping to get a view through the bush overlooking the campsite. This was my first stop; you can't see the camp, that's off to the right but it's overlooking the bay and the other finger of lake where we explored and where the hut is located. We didn't stop for lunch at the beach you can see, ours was not far around the next point.

 I stopped a few more times and finally managed to get a clear line of sight down to the camp.

Abel Tasman Coast Walk- Awaroa to Totaranui

Real-time (although we have moved on from Totaranui)

We have visited the Tasman Bay area and the Abel Tasman National Park numerous times over the last 4 years, stopping for extended stays at Kaiteriteri, near the southern end of the Park and visiting the Golden Bay end a couple of times also. Although we've not walked the complete 60km 3-5 day  Abel Tasman Coast Great Walk, we have walked the Medlands Bay to Anchorage section on a previous visit after doing a boat tour right along the coast to Totaranui.

This time I was thinking that David could run me to the Awaroa Inlet in the boat and I'd walk the 7km section from Awaroa back to Totaranui but in the end we decided we'd drive to the Awaroa carpark and I'd walk from there. The carpark is at the end of a very narrow, winding road, the last time we explored the road we came across a rental motorhome that had slipped off the road. There are a number of holiday baches and a few lodges on the far side of the inlet near the beach, the carpark is where owners and visitors leave their vehicles. They then either use dinghies to cross at high tide or walk across (or around) the estuary at low tide.

From the carpark I crossed the estuary to that tiny island and then headed towards the track entrance which is around that little finger of land and across to the far left. The Awaroa DOC hut can be seen on the shore on the right. Trampers cross directly from there to the track entrance on their way north.

The water, in places, was deeper than I'd hoped for but I'd commandeered David's socks off him at the last moment in case mine got too wet. I wasn't going to take my boots off; while it's lovely to walk on the sandy parts, much of it was sharp shells and mud. You can then spend half an hour trying to dry your feet and get rid of the sand between your toes before you can start on the track.

David waited until I rounded the island; can you see him above the dinghies? (click to enlarge the photo- use your back arrow to return to the blog)

He's taking a photo of me taking a photo of him! 

Walkers can cross the estuary 90 minutes before low tide and up to two hours afterwards, and as I neared the crossing point, I spotted a group making their way across from the DOC hut.

I decided to let them go ahead of me, that way I could take my time once I got onto the track proper and not have them breathing down my neck (and nattering away disturbing any birds). I wanted to walk down towards the beach anyway but decided not to cross over as the river got deeper towards its outlet. 

Awaroa Beach is world famous in New Zealand; it's the beach that over 40,000 Kiwis bought through a crowdfunding campaign when it looked liked it would be lost to private ownership once again, you can read about it here. There are also some lovely aerial photos of the inlet in that link too.

As I walked alongside the streams and channels that criss-crossed the inlet, I once again found dozens of shoals of whitebait fighting their way upstream against the current. As soon as they spotted me they turned tail and were swept downstream, only to turn and head back up over the same ground as I stepped back.

Someone else was keenly following their progress; a Kotuku/White Heron, and I'm guessing the same one that we were seeing in the Totaranui estuary on a regular basis.

The group of trampers hadn't made much progress, there was much laughter and squeals of surprise coming from them, some had taken their boots off and were struggling across the broken shells, while others that hadn't, had sunk to their shins in mud. A few other walkers were crossing in the opposite direction and having the same problem. 

I stayed with the white heron for awhile, waiting until they eventually disappeared up the track and then made my way to the track entrance where I met another two couples heading across the estuary. I guess low tide at the estuaries along the walk are always going to a bit of a bottleneck as walkers time their crossing to suit the tide. 

The first section of the track is a gentle climb over the inlet headland to Waiharakeke Bay, the wide and gravelled track was very easy going, passing through beautiful bush and running alongside two crystal clear streams, one exiting into Awaroa Inlet, then once over the top, the other running down to the beach. 

There's plenty of evidence of pest control in the Abel Tasman Park (and in many of the parks we visit)- wasp bait stations and stoat and rat traps on the ground but this is the first time I've seen this type of trap (below left). I think it's for possums, they'd climb up on the board and put their head in.....well, no need to give you any graphic details. The Abel Tasman Park has the added bonus of Project Janzoon to help with predator control, a privately funded trust, working in conjunction with DOC to restore the local ecology. And in case you're wondering; 'Janzoon' was Abel Tasman's middle name. 

Once over the headland I take a short detour to check out the Waiharakeke Campsite, it's tucked up in the bush just behind the beach. I decide to have my lunch at the picnic table listening to all the birdsong and watching the antics of a couple of tui chasing each other and anything else that dares to land in a nearby tree. 

After lunch I walk back to the track and out onto Waiharakeke Beach, there's no missing this entrance if you're coming from the other direction.

The group of trampers ahead of me have spread themselves out along the beach to sunbathe and explore. 

Awaroa Beach can be seen in the background here.

I carry on my way, up the stairs at the far end of the beach. It looks like the group will be here for awhile and I can get a jump on them. Perhaps this is as far as they'll be going and they'll pitch their tents in the campsite.

There's a short steady climb after the stairs and then the next section of the track follows a part of the rocky coastline around Ratakura Point. There are peeps of the ocean here and there and also a view across to Awaroa Head through a tangle of bush.

Photos clockwise- 1) Awaroa Head, 2&3) Punga/Tree Fern, 4) Awaroa Beach(zoomed in), 5) Bush Lawyer/Tataramoa flowers (a scrambling thorny native climber, with sharp backwards-curved hooks that grab and rip clothing and skin. Once it seizes hold of you, it doesn't let go, presumably the reason for it's English name.), 6) Nikau Palm

And then the view opens up to something more spectacular; Goat Bay, the next beach on the walk. The tour boat in the background is heading into Totaranui.

I step down from the rocky platform at the end of the track...

...and out onto Goat Bay beach where no one has gone before me (yeah right). There are obviously a few walkers in a hurry because I have the whole beach to myself.

I stop to say hello to a Variable Oystercatcher/Torea Pango, with leg bling that looks a might uncomfortable. Variable Oystercatchers are mostly all black in colour (I know, it used to confuse me too, 'variable' means, well, variable doesn't it, not all black, right?)  This is an intermediate morph adult (it was with an all black mate- haha no pun intended!). They are not to be confused with a South Island Pied Oystercatcher who looks similar but has distinct black and white markings with a white breast and underpants, and who is also a larger bird. 

I leave the oystercatchers to their foraging and carry on to the far end of the bay, to where the next section of the track begins up and over Skinner Point. The cloud formation certainly makes for some fab photos.

I put my camera in my pack (very unusual for me) for the next climb, it a steep steady haul, with many switchbacks. I wonder when I'll reach the top. This is a reasonably new section of the track. If you look at the photo above (click to enlarge), you can see two slips on the point; they wiped out the old track which was just a very short climb to that low section on the point. The new track enters the bush at the base and then does a hard left before weaving back and forward to the top which I think must be close to the left edge of the photo. From the top it's a steep descent down the other side with lovely views through the manuka of Totaranui below- can you see the 'Grand Entrance' trees?

Half way down I take a short side track to Skinner Point Lookout, it's where the old track used to pass by and thankfully they have kept this part open, who'd want to miss this fabulous view of Totaranui.

On my way back to the main path I watch as a water taxi arrives at the beach...

...and zoom in on a long line of trampers waiting patiently to board; the owners of all those footprints perhaps? 

Then it past the sign board and home to have a much needed cup of tea; 3hrs 30mins and 9.5km later (inclusive of all photo stops, snack breaks and up and down the inlet). Job done!

Heading for Heaphy

Exploring Golden Bay is made much easier by the fact that there are very few roads with just three longer than about 30kms and they all head inland; two ending in the Kahurangi National Park and the other one on the west coast at Anatori (that’s if you don’t count the 4WD road that can take you further on past Anatori). The rest are reasonably short and usually service the beach settlements and farming communities in the area.

The Heaphy Track, another “NZ Great Walk”, begins right at the end of one of the longer roads, at the head of the Aorere Valley. And while we aren’t going to walk the 78km, 4-5 day walk we wanted to check out the beginning of the track and explore a few areas along the way.

First things first though; it’s lunch at the ‘Naked Possum’, a well known cafe at the end of a side road surrounded by cow paddocks. Lucky the sign points down the road to the café otherwise we might just have thought this was it. There's sure to be a few very naked possums in there though.

Unfortunately there aren’t too many people about at the cafe. Well in fact, there’s only us but we had an enjoyable visit, we both had their signature venison pie which was very tasty indeed. Apparently during the summer (and over the weekends) this is a busy place, the cafe is also located at the start of the Kaituna Track, a 15km tramp up and over the Whakamarama Range ending out near the west coast (we’ll pass the other end later in the week). But for the moment it’s just us & the lunches they supply to the builders of a new dairy shed down the road.

After lunch we’re back on the road and heading towards Bainham and the ‘famous in NZ’ Langfords Store. The store is thought to be the oldest operating shop in New Zealand. But it was not operating when we visited. It’s been closed for winter, reopening this week. The store first opened it’s doors in 1928 and it’s still in the same family with the original owner's great, great grand-daughter running it now. 

With no visitors and the shop shut, it gave me a good opportunity to take photos. But I’d love to see inside so I’m hoping to head back there this week sometime to check it out.

Further down the road a sign post pointed down another side road towards a historic bridge which of course we had to check out. The Salisbury Bridge was a suspension foot bridge that crossed a narrow gorge over the Upper Aorere River. But all that remains of it, is one of the supports (middle right), the 37m long wire bridge, built in 1902, was swept away in a huge 14 metre flood on 28th December 2010, only 6 years after being fully restored and becoming one of Golden Bay’s tourist icons.

It would seem that the 2010 flood (the biggest in 150 years) was horrendous and probably the cause of all the new embankments on rivers and streams, and a couple of new bridges, that we’ve seen in the area and also why there are so many whole trees and huge tree trunks littering the estuaries in all directions. A tour guide we spoke to told us that the Aorere River has an average water flow of 80 cubic metres per second and at the height of the flood it was 8000 cubic metres per second.

What an interesting little gorge; very narrow with deep clear pools of forest green water. I can imagine the water raging through here in a flood, it would be quite terrifying crossing it on the swingbridge (especially if it was during the 2010 flood!). Can you see our shadows on the rocks? A short side walk to the end of the gorge reveals the Salisbury Falls located on a stream that enters the river near the bend. After nearly a month of little more than a few light showers, Golden Bay needs a heavy dose of rain, that would be certain to increase the flow of the falls. The whitebaiters back at camp are also wanting a good dousing to flush out the rivers, they think this will improve their catches. Going by the quantity we’ve seen some come back with we aren’t convinced the lack of rain is the reason others haven't started to fill their freezers yet.

The road to the Heaphy Track has now turned to gravel and narrows down considerably, it seems a long way in too. Travelling a dusty winding gravel road always feels twice as long as it actually is. It must be to do with all the bouncing about in the cab at half (or less) the usual speed & the taste of dust. I know David curses everytime we hit gravel as the wellside fills up with dust leaving a thick coating over everything we store back there and he’ll have to get out with the hose when we get back home. But needs must, and gravel roads are very much a part of our journey. We wouldn’t have explored half the area that we have if we kept off them.

This is Mt Olympus (1519m) and for LOTR fans this was the "Rugged Country south of Rivendell Eregion Hills"

Finally we reach the Heaphy Track carpark and as it’s getting on into the afternoon we decide to walk to the first hut only; Brown River Hut. Once again it’s deserted although there were 3 vehicles in the carpark.

This hut is very clean & tidy compared with most of the others we’ve visited but it still doesn’t make us want to stay over anytime soon. The next hut is 17km further on and the walk to it is the steepest on all the Heaphy, climbing from 500m above sea level, here at Brown River Hut, to 3000m at Perry Saddle. It’s the reason we’ve decided we’ll do a day walk on the Heaphy Track from the other end, when we get to the West Coast early next year.

I walk a little further on up the track to a wooden bridge that crosses the Aorere River, no swing bridges here. I wonder how this one faired in the flood.

Then it’s back down the track to the ute and a quick shot of the sign board at the carpark. What? You weren’t expecting us to put in a long walk late in the day were you? Our shortest walk ever! Just what we needed at the end of another day exploring.