After three wanton sun, sea and wine soaked days at Matauri Bay napping and wallowing in tune with the sound of the surf, it was time to pack up Car-lotta and swap one fine New Zealand beach for another.
We left in a convoy of “five wheelers”, camper vans and caravans that would have frustrated any motorist caught up at the back of our queue.
Our destination is arguably one of the finest beaches in Northland, Tauranga Bay. Immediately south of the entrance to Whangaroa Harbour – it’s only a half hour’s drive up the road.
My family often took the drive along this coast during those long hot Sunday drives that everyone used to do as a rite of passage in the 70s. Dad driving our Triumph 2000 and cursing the price of petrol - it was 59c a litre - and mother straining to keep my brother and I from killing each other in the back seat. We would ramble along the narrow roads bordering a spectacular and unique shoreline that in those days I failed to appreciate, but today, cannot fail to admire.
Little did I realise in those early days they would be the memories my parents were creating for me to enjoy in my burgeoning autumn years: long, hot Christmas landscapes, decorated with the bright red pohutukawa flower carpeting the melting tarseal roads and meager fibrelight baches littering the idyllic foreshore; the sound of cicadas exploding through our open windows; and over the radio, John Rowles lamenting, the music fading through the summer haze into the slipstream of our car.
Arriving then, as we do now, through an ancient forest of cabbage tree and swamp, the camp is a throw-back to those halcyon days.
Today little has changed, except for the odd multimillion dollar holiday home now nestled amongst seemingly fragile clapboard neighbours. And of course my choice of music, which today is Robbie.
Our destination is a beautiful one kilometre beach sheltered by a headland on both sides which offers shelter from the prevailing winds; its isolation and privacy protecting it from the scourge of modern civilization and creating a time warp that most New Zealanders will appreciate.
At one end of the bay through a natural rock archway, is a small cove - Butterfly Bay, a haven to a kaleidoscope of Monarch butterflies, which breed and thrive here. At the other end of the beach is a natural swimming estuary, its tidal rip cascading in a white rush over wave ripples gouged into the sand. In the middle where the camping ground is located and beyond a sand bank and colony of Dotterell is a clear and constant surf that begs to be appreciated by the young at heart.
The camping ground Eric Rush’s family still oversee has barely marked the subtle changes infiltrating its grounds. Instead of Triumphs, Cortinas, and coleslaw and bbq’d sausages, we are now arriving in motorhomes, vans and RAMS to consume slow cooked lamb and potatoes dauphine with salmon canapés and drinking Oyster Bay instead of Cold Duck.
Kids play in the safe estuary and the adults body surf in the main beach, whilst once again the women organise the food and we men dash for the crashing waves in our bathing suits still wet from the morning’s exertions. Then we are called back - just before suffering too much concussion from the dumping surf - to the groaning tables of food and open bar.
With chill music drowning out the cry of the sea gulls, someone suggests a cocktail of Long Island Iced Teas and the rest of the afternoon is a blur of alcohol and Finska - a torturous Finnish game which challenges your co-ordination and mathematics - made extra difficult the more ”teas” you’d imbibed. The day slips quickly into dusk.
Through the eyes of Car-lotta, I'm discovering that camping grounds around the country are enjoying a new revival, but they are under threat from rising property prices and the dearth of houses and suitable land to build them on. The best grounds in the country are located next to the sea and therefore are the most at risk of being lost forever.
Will our children and generations of the future have the same opportunities that we had to achieve these memories, or will we be foolish enough to lose the land and deny future generations the way of life that we took for granted? All the more reason to get out to rediscover our country now, before it is too late. (ROSS THORBY)
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