My Account
Last summer, Mahurangi Matters editor James Addis headed off in all directions to explore Mahurangi by foot, bicycle and kayak. He continued his odyssey this summer with an exploration of Tawharanui by bicycle.
After more than a year of editing Roger Grove’s Tossi columns, where he explains all about conservation efforts on the Tawharanui peninsula, it dawned on me that I had not really done a lot of exploring there myself, apart from joining the crowds on the beach at Anchor Bay on scorching weekends. But reading Roger convinced me there was more. When I learned that you could pretty much bike around the entire peninsula – my favourite mode of transport – it just had to be done. My wife and I set a date for a Friday, a lovely excuse to get out of the office on the pretext of doing some serious background research.
The day before, I popped into the i-SITE in Warkworth to pick up a map. A grave gentleman informed me we would need mountain bikes (my wife has a road bike) and that it wasn’t wise to attempt the trip after heavy rainfall (that week it had pelted down for several days in a row). I took this with a pinch of salt. Where would Hillary be if he had abandoned his ascent of Everest simply because someone said it could get chilly near the top?
Friday dawned clear and fine and, despite the recent rain, the track was pretty much as dry as a bone. To bike around the peninsula, you take the 9km North and South Coast Tracks, which come together to complete a loop that takes you along the cliff tops – offering fine views of the various islands dotting the Hauraki Gulf. We elected to begin with the South Coast Track.
From the Jones Bay lagoon carpark, you bike across a boardwalk and across the lagoon.
You are then confronted with a pretty stiff climb up a grassy track. Unless you are Superman, you will have to push the bikes up this bit. Once you get to the top, there’s a tree log to sit on and catch your breath, while you overlook the pretty lagoon. The guide books tell you that it was formed by intensive gravel extraction, which ended in 1967. The gravel was carried by conveyor across a jetty to scores of waiting barges for shipment to Auckland. It’s hard to imagine such rude industrial activity in the tranquil place it is today.
Having drunk in the view, we pedalled up and down well-mown grassy slopes. Along the way, we passed a flock of sheep contentedly chewing the cud under the shade of a large tree. A reminder that Tawharanui is not only a sanctuary for native bird and plant life, it also endeavours to be a home for sustainable farming. From there, we descended into a gully, somewhere near Bluebell Point, where there was some tree shade. Manuka and ponga ferns panned out into the valley below us. With more vegetation around, we noticed a lot more tweeting and the birdlife for which the sanctuary is famed. Tui and fantails were in abundance, and we also spied a yellow-breasted creature we think was a bellbird. Keener birders than us would probably also spot kaka, pateke, saddlebacks, kakariki, North Island Robin and many others.
Refreshed by copious handfuls of scroggin, we headed towards Maori Bay and some steep downhill patches on gravel that tested our skill at staying on our bikes. At this point, we bumped into Tossi volunteers Kerry McGee and Janet Poole who were out tracking takahē – a bird that was thought to be extinct until a few were discovered hiding in the mountains of Fiordland in 1948. The birds were introduced to Tawharanui in 2014 and Kerry says they are doing well, a tribute to the efforts to control predators at the sanctuary that nearly wiped takahē out elsewhere. Currently, there are 14 takahē at Tawharanui, each fitted with a radio transmitter that emits a radio signal at a different frequency. By using an antenna attached to reception gear, volunteers can, in about three hours, usually locate and identify every bird to make sure they are doing okay.
Leaving Kerry and Janet behind, we veer westwards onto the North Coast Track and back to our starting point. It proves a bumpy ride on loose metal at this point, but mercifully we were travelling mostly downhill. I say mercifully because we were both dog-tired. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the glorious Anchor Bay came into view again. It was just the refreshment we needed.
