page 2

Auckland City Walk

Along the banks of the stream is an occasional old nikau, the world's southernmost palm tree. Its ripe red berries provide a valuable food source for birds

photo by miranda woodward

still leaving plenty of seed available to germinate and grow.

photo by miranda woodward

Nikau is often a major feature in regenerating forest around Auckland. It's especially noticeable at Mt Auckland, yet inexplicably absent from most of Woodhill Reserve. (For the best display of all, the coastal section of the Heaphy still beats everything I've ever seen.)

Punga line the track in several places and at times you can look up into a grand silhouette against the sky. (I know when I'm tramping or walking it's easy to get my eyes pointed at the ground and leave them there.) A look up is as good as a stretch.

Miranda moves right in close for this shot.

It's a nice walk

photo by miranda woodward

The vegetation through here is lush, unlike the Woodhill reserve where anything remotely west-facing has something of a hard time. Here is a young Coprosma grandifolia (raureku) , with a young mahoe just behind it.

Hangehange is everywhere along the track and also, though not as common as I've seen it, kawakawa. Rangiora is present as small plants, but not the 3-5 metre examples that Woodhill provides.

Hangehange (above)

Rangiora

Houhere (Lacebark)

Here are a couple more big ones.

Kauri roots are close to the surface, and easily damaged by feet tramping around then. hence, most big ones are fenced off. They're one species that do not welcome treehuggers.

We continue on past another punga grove, and the best is still to come.

It just keeps on going up past the point of comfort.

Suddenly, when I'm just starting to feel warmed up, there's mown grass ahead of us again

and it's all over...

My biggest positive out of all of this is that when I went to the doctor nearly two months back I was worried that I'd never manage another overnight or even a long day tramp. Now, after a quantity of Voltaren and six weeks or so of osteo and acupuncture, I'm looking forward to the Greenstone and Mavoro next year. We might even grab a couple of days with Simon on the Heaphy if we can persuade the powers that be that paraplegics with heavy duty mobility scooters should not be excluded when the track is well suited to 4 wheel farm bikes. It will interesting to see how many packs it can cope with. (Hang on. I just remembered that bloody great tree across the track on Day 1 - it had fallen the previous day, so we had to climb over the brute.)