Part 2 To Pouto and Kelly's Beach: How did all that sand get in here?

The Pouto road leads out of Dargaville for nearly 70 km, reaching its end in a pair of composting toilets and a sign forbidding dogs from further access. I register a silent protest at a reserve that permits 4WD access all over the place, and from the tracks, that's ALL over the place and deems a dog on a leash far too dangerous to the environment to even consider. Bloody stupid, if you ask me.

I had envisaged most of the peninsula as either sand-dunes or minimal grass over sand. Rough country. On the contrary. there is much to learn. Houses and farms are on the whole tidy and cared for, unlike the East Cape area we traversed a few years ago. The landscape at times is stunningly beautiful in its intense green and sculpted hillsides.

One of the features along the way is the pink heather, sometimes whole hillsides of it, with just occasional white plants, whereas locally, white dominates.

photo by miranda woodward

photo by miranda woodward

We stop for morning tea in the middle of the lush green hilly section, where it merges into pine forest. Pinkl heather is all along the roadsides.

We detour to Kelly's Beach, an unlovely road through cut over and pruned pine forest, and crowded mangrove swamp, emerging eventually onto an immaculately mowed and presented display of New Zealand baches and foreshore.

The tide is right in, the sun is shining, and a large mob of South Island Pied Pheasant Pluckers is gathered in white tie and tails and shiny orange-red beaks on the lawn by the seawall. Champers, anyone?

photo by miranda woodward

I halt silently about 50 metres away and Miranda emerges in stork - whoops, stalk - mode, camera at the ready.

photo by miranda woodward

I say, chaps, deuced boring, waiting for the tide, what. Let's see who can stand on one leg longest? Ready?

photo by miranda woodward

Right in the middle of the group is a caspian tern, a notoriously shy bird. A Forest and Bird publication has this to say about Caspian Terns and the Kaipara.

"One of the first strong signals that off-road vehicles were beginning to have a significant effect on ground-nesting birds around the Kaipara was when Caspian terns abandoned Papakanui as a breeding ground in the early 1980s. As a colonial-nesting species, Caspian terns have a low tolerance of disturbance. Reports by Wildlife Service rangers recorded the last colony of Caspians at the site was abandoned after the area the birds were breeding in, complete with eggs, was run over and completely destroyed by vehicles. The abandonment of the site is a double tragedy when one considers that, from the time records began to be kept in the early 1940s until the early 1980s, the largest Caspian tern colonies in New Zealand were regularly found at Papakanui. Caspian terns now only nest in an area of the harbour which is inacessible to vehicles

This fellow seems relaxed enough up close to settlement, but we don't see any others.

We earmark the spot for a possible return and as it happens, the campground at Pouto is closed, so this is where we wind for the night, but more of that later.

Poutu - 70 km from the nearest petrol pump and almost as far to the nearest store and pub. The cleanest longdrops I've ever seen - composting toilets that really do work.

I do not know at this point whether DoC has some variant on Auckland Zoo's Zoodoo compost, but I'm keeping an eye out in case. It would need careful marketing.

Reluctantly we crate Alice for the hour or two we intend to be on the beach and head down from the park to the shore. I still can't see what dogs on leads are likely to do that 4WDs are not going to do considerably more of. I think we may be dealing with political correctness in one of its minor forms or at the very least a dog in the bonnet. I shall return to this subject.

It's turned into one of those Miranda tramping afternoons, with fluffy clouds and a deep blue sky.

To the left we can see the island sheltering the beach at Journey's End, and across the channel to the right we can see the cliffs of South Head and beyond that Papakanui Spit sheltering Waionui Lagoon.