Pouto

 

It's been 6 years since my most recent visit to Pouto and 17 years since I went with a group of younger family members.  There were a couple of visits between those two.  My visits are infrequent enough for me to forget between visits how beautiful the place is.  Then it smacks me in the face all over again.  I doubt I will ever go there and not be stunned and captivated by its charm. 

The Pouto Peninsula is itself a huge mound of sand. Features include huge dunes, fresh water lakes and valleys. The scenery changes regularly as the wind reshapes the dunes.

This time there were 9 adults including 2 grandchildren and 3 little girls, aged 5, 7 and 9.  We stayed in a relative's farm house, distant in lineage but close in bonds.  (The cousin, that is.)  While there we enjoyed long relaxed gatherings with other local family members.  

We spent our days at the beach or inner harbour bays and, of course, had an adventure going along the beach to see the lighthouse.  It's always an adventure, as soon as you turn the corner at the end of the road, onto the beach the landscape is other worldly with the massive dunes on one side and the Tasman Sea on the other.  A remote wilderness of sand, sea and sky.  

The beach can be accessed, with care, at low tide by four wheel drive vehicles.  I was spoilt to be whizzed along the beach (at great speed I might add) by cousin Simon in what I can only describe as a dune buggy.  Goodness knows what it's really called.  I had to be helped into and out of it but in between I felt like a young free spirit.  I would not have been capable of the climb up the dune to the lighthouse.  

 

This three story wooden lighthouse was built in 1884, as a navigational beacon for ships entering the Kaipara Harbour. Not only is the Kaipara New Zealand’s largest, it's the most difficult to sail into. The entrance is guarded by a treacherous sand bar. The flashing lamp was visible for 18 nautical miles. Ships stopped using this harbour in the 1950s and the structure fell into disrepair, but it has now been restored by Heritage New Zealand as an historic landmark. 

This next photo is from 17 years ago.  That same sand dune is now covered in t tree.  Mother Nature  is in charge out here.  

After this trip I have decided I definitely must have a new camera or a new phone with a good camera.  I've fallen out of love with my current camera, it's not the camera's fault, I just can't read any of the settings.  And I do need a new phone.  I so wish I could share this image with you so you could see what I saw.  We were sitting on top of a sand dune with a sea of t tree below us, then more dunes, a lake, Simon's farmland and then the harbour in the background.

 

In another direction the South Head of the harbour is clearly visible about 6 kms across the harbour.  It looked quite different from my last visit, much more sand.

Can't blame the camera for no photos of the quiet waters of a little bay accessed through Simon's land, where we took the little girls for a safe swim away from the beach waves.  I  became engrossed in what looked like driftwood - which has not yet drifted anywhere.  It's t tree that grows along the shore that has succumbed to old age and the battering of many storms.