The stars are dazzling
My favourite wild place is right where I live, on the windswept foothills of the St Arnaud Range. I moved here 20 years ago, knowing no one. But the property offered everything I was looking for: native forest, two streams, paddocks for my alpacas, and a large area of wetland and alpine tussock.
If you walk up to the top of the drive through the forest, listening to the calls of tuis and korimako on the way, or bush robins, fantails and kaka, you find stunning views of the St Arnaud Range. But they don’t match the views to be had if you trudge up towards the back of the property. Here you can see mountains in all directions. It’s spectacular.
At night, with no street lights, the stars are dazzling. I can’t see another house from mine. As the property has grown wilder more and more birds have made their home here. I know spring is on its way when I hear the first call of the kotare, the native kingfisher, followed soon after by the welcome swallows arriving back from overwintering in the lowlands. Later the shining cuckoo will arrive from the Pacific Islands. Why fly all the way here, I wonder. But I don’t complain. They love it here and so do I.
Cathie Harrison
Like a mirage
My favourite wild place is the fur seal colony at Ngawi. The kekeno (NZ fur seals) live on a rocky bulge of the coastline. The road is windy and narrow and a little perilous, including a short ford which might be unsuitable for smaller vehicle after a lot of rain. It is better to be the passenger, watching not the ocean but the patch of grass between the rocky shoreline and the road. The kekeno are like a mirage. You’ll think you’re seeing large boulders, then your eyes shift and the seals reveal themselves, stretched in the sun.
DOC’s advice is to not get between a seal and the sea. They appear clumsy on land, deceptively fast. The last time I was in Ngawi we watched a young seal crying for its mama, who’d respond from somewhere deeper in the large rocky formation.
Spying them in the ocean can be tricky. They’ll dive beneath the waves and resurface a much farther distance away than you’d think. Their thick coats keep out the cold of the ocean. NZ’s east coast feels like it comes straight off Antarctica – so it’s no surprise they’re sunbathing every chance they get.
Grace Tong
A mountain of sand
Twenty years ago, someone said the dune was the largest in the southern hemisphere, who knows if it’s true, who cares. You have believed it ever since. Bordered by an estuary and the Pacific Ocean, it looks to be a mountain of sand 100 metres high. It is across the way from Mangawhai, an hour or so north of Auckland. It is a presence you can’t ignore.
The wind can be cruel up there. The climb up the sandy face can be agony. Short agony maybe but still the lungs scream and the quads burn. And when you get to the top it’s only to take a break and catch your breath before the descent, the run or fall back down. Often a mixture of both.
As a kid, when you wrestled near the edge there was a touch of desperation you didn’t get down below. As a teen, you learned a little more about the way things worked, about how things went wrong. For instance, one day you threw yourself down on a boogie board and instead of flying away, you went mouth open, head first, into the hot sand. Too late, you realised that years of use had rubbed the boogie board’s skin completely away.
Later there was romance up there, too. And jealousy. From miles around you could see the little black ants that meant others, strangers, were on that beautiful mountain of sand. So you rushed up. You followed their footsteps. You reached the top and the ground below you shifted a little. Collapsed a little. You couldn’t really see the changes but you knew it was happening. Sand was always being blown in one direction or another, washed away. You were told it was stolen for beaches in Auckland, by ships out at sea.
No doubt the dune has changed over the years, but what hasn’t changed is that it continues to seem otherworldly, the shining white gold still catches your eye from all over.
James Pasley
Many times we watched the sunrise
Kakanui river mouth is where I’d like my ashes to be thrown. Between the 60s and 80s we had a crib in Stirling St, just up from it, next to our grandparents’ crib.
Staying there every January was a must, even though it was quite a hike from our home town in Invercargill.
We swam, jumped off our grandad’s rowing boat, fished for flounders at night and if it was the September holidays, we’d visit the whitebaiters to check their spoils.
The best part of staying in Kakanui in a different school holidays was noticing the sky cloud formations, colour of the sea or the smell and feel of the air of that season.
The river mouth often looked different due to storms or king tides and many times we watched the sunrise or sunset from the large rock just south of the river mouth.
My sister was living there with her children until recently but we five siblings and families will still meet up there in the future no doubt.
Brenda Hamer
A kindred spirit
I recognised Theatre Flat in Aspiring national park as a kindred spirit from my first visit. I was a final year medical student savouring my last ever holiday and was trotting behind three affable men from Southland. After teetering along the high route from Mt Nereus, we had followed the turquoise Rockburn’s waters, and behold, like a sunlight splashed picnic blanket, below us was Theatre Flat’s horizontal oasis of tussock, beech trees and boulders as big as bedrooms. Adding to the drama, the peaks on all sides were named after Greek gods. We climbed the smooth slaps of Amphion and the next day before we left, I stood on a rock in the middle of the Rockburn and sang ‘Worship his Majesty’ in praise of this perfect place.
Two decades and four children later I made it to Theatre flat a second time with seasoned climbing friends, Jane and Rosie. After years, we had finally escaped, leaving children with husbands to enjoy a spell in the wild.
On my third visit to the thespian flat, just weeks before the Covid lockdown, I bounded confidently down from Park Pass, Leki poles, twin 20-year old daughters and three others trailing behind. I led the crew straight to Theatre Flat boulder where you camp. I led them up mossy slopes (how steep and slippery and sketchy it all seemed this time) to Amphion where you look over to Lake Unknown. I showed them the rock where you stand and sing praise and the next morning we reverently watched whio (the enigmatic whistling alpine ducks of New Zealand) skittering in the chuckling Rockburn. Of great consolation to me is that Theatre Flat continues oblivious to this pandemic and resolutely itself.
Kaaren Mathias
