Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Dragville
I'm now in Tongariro National Park but, I haven't written about dragville, so I need to go back. Today is Wed 23 Feb , but we went north from Auckland because we couldn't get a ferry to the south island as soon as we wanted. Our original plan was to race as far south as soon as we could and then leisurely head north, arriving back in Auckland in time for our flight to Sydney. Because we couldn't get the ferry when we wanted, we went north from Auckland and then headed south after a few days.
While north we stayed in Dargaville (aka dragville). Maureen thinks it's like Fort Saskatchewan in the 1950s. Perhaps, but it wasn't bad. Very quiet and a good base for touring the north of the Nort Isaland. The motel had great facilities and we cooked in every night - great food! Day 1 we went to (the name escapes me now after a few glasses of wine with dinner) a NZ national park and saw a 2000 year old Kauri tree. Very tall and rotund - about 30 metres in girth near the base. In fact we saw a few of these, although most Kauri were cut down in the 1800s - tsk...
We also went to Weitanga (see, I'm not that pissed) where the treaty with the Maori was signed. The treaty was largely ignored by the white Europeans for many years but today is having a positive (from the Maori viewpoint) impact on relations with between the whites (called Pakehas by the Maoris) and Maoris. Our last day in dragville was spent on Bayly's beach - a seemingly interminable expanse of beach where locals race up and down on cars, motorcycles, 4-wheelers and anything else that comes to hand. Nonetheless, it was nice to be on an enormous beach where you can walk forever and never see the end. What we didn't get to was 90 Mile Beach at the extreme north end of the North Island. It is a beach so vast and long that it is formally part of the NZ highway system.
From dragville we went south past Auckland to Tongariro National Park - volcano country (not to mention skiing in winter and lots of walking/tramping/hiking in summer). That will be my next post.
While north we stayed in Dargaville (aka dragville). Maureen thinks it's like Fort Saskatchewan in the 1950s. Perhaps, but it wasn't bad. Very quiet and a good base for touring the north of the Nort Isaland. The motel had great facilities and we cooked in every night - great food! Day 1 we went to (the name escapes me now after a few glasses of wine with dinner) a NZ national park and saw a 2000 year old Kauri tree. Very tall and rotund - about 30 metres in girth near the base. In fact we saw a few of these, although most Kauri were cut down in the 1800s - tsk...
We also went to Weitanga (see, I'm not that pissed) where the treaty with the Maori was signed. The treaty was largely ignored by the white Europeans for many years but today is having a positive (from the Maori viewpoint) impact on relations with between the whites (called Pakehas by the Maoris) and Maoris. Our last day in dragville was spent on Bayly's beach - a seemingly interminable expanse of beach where locals race up and down on cars, motorcycles, 4-wheelers and anything else that comes to hand. Nonetheless, it was nice to be on an enormous beach where you can walk forever and never see the end. What we didn't get to was 90 Mile Beach at the extreme north end of the North Island. It is a beach so vast and long that it is formally part of the NZ highway system.
From dragville we went south past Auckland to Tongariro National Park - volcano country (not to mention skiing in winter and lots of walking/tramping/hiking in summer). That will be my next post.
