New Zealand
Jesse Mulligan gives his top recommendations for a relaxing week with a young family in Hawke’s Bay
For the first few years of our young children’s lives, my wife and I mostly holidayed without them. Christmas and the occasional beach trip aside, we tended to plan a long weekend away and leave the kids with their grandparents (the amount of planning required for life at home without us far outweighing any prep we did for the city we were flying into).
But now the kids are 6, 4 and almost 2, it’s occurred to us that they might quite like a holiday too. Plus, it’s the first time in living memory we haven’t had a tiny infant to worry about travelling with. At 20 months old, Felix has one sleep a day and is happy in a plane or car seat so long as he has access to a light he can turn on and off. A bulb and a switch is basically his smartphone.
We both have an emotional attachment to Hawke’s Bay, which is to say we have an emotional attachment to wine and food and the Bay might be the most beautiful part of New Zealand to imbibe them. But unlike on our last trip down there, where I visited 12 eateries in a day and a half, this time we were keen to hunker down and do most of our eating at home, heading out for a different activity each morning to keep the kids amused. Here are my top recommendations for a week with the family in Hawke’s Bay. OUTDOORS You can follow the locals and climb Te Mata Peak, or at least part of it, with carparks at various points on the trail up. From the top, you’ll get spectacular views of the whole district, and see a terrifying launch pad the hang gliders jump off at the top, before coasting about in the sky above Craggy Range.
The award-winning Mangarara Family Farm is about 30 minutes south of Havelock North, but is worth the trip for city folk looking to experi- GETTING THERE ACCOMMODATION craggyrange.com ence real life on a sustainability-focused working farm. We patted day-old calves, fed a drift of pigs and collected eggs from the hand-cranked chicken run. Visits are by appointment but worth planning for. We hired cycles from Napier City Bikes and rode around the port to Ahuriri, a regenerated historic district with great coffee and an excellent playground. You could bike the other way and follow the path along the waterfront — the council has done a first-class job of making the whole district discoverable by pedal power. Take a map of the seawall murals with you and see how many of the 30 you can spot. Ocean Beach is a beautiful and only slightly rugged place to muck about with sand and driftwood. Waimarama, a little further south, has a great walk along the grass where you can check out the flash baches and dream about buying your own pad — perhaps next to Rod Drury’s one. On the way back, you may have time to visit the Maraetotara Falls, easily accessible and just a few minutes off the main road. INDOORS It doesn’t rain much in the Bay but when it does you can shelter at Arataki Honey centre, a sort of 1980s-feel shop and exhibition where kids can spot the queen bee among her thousands of workers, or pick their favourite honey from the six or so being tasted. The Ocean Spa on Napier’s waterfront offers a range of heated pools, none deep enough that you’ll worry about your children splashing about in them.
The Faraday Centre is a fantastic place to take children of all ages. A collection of vintage machines and technology, it’s a great way to get kids enthused about the area’s historical roots — much better, I found, than driving around in a rental car occasionally saying “there’s an art deco building. There’s another one.”
If you’re organised enough, book in a penguin encounter at the National Aquarium. Great for critter-y kids like mine, the experience takes you right into the enclosure where you can feed the birds smelly fish while an audience of visitors watch you from the grandstand. The rest of the aquarium is very good and will be a quiet relief for anybody used to queuing for a view at Auckland’s equivalents. FOOD AND DRINK Clearview winery at Te Awanga has a playground for kids, while Elephant Hill down the road will provide them with colouring pictures and pens. There’s also a big elephant sculpture to muck around with at the latter, though it’s no match for the brass bulls at Craggy Range.
Kids love to climb on them, and if you trust them next to the lake, you can keep half an eye on things from your vantage point tasting wines at the cellar door.
Unison wines is a family owned vineyard set up for kids, while Bareknuckle barbecue in Hastings and Birdwood Gallery in Havelock North are both child-friendly and serve great craft beer and coffee respectively.