Onetangi a place to love
Onetangi Beach is a long, white ribbon of sand that is easily laced into a love story. Storyteller and author Tanya Batt and her now-musician husband Peter Forster can trace their romance along the western end edge of the shoreline.
‘‘We spent hours there watching the territorial seagulls and oystercatchers,’’ Batt says.
These days, Onetangi remains a special place – it’s the closest beach to their off-the-grid house, a converted barn at the 169 hectare eco-village that 15 families call home.
‘‘I love Onetangi in winter – I love its wildness and vastness,’’ Batt says. ‘‘I like to walk the beach in storms.’’
As a woman who travels the world telling tales for a living, Batt, 47, had been shifting from one area to another every few years before she discovered Waiheke about 15 years ago.
‘‘Waiheke stopped me in my tracks. It’s very nice to be stopped by a place.’’
For Batt, the ‘‘curious collection of people’’ who call Waiheke home, the land and the sea all around swirl together to make the island a place to love.
With a population of about 9000 and 1.4 million visitors a year, Waiheke is socially vibrant and diverse.
There’s tension between those who would like to see the island become more developed, and attract even more tourists, and those who want to preserve the island’s diverse range of wildlife.
‘‘I think as humans in the world, not just on Waiheke, we have to be thinking beyond ourselves. That’s our responsibility.’’
Like Batt, I was drifting from place to place, before love tugged me to Waiheke. Almost 30 years ago, my longlost ex-boyfriend shouted me a weekend at an historic hotel at the eastern end of Onetangi Beach.
I had never had a weekend away by myself and he insisted it was a rite of passage.
That relationship didn’t last, but I fell in love with the island, where I have remained now for 21 years straight.
Visitors might be wowed by the sweeping sea views from the main village in Oneroa or the vineyard restaurants, but locals find pleasures beneath the surface.
Golden seahorses and exquisite white ocean flowers occasionally materialise on the sea floor as I snorkel around the coast after work most days in summer.
The climate here is a few degrees warmer than Auckland’s and we get a bit less rain, making the seas warm and inviting.
Dolphins dive under me and circle me in the sea almost every year, while massive orca are regular visitors to Waiheke bays.
In the bush I call my garden, a giant puriri droops with pink flowers and my favourite tui sings a song that my heart longs for whenever I’m away.
Okay, we can’t claim to have kiwi wandering around, but kereru make head-rush dives over the bush, the ancient call of the kaka echoes through the valley and piwakawaka (fantail) dart around my pegs as I hang out the washing.
The natural wonders of this place keep me here, but the friends who form a solid wall of love around me anchor me even more solidly on the island.
The few shops on Waiheke make life simple. We wear old, faded clothes and jandals or bare feet.
While pregnant with my two daughters, Onetangi Beach was my refuge. I spent the most painful 24 hours of my life giving birth to my first baby at home in Onetangi. My second daughter was born in the same house and when she was three weeks old, the landlord gave us notice.
Houses in paradise aren’t cheap – the average residential property value is $1.156 million.
The cost of ferry tickets creates a barrier to the mainland. Still, at $24 one way for passengers, that barrier is small compared to Stewart Island’s, where residents pay $79 to escape and explore the wider world.
Hardest of all, Waiheke enters your heart.
I care too keenly about this beautiful place, but helplessly watch hordes of tourists trample over it, developers push for one marina after another, and the rich dig up whole hillsides for their mansions so rain sends swathes of mud weeping into the sea.
I imagine the pleasure and pain of loving Stewart Island could be even more intense.