Rich local flavour on Great Barrier
Escaping the Auckland metropolis, Brett Atkinson finds that the sustainable future of the city’s farthest-flung island is in very safe hands.
Friday morning in central Auckland has never felt so serene. Courtesy of New Zealand’s most idiosyncratic electoral boundary, I’m discovering getting an early start in the Auckland Central catchment can also include zipping across the glassy waters of Whangaparapara Harbour on Great Barrier Island.
Wispy curtains of mist remain welded to the harbour’s forest-shrouded valley, the site of New Zealand’s biggest sawmill just over a century ago, while morning sunshine peeps tentatively above a verdant ridge to the east.
My guide for the morning is Benny Bellerby, born on the island also known as Aotea, and a man with serious Barrier credentials.
Between forest hikes with Star Treks, Bellerby works as an arborist and track maintenance whizz with the Department of Conservation, and shares an off-the-grid home with wife Eve and their homeschooled children. Factor in a passion for protecting Aotea’s natural and cultural heritage, and he’s the perfect guide to his island home.
Also knowledgeable about educating kids on a remote island are Tony and Carol Litherland. They’ve lived on the harbour in their ocean-going steel catamaran, dubbed the Argo, since the early 1980s, and soon after Tony eases his tender up to the 15-metre home-built vessel, it’s obvious it’s a comfortable live-aboard houseboat. Ensconced in a cosy combination of cabin, lounge and library, coffee and banana cake provide sustenance as Tony and Carol recount changes in Barrier life across the past four decades.
Educating their family was done by mail and radio with the Correspondence School, while grocery shopping was a major and infrequent exercise. Now, Benny and Eve’s children are linked to the world via the internet, and Tony and Carol order online from a mainland supermarket and pick up boxes of supplies from Whangaparapara’s nearby wharf.
Tucked into a compact cove on the harbour’s western edge, the Argo is moored adjacent to the remains of New Zealand’s last whaling station, operating for just six years from 1957 to 1963. A badminton net flutters incongruously in the morning breeze, a reminder that the station’s exposed platform doubles as a harbourside backyard for the Litherland family.
On the Argo’s port side is the rusted pea-green skeleton of the MV Wanganui, a Scottish-built dredge beached in the harbour in 2003 after decades working the Whanganui River and Milford Sound.
From the Argo, Tony ferries us back to a sheltered bay, and it’s a boots-off scramble in calfhigh water into the beach.
A forlorn phalanx of wooden poles is all that’s left of a wharf that once served the biggest timber mill in the southern hemisphere.
From 1908 to 1914, the Kauri Timber Company
Weaving up and down a pair of bush spurs through regenerating forest, glimpses of the harbour are revealed through sylvan shade.
processed logs rafted from as far as Northland and the Coromandel Peninsula. A tramline dragged newly-felled trees from the forests surrounding the harbour.
A rusted steam traction engine provides decaying evidence of the industry from a century ago, and tracing the logs’ original route, the island’s Tramline Track is now a challenging 8km option for trampers.
It’s just one of the island tracks Benny knows well and, before setting off to tackle the easier but still spectacular Old Mill Track, he breaks out our beachside lunch.
At an off-the-grid destination where Aotea Brewing’s craft beer and award-winning Island Gin are both made sustainably, it’s not surprising there’s also a Barrier spin to our snacks.
Wrapped in recyclable waxed paper, our scroggin is packed with organic nuts and carobdipped fruit, while chunky sandwiches are made from Eve’s homemade bread.
Weaving up and down a pair of bush spurs through regenerating forest, glimpses of the harbour are revealed through sylvan shade. Leading the way downhill to the track’s conclusion at the Green Campsite, Benny recalls his work with DOC to gather precious ra¯ta¯ seeds to preserve the species from the ravages of the myrtle rust fungus.
Late morning in Auckland Central, it’s obvious the sustainable future of the city’s farthest-flung island is in very safe hands.