My Favourite Walks: Te Puna Quarry and Puke toki Reserve - two great Tauranga short walks
Why not have a weekend in Tauranga and come for a walk with me to the Te Puna Quarry where Spring has sprung. Let’s take a picnic with us and drive on to the Puketoki Reserve to find black robins, tuis and maybe a wood pigeon or two.
Spring is such a glorious season and it’s particularly special at the Te Puna Quarry.
The Quarry stopped operating about 50 years ago and soon became derelict. People used it as a convenient dumping ground for old household rubbish.
Accessible holes were filled with unwanted fridges, washing machines and general rubbish. Gorse grew, brambles, wattles and pines flourished. The odd native tree and plants made an effort but with little effect.
Then along came Shirley Sparks, a local Te Puna gardener with a vision and so began the Te Puna Quarry Project. That was away back in 1994.
Shirley formed the Te Puna Quarry Trust and with a group of energetic volunteers began hacking their way into what must have been an almost impenetrable jungle. That was 23 years ago and you should see it now!
What a transformation. And, oh to imagine the hours of really hard labour. Not just physically but also in persuading the local councils for permissions and also fund raising - they needed tractors and diggers, chainsaws and axes as well as dedicated workers to say nothing of plants! All donated!.
Every season has its moment but Spring is always special.
The Quarry is only a short two or three kilometres drive from S H 2 and it’s straight into a fairly ordinary car park. But let the magic begin. Your choice which way we go.
To the left, past a scented garden, is a Gallery and the Dragon Garden with a Rapunsel Tower and an enormous concrete dragon all set around with beautiful flowering cherry trees.
Behind the Gallery, which you can hire out for parties, weddings etc, you can choose to walk up a path and along a stream to a small waterfall or if you feel more energetic a bigger climb takes you up to the top and maybe with a scramble around you can find your way over to the main track? This track is mainly through regenerating native bush and ferns.
In the other direction, to the right, is an enormous digger. Its rusted hulk was found underneath the rubble. It’s been cleaned up, made safe and now children love to clamber all over it, pulling levers and imagining whatever!.
Up the main path and past the vireyas and the water wheel pond to “Shirley and Friends” having morning tea. Life sized models in mosaic pottery of a lady in a hat with friends.
Throughout the walk you come across sculptures and assorted art work. Something for everyone’s taste and another reason to fund raise as the hard work of forming the tracks and main path is almost complete.
The “Main Track” is a good solid walk up and around a steepish, well made walkway and takes about half an hour with views out across the Bay to Tauranga City and the Mount and a birds eye view of the avocado and Kiwifruit orchards.
Everyone and everything has its place and nothing is out of place in these gardens. The Rhododendron Society, the Japanese gardeners, Edmond Hillary’s Cairn and the Baha’i Garden, fuschias, statuesques curling plants and don’t start me on the orchids! What a show -
Te Puna Quarry and Puketoki Reserve - two great Tauranga short walks
they seem to grow everywhere.
No glasshouses for them. Lots of greens, yellows and golds. You can wander off the main path and lose yourself in the myriad of plantings. Little clumps of freesias and ice plants where iceplants shouldn’t be. It’s that sort of place.
It’s not meant to be an ordered affair with edges and “beds”. If it’s happy growing around or on a rock who cares. It all seems to work.
A wander off the main path through some stunning fuchsias leads you to a Butterfly House. Mary, the “Butterfly Lady” started with a small aviary type shed where she rescued monarch butterfly caterpillars and chrysalis and kept them fed on swan plants, releasing them to fly off and lay again. Now they have a large, purpose built house. Some of the butterlflies are tagged and people write in to say where they landed.
Up the top on festive days children and young people have their first go at abseiling down the cliff. Here too you can admire the beautiful dry stone wall built in memory of a local farmer.
Up the “Lions Steps”. Yes, everyone seems to have a hand in volunteering at the Quarry. One of the Lions projects was to plant a grove of kauri trees. In 50 years time they will be taller than the Quarry hill top and what a delight they will be. Then it’s down to the newish magnolia garden. The deep purple of the Vulcan. And masses of other flowers in white and pink.
Children love to visit the Quarry. In the distance you can hear the dinging and donging as someone bangs the pipes that hang between the trees to say nothing of the big gong that startles everyone.
What a walk and I haven’t even mentioned the Herb Gardens, the roses and the frog ponds.
If you have half an hour to spare on your way into Tauranga or a whole day and time for a picnic there’s loads to see. Exercise or a work out or just a laze on the lawn. Te Puna Quarry has something to offer everyone. Give the beach a rest.
Puketoki Reserve
But spare me another hour. Drive along SH 2 back to the fish and chip shop at Whakamaramara and drive about 10 kms up towards the Kaimais. Take the road to the left marked Puketoki Reserve.
This, for me, is a special walk. It is difficult to get or let our overseas visitors experience a walk in our native bush. They haven’t got time, not the right shoes, it’s too steep and rugged. All these excuses. Puketoki Reserve is perfect.
The track is an easy walk with no steep bits and takes about 40 minutes. Nearly everyone can manage it. Most of the bush is regenerating forest with some of the most beautiful tree ferns umbrellaring over your heads.
It does have one huge ancient rimu tree that must have been left behind in the drive to denude our bush of kauri and rimu.
A stream runs through with several bridges to cross. The children (and adults) have time for a quick game of Pooh Sticks!
Once again we have a group of committed volunteers who keep bait stations filled and gradually , what, 20 years ago was a silent walk is now becoming filled with bird song. Little black robins flirt behind you and fantails flit. Tuis too and stand still and listen you may be lucky enough to hear the swish, swish of a fat old wood pigeon in his white vest lumbering overhead. . Although nearly in the Kaimai Range it is a separate few acres of bush. The paths are well marked and you wont get lost! I take all my overseas visitors up to Puketoki and they are all, without exception, thrilled to have had a small taste of a walk in our wonderful native bush. Just for fun, take a thermos, even get fish and chips (they’re really good) from the shop at the bottom of the road and have a picnic by the babbling stream. There is a picnic table and the stream is shallow enough for even small children to have fun. You don’t always have to go to the beach when visit ing Tauranga/Mt Maunganui!