Capturing beauty on Great Barrier Island The “worst storm in half a century” Not! Never did we receive so many warnings from so many sources. Cyclone Cook was heading straight for Great Barrier Island and we were in for it! The police and Civil Defence met among themselves and with business owners, who all closed up shop, and police came door to door to be sure everyone was prepared to evacuate. The whole country learned that Great Barrier Island was about to become a mess of slips, closed roads, fallen trees, flooding streams, coastal inundation and chaotic wind damage. People spent the day keeping themselves calm as they brought in anything loose from outside, anchored down the rest, and got their grab & go bags ready. I didn't understand the evacuation – when were we to evacuate? If the house fell to bits in the predicted 150 kph winds or we saw the ocean crashing up the road? Where would we go if nowhere was safe and all the roads were flooded or blocked? The day of the big storm arrived, the worst of it to begin around 1 pm. The worst of it didn’t begin but the warnings kept coming. Everyone thought the storm must be slower-moving than expected. The worst of it never began! The sun came pleasantly out for a time, the panels were collecting, the winds were no stronger than usual, and it was an ordinary balmy afternoon – not the eye of the storm as many people thought. We could just shrug and feel grateful for our good luck. But some people think we were all deceived, that the exaggerations were intentional hype by MetService and Civil Defence to create a perfect emergency scenario for a practice run. There’s more to say about this theory – but we’ll never know if it’s true. Other regions got heavy rain and high winds, but it was the particular focus on the storm’s intensity for Great Barrier that has people wondering. Gerald took these photos of Whangapoua Beach at 6 pm on the day of the storm. He wrote: "Cyclone Cook just moved away. 95% missed us luckily., but it was out there about 20 miles all day. 2 m NE break, with a SW wind. Bar was barreling, no surfers.” Old-timers clearly remember Cyclone Giselle of 1968, which this week’s storm was predicted to equal. Charlie told us that the bridge high over the normally placid Kaitoke Stream was two feet underwater (no metric in those days) and that along the rocky coast south of Medlands Beach, boulders four times the size of our car and probably in place since time immemorial, were flipped over and pushed up on the beach by the phenomenal waves, revealing clinging anemones and holes caused by rocks grinding over the millennia into increasing larger depressions. Winnie’s sister Catherine said that after the storm she mourned for Medlands Beach, which once was the quintessential idyllic sandy beach. The waves lashed at the beach, dragging away the sand, and at the dunes, forming a cliff. She thinks it will never recover. We think it’s beautiful now, but we can only imagine how it used to be. The six-member crew of a ship bringing grain to the island was wrecked along the coast during Giselle, and Charlie was one of those sent to recover bodies. They never were recovered. As he says in his inimitable way about this week’s storm, “Better that the damn thing was out there than in here.” We love Charlie! The day after the storm, with the seas rough all around the island and the river running fast and high, we decided to give the rock pool at Medlands Beach a try. With the sea dynamic for several days, we didn’t know what we’d find, but the pool was larger and deeper than ever – we mostly couldn’t touch bottom. Someone came along saying that on the previous day the entire pool was ankle deep! When we were there not only the sea but the pool itself were dynamic. Even at low tide (the only time the pool exists and you can get there), high-spirited waves crashed in intermittently and pushed us towards the rocks! When the sea is very rough, crossing the channel to get to the pool can be tricky even at low tide. You have no idea from the beach that there’s a tranquil pool tucked amongst the rocks! The next day the rock pool was shallower and the waves were bigger! We can't get enough of watching them! What next? An octopus hug? One day after Paul and Mary left, and long before we’d heard even a squeak about Cyclone Cook, when Ro and I were still avoiding sharks in the sea, we were merrily swimming in the river when all of a sudden – eeeny meeny miney mo, an eel caught Joanna by the toe! After we stopped the bleeding and got home, I discovered that freshwater eel bites aren’t all that uncommon in New Zealand. In fact it’s wise not to put your face in the water! Haven’t been back to that particular swimhole since! From a perspective of appreciating New Zealand yellow bellies (long fin eels) for what they are (and at a distance), I found that they breed only once at the end of their long lives – up to 100 years! In order to breed, they undergo mass spawning migrations, leaving the shelter of their lake and river homes to swim all the way up to the subtropical Pacific Ocean, where they spawn en masse in very deep water. Over the course of a century they grow large and heavy enough to perhaps become the taniwha of Maori legend. A monster caught in the Selwyn River in Canterbury in 1903 was “only" 1.67 km long, but with a huge girth, and weighed 26 kg. One caught in Queenstown in 1863 was reputed to weigh 48 kg. So I was lucky! Mine probably looked like this. Closer up where jaw met toe Capturing beauty with Paul and Mary Come along with Ro, Paul and Mary, and me on a tour of some less-photographed spots on this island we call home. After two visits here, Great Barrier has become as beloved to Paul and Mary as it is to us. One day we headed north from Kaitoke, over a saddle overlooking the small community and surf beach at Awana. We never swam at Awana – it’s always too rough! Over a few more saddles between the central mountains and the coast and down onto the flats of Okiwi in North Barrier. Okiwi Park is a sweet little gem tucked in across from Gerald and Caity’s Okiwi Passion market garden and behind Okiwi School. It’s great for a tranquil walk and picnic, and it’s much more than that too! The school community and the reserve have a special relationship. Not only do the school’s 28 children (with their four teachers) visit every day to play, explore and imagine, they’re also its kaitiaki (guardians), including monitoring bait stations to control pests. The park’s history began with a farmer who saved the remnant podocarp forest trees. Once the reserve was formed, stock excluded and predators controlled, regeneration was spectacular and native birds found a welcome niche (left to right): kakaraki (New Zealand parakeet), kaka (parrot), kereru (wood pigeon), tui, riroriro (grey warbler), piwakakawaka (fantail) and many others. Visitors wandering amongst the parkland, bush and birds spot the children's artwork and messages placed in sweet nooks throughout the park. Katie, the year-eight artist, writes, “…all painted the way I see them and the way I want them to be.” Westward past Port Fitzroy towards the road end at one of the starting points for the Aotea Track around and amongst the central mountains. We enjoyed a beautiful walk through the bush and over rocky creeks to a pair of unnamed falls. Touching the lower falls splashing into the pool Mary at the upper falls The exquisite scene before we arrived and after we left. A few days later it was destination Whangaparapara, where there’s another small community around a large, beautiful harbour at the end of an unsealed road about a 15-minute drive from the start of the hot springs track. A track leads to a tiny campground by a bouldery beach. Mary captured some of the beauty of this isolated place. Te Ahumata in the distance from the Green Campground On the way back we stopped at a couple of overlooks to take in and photograph the vistas. Closer to home, Kaitoke wetlands and Kaitoke Beach. With 256 of Paul and Mary’s photos to choose from, there’s more captured beauty to come in future posts! From the sublime to the mundane, but just as delightful – Barrier Toast! Paul’s protein-packed egg-and-seed bread fried in coconut oil. And back to the sublime.
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