More news and photos from the Barrier We’ve been in this house for two months, and few days ago we signed a lease to stay here another nine months! It wasn’t easy to negotiate an agreement that we and the owner were happy with, but we did it, thanks to the Citizens Advice Bureau, online research, and our own strategising and conscious communication! And we thank our lucky stars for it! It’s really a minor miracle, because long-term rentals are all but unheard of here and this one is just about perfect for us. We’re still swimming every day. We can never tell what we’ll find when we swim on the west side at Blind Bay. A few times we saw glorious rainbows and other times we saw big pods of big dolphins. One time after we got out of the water we saw some dolphins farther away, going into other smaller bays off to the side of the large bay, and SOME coming directly across where we’d just been! We were so excited! But it was raining andj I hadn’t brought the camera! We learned that encounters with dolphins aren’t all that uncommon. And someone told us that surfers sometimes share the waves with sharks, the harmless type! Another day at Blind Bay I was hanging out in deep water admiring the large rocks on the bottom when I noticed something unexpected near my leg — a very big fish, as big as both my legs and a bit more! We both swam off, in opposite directions. Someone who knows about marine life here said it was probably a yellowtail kingfish, which looks like this (not our photo). We learned about onshore and offshore winds and why the waves look as they do on the ocean side, on the east, at Medlands and Kaitoke. An onshore wind, blowing from out in the ocean towards the beach, presses down on the back of the waves, causing them to crumble early. This gives a frothy washing machine look. But an offshore wind, blowing from the beach out towards the ocean, "holds up” the waves as it blows up the front of them, giving them the glossy blue face I described before. These are the waves surfers crave. We can also never tell what we’ll find on the ocean side. The waves at Kaitoke are always up to something different. We love walking there every day to see what’s happening. A few times we saw a phenomenon we never saw before and never dreamed was possible. The wind was fierce. We were all bundled up in layers with windbreakers. At Kaitoke you sometimes can’t see the actual shore until you get quite close. We found that the onshore wind was so strong the waves couldn’t break as they usually do. (We learned that surfers call the breaking waves the “shore pound”.) The waves were either flattened as they tried to roll over, as if they were being squished, or as they began to roll they actually UNROLLED and the foam went in reverse!! We’ve been pondering questions like why are seashells all different colours (the molluscs once inside them eat different diets all around the world) and why don’t clouds fall from the sky (even though your average 1 km x 1 km x 1 km cumulus cloud weighs 500 tonne!, each tiny water droplet is so small that gravity leaves them alone). More about GBI roads. Not only are there no speed limit signs, there are also no lines on the roads, probably because the roads are so narrow that if there were a line you’d be driving over it or very near it unless another car is coming. The roads are really like long, wide driveways. (No wonder – some of them, like the one from Medlands over the saddle to Tryphena, were hand dug by settlers impatient for government to give them a road! The Medlands brothers not only made their own road, they built their own wharf at the bay there, because they couldn’t always use the ocean beach to launch or return with their boats.) Almost everyone lifts a few fingers off the steering wheel in greeting as they pass by. Aotea FM is the community radio station, broadcasting from their wee studio at Claris. It’s believed to be the only solar powered radio station in the world. Because it’s solar powered, it’s on air only between 8 am and 6 pm in winter, and 8 am to 9 pm in summer. Volunteer presenters do a 2.5-hour programme per week (some do two), anything they like – music, interviews, commentary – plus ads and community announcements prepared by the station coordinator. A playlist replaces presenters who don’t turn up. You can listen to the live stream at www.aoteafm.org. We discovered something that could be applicable to the issue of restrictions on multiple dwellings on rural land in Golden Bay and Motueka Valley. The district plan for Auckland divides all the land on GBI into “landforms”. There are special rules for two of the landforms ("productive land" and "regenerating slopes”). From the “Rules - activity table” for these landforms: Dwellings (two per site), on Great Barrier Island only, where the following circumstances apply: • there is no visitor accommodation (existing or proposed) on the site; and • the site is not required to meet the minimum subdivision site size in tables 12.1 and 12.2; • a restrictive covenant is to be registered on the title to avoid subdivision for sites that do not meet the provisions of tables 12.1 and 12.2. I also spoke with someone at Auckland Council about it. Building a second dwelling would require a resource consent. It's a restricted discretionary activity, which is the least restricted resource consent. At its most straightforward it would cost $2500, or as much as $4000. This rule is an exemption to the minimum subdivision site size referred to in the second rule above. I think there's a similar rule for very large rural properties in Tasman, but perhaps a multiple-dwellings rule could be created for smaller properties in parts of Golden Bay and Motueka Valley, and elsewhere. If you don’t already know about it and want to find out more, you can contact the policy team at Auckland Council — or “in town” as GBI’ers say. Yes, around here “going to town” means going to Auckland! Or I can send the relevant parts of the plan. But perhaps the “consultation” period is all over now, and everyone’s been ignored as usual! Below are some photos. Next time I’ll have some from our “big day out” last week, when we explored to every road end of North Barrier, where we hadn’t been before, and found the most spectacular beach of them all! The Community Gardens at Medlands, where you help yourself and leave a koha. It’s where we go for salad greens, brassicas, herbs and more, even a bit of fruit! We met the lovely group that gets together for two hours once a week to keep it going for the good of the community. Isn’t it wonderful!? The start of the road to Okupu, where we lived during our first five weeks here, and to Blind Bay. The mountain is what's left of the ancient volcano Te Ahumata, also called White Cliffs. It was once the site of mining for gold and obsidian. Medlands from an overlook on the way to Tryphena. As in Golden Bay, most of the beachside homes are vacant much of the year. Nikau along the road on the way down into Tryphena. Hirakimata, the highest mountain, and neighbouring mountains separating south and north Barrier. Tracks explore the whole central high country. A lovely forest pool and small cascade a few minutes walk from the road to Blind Bay. Most of one of a group of ancient pohutukawa trees at Blind Bay. The branches on the right continue outward for quite a few more metres, touching the ground and then heading upwards again. In some places trees like these are just about enclosing houses! Tryphena also has beautiful large trees with plenty of room to spread out. Alignment of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus, in the northern sky the whole month of June.
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