Early summer on the Barrier Our new life on the Barrier continues to delight and satisfy. A transition of sorts happened a few weeks ago. Ro drove into Claris, the teensy town that’s not a town (photos below), for a few quick errands. It’s about two minutes away so I thought he’d be back in fifteen. It was an hour. He used the words we used to say when errands in Takaka took much longer than expected, no doubt the same words everyone says: “I kept running into people.” Wow! Here?! That’s pretty cool! And not only that! I found out about “thank you cards” on Charlotte’s fantastic Happyzine and ordered a set. The idea is to give them to people when they do kind things for you, who pass them on to people who do nice things for them, so the cards keep circulating. I’m happy to tell you that we need them! If we’d only thought to use them when we first got them, our set of eight would have been long gone. Now we’re in the groove. You’d be amazed how nice people have been, bringing us lemons and fish and smoked mussels and loquats and more, bits for our garden, even used buckets for Ro to carry our grey water out to the garden! Drive with us from Kaitoke to Claris…. We turn right from Oceanview Road onto the main road. There’s one continuous road from Tryphena in the south to Port Fitzroy in the north, but along the way its name changes from Medlands Road to Walter Blackwell Drive to Hector Sanderson Road and finally to Aotea Road. The first three are the names of original pakeha settlers; the last is the Maori name for the island, still in common use to name things relating to the Barrier. We’re on our way for our two-minute tour! The first point of interest is this assembly of tiny buildings: three takeaways (only one open in winter), a few picnic tables, the Aotea FM station, and a used clothing caravan (to the right, not in the photo), open randomly. The “Go Great Barrier Island” car belongs to Leebee, who’s in the studio doing her show. She and her partner Steve have a tourism business – booking people into accommodation, car rentals, transport and tours. Our favourite Aotea FM presenter is Artie, whose “Cool Grooves and Hot Tracks” is on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, 3:30-6. For a great taste of GBI radio, tune into livestream at www.aoteafm.org. If we blink we’ll miss the Milk, Honey & Grain Museum, one history buff's long-time labour of love. It’s open all day every day – just walk on in, put your gold coin in the jar, and immerse yourself in photographs and artifacts from the old days of gum digging, logging, timber milling, mining, whaling and shipwrecks, and old pioneer ways of beekeeping, dairying, building, food growing and processing, doctoring, toolmaking, improvising and otherwise surviving. These museum photos aren’t mine. Coming into Claris we pass the library and council office on the left. The local board has a smaller building just down the road. Down a small side road is the airport. These signs are at the corner – 16 km south to Tryphena, 23 km north to Port Fitzroy. The sign in the middle says Claris Aerodrome. At the corner is Aotea Health, with two doctors, several nurses, and a receptionist. A few hundred metres further on are the four buildings of the Arts Village. In between, the road looks like this, with a few houses along the way. Claris Centre marks the end of the village. There’s a laundromat, dentist’s office, small grocery store, the Pigeon Post gift shop and post office (in the shade on the right), petrol pumps, and around the far side, the Claris Texas Cafe. We could continue on to Okupu and Blind Bay or Whangaparara on side roads, or around the mountains to North Barrier. We continue to observe that people who live here explicitly appreciate it, just like people do in Golden Bay. They know they’re in a very special place. It’s like living a fantasy. It’s easy to pretend that the whole world is like this – green and lovely with natural beauty everywhere, quiet and peaceful, spacious and easy, nights as dark as they were for aeons on Planet Earth. On to my favourite topic, the sea. We noticed that it always sounds louder and closer at night. Even though the ocean is about 500 m away, with a whole lot of dunes between it and us, it’s a bit disconcerting when it sounds like the waves are crashing right next to the house. Some say the apparent increase in volume is caused by temperature change and resulting bending of the sound waves: The ground cools rapidly as night descends, so the air close to the ground becomes colder than the air higher up. Sound waves travel more slowly in cooler air, and instead of spreading upwards from ground level they bend back down towards it, so the thuds and booms that would have gone over our heads during the day can reach us at night. Others say that’s not what happens at all, but it’s simply a matter of calmer wind and a quieter world at night, plus minds less full of other distractions. Since Great Barrier can be windy at all hours of day and night, and aside from that it’s always quiet, either the first theory is correct or it’s all in our heads! Medlands Beach is mostly black sand, except below the high tide line. On sunny days in October the sand started to get HOT! By early November it was impossible to walk on barefoot. In Golden Bay the sand got hot briefly towards the end of summer, and some summers not at all I found out just how hot the sand is here when I barefooted it from the car to the shore one day. It was a crazy walk – I dropped to my knees at one point, but that was no use! I was surprised the soles of my feet didn’t melt or burn. But I was really a sight on the way back! Every few steps I’d drop my jacket to use like an island haven until my feet cooled enough to take a few more steps! We’ve both worn shoes ever since, but our feet even get a bit of a burn feel through the holes in the top of the Crocs! The Pacific Ocean has been living up to its name day after day for months. No need to travel over the saddle to Blind Bay for our swims. One day when we were swimming at our favourite spot at Medlands I nearly collided with one of these creatures (not my photo), which is beautiful or frightening depending on how close you are, and I was pretty close. It’s much bigger "in person" — think steering wheel size. Oh dear! I’m still trying to find out if it’s friend or foe. It seems dear Lorraine was wrong when she said jellyfish are seen here “once in a blue moon”. We’ve seen them on both sides of the island more often than we like to think about. In Golden Bay they were there either in droves (for a week or so at a time) or not at all, not the odd one like here. In early November we attended “Aotea – Ridge to Reef”, an all-day programme of eight expert presenters on the wildlife of the Hauraki Gulf and Great Barrier Island. We and a whole lot of other fascinated people learned a whole lot about dolphins, orcas, lizards, seabirds, freshwater fish, plants and invertebrates that live in and around Great Barrier. It started a few hours after the All Blacks defeated Australia in the final of the World Cup, so everyone (well, almost everyone!) there was very tired and very happy! (For non-Kiwis….New Zealanders are very keen – there’s a stronger word for it – on rugby and the seemingly invincible All Blacks. The fact that many of the games start in the wee hours of the morning doesn’t deter them – men, women and children – from cheering them on!). Ridge to Reef was a wonderful programme, though any information about the natural world these days will be a mix of wonder and sorrow I’d love to share the most interesting tidbits we were treated to, and I will, but I’ve already written a lot, so I’ll save for next time all but the “herpetofauna" – reptiles (such as tuatara, lizards – such as geckos and skinks, and the yellow-bellied sea snake), amphibians (such as frogs) and marine turtles. Did you know that lizards are found in huge densities on protected islands? Inquisitive minds have asked, What is their role? Their roles are many in the web of life! They’re great friends of trees, we learned. As they gather pollen treats from flowering trees like pohutakawa and rata, like this gecko, they carry the grains on their heads and sometimes the grains fall off just where they’re needed for pollination! They also disperse seeds far and wide, and they’re predators, keeping insect populations in balance. They’re scavengers, cleaning up unhealthy messes, and on top of all that they’re prey for other species, which seems a pity after all their contributions. But Mother Nature so much knows best!! This is a slide from the presentation. Some Great Barrier mysteries…. Tuatara were seen here in the past, and with much of the island still unexplored they might still be here! The Great Barrier Swimming Frog, the only frog with a double-legged kick, also hasn’t been seen here in recent memory but could be lurking in a puddle deep in the bush! I was always so happy to hear frogs croaking in Golden Bay and here, but this was some of the bad news of the day. Native frogs don’t call. Even if they hadn’t been wiped out by cats, cars and introduced frogs, what you hear is the invaders that displaced them. On a happier note, chevron skinks can predict the weather! They live in stream beds but when heavy rain is on the way, they climb as high as they can in stream bank vegetation to be safe from rising water. To conclude, here’s one burst of Guy Fawkes fireworks at the Claris sports ground.
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