Ruakaka

 

Before we left Bayly's Beach, we went to Pouto about 60ks away at the end of the peninsular, to go fishing with Adele and Russell. We could see the waves coming in over the bar to the Kaipara Harbour. Eddie caught a good size Kahawai which fed us all. Russell was very disappointed not to get anything. He was very disappointed with west coast fishing.

Eddie caught a nice kahawai from this point

getting set up with the fishing tackle

Adele and I did a bit of a beach walk and cleaned up a lot rubbish as we went; such as plastics, fishing line, cans and other assorted stuff. It's hard to believe people are so lazy and leave their rubbish behind them. 

We are now at Ruakaka. We came here on the 21st May. We had to come back across here as the COF was due on the caravan and there is no where to get that done in Dargaville. Ridiculous but true.

We were booked into a garage to have our COF done on last Monday morning. When we got there they didn't have us booked in. It turned out they had another branch in Warkworth about 60 ks from where we are and over the Brynderwyn hills. We went to the VTNZ and waited in a queue about 4 hours. A test of patience. Thank goodness I had thought to take my book. Eddie chatted to other people in the queue.

We went to the garage yesterday,  to get something in the suspension done. Eddie has bought the parts a while ago ready to get it done, but we hadn't quite got there. Then back to VTNZ to get the re check done. The line wasn't so long this time, but I still read my book.  Now we have a brand new COF on our window. 

There are lots of birds here in the estuary. There are oyster catchers, godwits, dotterels as well as the usual seagulls. There is also a quite friendly duck with 5 ducklings. Quite late to have babies we thought. She isn't very frightened of us and we can get quite close.

Eddie is actually worked for a few days last week. A friend of his has a few trucks, based in Tirau, near Matamata and they are unloading a container ship this week at the port in Whangarei, so Eddie did a few days for him. On Monday, Eddie went and delivered the container he had on board to the logistics place in Manukau in Auckland. No one had told Simon the ship was finished, so Eddie went on down from Auckland to Tirau and Simon flew him home from Rotorua. I had to walk down to pick up the truck. I am very glad it wasn't raining, as it's a bit of a walk.

 He is also going to work for Simon in June, driving a bobby calf truck. We will be based in Tirau for 6-8 weeks.

We have had a couple of stormy days here. We have had very strong south east winds. It's still quite windy today, but it is supposed to calm down later today.

We took the awning in on Friday night, as one of the anchor straps had pulled out of the ground and it was easier to take the other one in, with the wind a blowing than try to reattach the disconnected one. We figured they might come out again during the night.

This is our view at the moment from our site at Ruakaka. With the full moon happening tonight, the tides have been very high, with no where for the birds to settle on the mud. Usually there is a high point they can sit on with the water all around them. It is coming right up into the mangroves you can see in the photos.

Our next port of call is going to be Tinopai, which  is back over on the Kaipara Harbour, so we can finish exploring there. We are going on Saturday.

Uretiti, Dargaville and Bayly's Beach

 I have been very slack at writing my blog lately and I do apologize. I will try to do better in the future. 

We are enjoying moving about more since leaving Pataua.

We stayed at Uretiti DOC camp for 3 and ½ weeks. We had nice easy access to the beach. We don't know where the days go, but we are filling them up ok. We went for a stroll along the beach most days. We go left one day and right the next, just to mix it up a bit. The sand is very firm at low tide, so we biked on it a couple of times too.

My cousin, Adele and her husband, Russell, also live in their van. They came to Uretiti too. It was nice to have a catch up

When we were at Uretiti DOC camp we went to look at the Waipu caves. Quite interesting with stalactites hanging down and some stalagmites growing upwards. It has a river running through it, so Eddie and I got wet feet. We didn't go very far in. Afterwards, Adele and I wandered around the little path that went up the hill above the cave. There were some great lime stone formations to admire. The lime stone stack in the picture on the left, was really a lot bigger than the picture shows.

Entrance to the cave

Limestone stacked up

Eddie  having a wander around the rocks

The stream coming out of the cave

Since leaving Uretiti we have spent 2 nights in Dargaville and 1 at Kai Iwi Lakes.

The lakes were quite interesting. They are only filled with rain water. The base is an impervious clay that holds the water in. They are very low at the moment due to 2 dry summers and a dry winter. You can see how big the beach is. The water normally comes up to the edge of the board walk that Eddie is standing on in the photo above. Hopefully it will rain more this winter and they will fill up again. The biggest one is 37 metres deep at its deepest point. There are rainbow trout in it, as well as the native fishes and fresh water crayfish. We did a bike ride around the biggest one, called Taharoa. It was just over 7 ks around it. We saw a man trying to catch a trout, but wasn't having much luck.

Hotel

At Dargaville we stayed at the NZ motor caravan association parking place. The old hotel has been there since the 1870's. We spoke to the man who runs the hotel. He said he was very proud and honoured to live and work in such a lovely old building.

Band Rotunda Dargaville

  They have a great museum in Dargaville. A selection of photos below. There is a great history of gum digger in this area. 

Wooden statue of a gum digger

the gum is washed after it is dug up

A gum digger in front of his shack

We came to Bayly's beach near Dargaville a couple of Saturdays ago. We stayed there for a week. There are huge clay cliffs along the beach, which I have never seen before. Russel and Adele were there too, as well as Eddie's friend from Swaps. Eddie caught a kahawai on Monday on his fish finder and Russell and Bruce caught 3 on Wednesday morning. We had a fish dinner all together that night with so much fish.

Eddie on Bayly's Beach

Clay cliffs

Water pattern in the sand.