Australasia > New Zealand > North Island > Bay of Islands > Articles > Catch Up With an Island Past

New Zealand’s Northland begins about 100 miles north of Auckland, pushing its way up between the South Pacific and the Tasman Sea until the land peters out in the sand-dune encrusted peninsula known to the Maori as Te Hika o te Ika ("The tail of the fish") where the two oceans finally collide in the turbulent waters off Cape Reinga.

Myth has it that Maori spirits leap here to head back to their ancestral homeland of Hawaiiki but we had neither the time or the inclination to cram onto one of the buses that make the day-long haul to the cape along the sands of Ninety Mile Beach (actually just over 60 miles long) to check out the spirit departure gate.

Instead we headed for the Bay of Islands, where Maori and Europeans first made contact. Cook anchored here in 1776, but it was the whalers and missionaries that came after him in the following decades who provided the historic backdrop that, twinned with its jaw-dropping beauty, makes the area such a magnet today.

Just a short ferry ride from the low-rise lodges and trinket shops of the bay’s tourist epicentre at Pahia, Russell was New Zealand’s main town during the first half of the 19th century. Then it had a Maori name, Kororareka, and a rumbustious mix of wild seafarers and reprobate landlubbers that earned it the title "Hell Hole of the Pacific".

It’s hard to believe today, strolling peacefully amid the picket fences and Victorian houses, though the ravishing white clapboard Christ Church - New Zealand’s oldest - just back from the quay offers poignant reminders of past conflict. "Wave may not foam, nor wild wind beat/Where rests not England’s dead" reads an inscription in stone inside, memorial to the British who fell here when the Maori chief Hona Heke razed the old town in 1845.

Most visitors to the Bay of Islands now come for the watery pursuits of the present rather than memories of the past. Everything looks towards the Pacific here - snorkellers even have an underwater nature trail at Motuarohia (aka Roberton Island) marked out for them in steel plaques on the seabed!

Countless cruises head out from Pahia Pier, offering either everything from turbo-charged rides through a natural rock arch called the Hole In The Rock or Hemingway-type battles with the local deep sea marlin to the quieter thrills of swimming with dolphins and whale-watching. But there are plenty of cruises where plain old sun-bathing on the deck is the thing, while the crew rustle up an al fresco lunch.

Even if you aren’t that interested in history, though, you should visit Waitangi, just a mile north of Pahia. It was here in 1840 that the British duped the Maoris into signing away sovereignty over their land with a treaty higher on misinformation and wayward promises than your average election manifesto. The continuing efforts to correct the Treaty’s wrongs remain central to New Zealand’s current national identity.

The simple colonial Treaty House tells the full story, while also providing a fascinating insight into the life of the times. Afterwards you can stroll the immaculate grounds, set high on a grassy headland above the bay, before walking down to the shoreline where huge, intricately carved Maori canoes stand as a reminder of those who once ruled here.

Away from Pahia and Russell, you can sense a search for a new harmony between contrasting cultures. A continuing influx of city escapees of various hues means organic food places and alternative therapy centres now rub shoulders with ramshackle stores and Maori meeting houses (marae) all around Northland, while fine crafts - often hewn from native materials such as iridescent paua shell or the dark wood of the giant kauri tree are on offer everywhere, especially in and around Kerikeri.

Keep going westward, though, and eventually the rolling grassland and lonely homesteads give way to the mangrove-rimmed vastness of the Hokianga Harbour, where the Tasman Sea pushes swirling waters deep into a rawer landscape as beautiful in its way as the Bay of Islands..

There are no resorts here and far fewer tourists, just stillness and a thrilling sense of isolation, walking along lonely beaches scattered with old shacks, driftwood and the husks of sea urchins - the "sea eggs" which are a delicacy to the local Maori who make up more than half Hokianga’s population.

The handful of settlements scattered amid the forested hills and vast thousand-foot high sand dunes - Rawene, Opononi, Omapere, Horeke, Kohukohu - are like little outposts on the edge of the world, where hiking or sand tobogganing down the dunes providing just about the only activities.

Even a simple cuppa became tinged with magic as we sat on the terrace of the Boatshed Cafe in Rawene, a bright red beacon set out on stilts above the grey water of the harbour, gazing into infinity while sipping Earl Grey and devouring damn fine cake.

We fed our memories, en route back to the city lights, with a stop for lunch and a beer at the marvellous Hokianga Brewery in Waimamake, the final Hokianga town before the road back to Auckland plunges into the Waipoau forest.

Casually stepping like true Northlanders past the dead possum by the door, we entered an amazing interior, sunlight playing through a webbing roof to dapple a ramshackle bar whose decor and old pictures were straight out of 50s timewarp.

Auckland’s cosmopolitan bustle might have been only a couple of hours’ drive away, but it could have been another world moving in another time.

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