New Zealand 2022: Day 9 Sunny Whangarei

By the numbers

1 car

2.7 kms walking

3,634 steps

 

The weather had a change for the better today and it was really warm and sunny with very few clouds in the sky. The morning was spent doing several loads of washing as it was the first real good day we have had with the weather. We saw off some family who came up from Auckland and my uncle and aunt who were staying elsewhere before they travel back to Australia on Monday. We have another week here before flying home on the Sunday.

 

The washing dried pretty quickly and we had the plan to go for the loop walk down near the Whangarei basin. That was the plan and we had to go get some stuff at Bunnings along the way. The first stop ended up being Portland where they have the cement works around a limestone quarry. It did sound like the cement works was working as there was a hum of activity. There is a walk you can do, but both of us were unsure if this had actually reopened. It was part of the land owned by the cement works. Mum had said the area had changed since she was out there last.

 

On our way back into town, we went looking for the Otaika Walkway entrance. We started going down the main road in the area, but thought we were on the wrong road. Later we looked at a map and found if we had gone further down the road we would have found it. Instead we went to the end of a road that would have ended on the highway if there had been no gate. The next road we took was a no through road that took us to the end of Valley View road. All we knew was this walking track would have been sign posted somewhere, but there were great views. We were not going to walk it, but only find the entrance to see what information it had.

 

We drive all the way to Onerahi and stopped at the cemetery out there for a look. I couldn’t remember at the time if I had visited it, but you never know I could have. There were new graves to see anyway and some were interesting. With mum she knew some of the people as they were parents of people she went to school with. We did the loop around the airport before heading out towards Parua Bay. Along the way mum told stories of how she rode motorbikes along the road when she lived in the area and about several accidents that she walked away from. We stopped at her local haunt of the time that was still there for a drink. The Parua Tavern had really good views while we had a drink. The view of Mt Manaia from the tavern was spectacular and once we finished we went further down the road into Paura Bay where we got to see some better views of Mount Manaia. By this time it started to get dark and our original plan to do the Hatea train in Whangarei was put on hold as it would be dark by the time we got into town again.

 

It wasn’t a bad ride around the area as I was getting great tales from mum about her past that would build a total profile on what things were like for her back in her day, and also how much the locations had changed from when she used to live in New Zealand full time until her return around now.