Tom & Belinda Wright
New Zealand 1999

We took a 3-day tour of the Northlands areas, north of Auckland, staying at an accomodation in Paihia, in the beautiful Bay of Islands area.

The Waitangi Treaty House & Grounds are located just across the bay from Paihia. This is the place where the indigenous Maori ceded soveriegnty of all lands in
New Zealand to the English Crown.

Between Paihia and Cape Reinga, we toured one of the last remaining kauri forests. The kauri is a tree unique to New Zealand that was almost logged into extinction. Its wood is very fine grained, giving it a very fine texture and the feel of "wooden satin". The kauri, while not as tall nor as big around as the California redwood, yields more lumber than the redwood because it does not taper toward the top, it goes straight up until almost the top. The New Zealand government, to its great credit, stepped in and protected the remaining kauri forests as they stand today.

The only legal kauri wood today comes from an ancient forest that was covered by a gigantic mudslide an estimated 45,000 years ago. The wood is "mined" from the area and has been preserved over the eons.

Belinda, the world's best beachcomber. The tour to Cape Reinga went by way of 90-Mile Beach. The beach is said to have been named by cattle drovers who said that they could push a herd 30 miles per day and it took them 3 days to get from one end of the beach to the other. Depending upon who you talk to, 90-Mile Beach is between 75 and 100 miles long. In Maori legend, the god Maui is said to have been in search of yams for his meal and ran so fast down the coast as to have created the long stretch of sandy beach.

The lighthouse at Cape Reinga,New Zealand's northernmost point. Cape Reinga is the point of land where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet. Cape Reinga is a place of great religious importance to the Maori. It is here where the human spirit departs the Earth when the physical body dies. It is of far greater meaning than this simple explanation - click on the image to learn more about Cape Reinga's meaning to the Maori.

Cape Marie Van Diemen looking WSW from Cape Reinga. This cape was named by explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, the first European to see New Zealand, in 1643, in honor of the wife of his employer, Count Anton Van Diemen, owner of the Van Diemen Land Co. and Governor General of the Dutch East India Company.

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