2 Dec 2006

The Long Road Track
(part 1: Road End to Lower Kauri Track Turnoff)

page 2 of 2

We've reached another gate, or rather, a pair of them. What looks like farm access on the right has a pedestrian gate. Nevertheless, the road straight ahead is the one we take.

It's all getting rather overgrown and we have to wade through it rather than walk.

Just a few hundred metres, though, and there's a bit of a gravel dump and the beginning of the Long Road Track proper.

It's a bit of a piss-off, but given the accumulated rust on the staples and the general condition of the sign I decide to keep going, albeit with Alice on a short lead. It's not the first time this has happened, to get well into a track with Alice along and then find one of these signs. The path steps sideways to detour round the gate.

The gravel has now disappeared. The dump by the gate has obviously been headed toward the revamped Montana Heritage Trail.

We have a 3 metre wide clay track, mostly firm, if at times slippery. with occasional muddy and boggy sections. The vegetation is open and somewhat scrubby, as it often is along the top of a ridge, though there seems to be plenty of water available. We're still, more gently, headed uphill.

Beside the track a young houhere is in prime shape

There's even a young kauri looking out from between a couple of ferns.

Granted this is kauri territory, but I wonder about how many of the young kauri, rimu and tanakaha along the edge of the track are happenstance and how many are there because the ARC put them there.

There's quite a lovely fern here too that has an almost metallic quality to it, a bluish coppery tinge to the fronds.

Once again, if you know the name of this, let me know. I am a glutton for information in this area.

Much of the interest in a tramp for me is right by the side of the track where the new plants are coming away. This area offers quite a bit more light than underneath the canopy proper, so it's a "special" region with quite a lot more visible activity than, say, 10 metres in from the track. Here live what I refer to as "the usual suspects" with some of the interest being in which are noticeably absent, or which of the less common ones are thriving. Mingimingi, kawakawa, hangehange, mapau, rangiora, karamu, Coprosma australis, C. rhamnoides, C. rotundfolia, C. spathulata, C. arboreum, C. areolata, koromiko, korokio, and so on. On this walk korokio is missing, and there are relatively few kawakawa. There are a few rangiora but more of the other tree daisies. Here is what I think is a young taurepo, not obvious as a full grown shrub in the locality as it is at Omeru.

A change of green up ahead recalls another recent visitor.

I come across a vigorously growing mangemange by the trackside, and I do my best to capture something of its tendrils but the light is poor.

Here you can see it travelling up the long saw leaf of a young lancewood (horoeka)

I take a look at my watch, and decide it is time to head back. When I feed the GPS waypoints back to the topo map on the pc, we are about 100 metres from the Lower Kauri Track turnoff, but I don't know this at the time. Back past the gate and along the heavily grassed track

We head towards the next gate by the Sylvia Happy seat and take in the misty wonder of Rangitoto on the horizon. The Sky Tower must be further around to the right. Alice has slowed down a bit and decides to catch a brief rest while I do the horizon scanning bit.

We head down the hill which is somehow a lot steeper than I recall it on the way up, and pause to catch the setting sun on a kowhai.

In the bottom right of the picture you can see the electric fence that Alice discovered earlier. We keep going, past the point where the Whatitiri Track threads its way downhill to Falls Rd, skirting the bush, and just over the next rise we can see the van. Alice quickens her pace.

It's been a thoroughly peaceful walk and as I walk down the last bit I consider spending the night here, Miranda being as far as I am aware still at a birth. there's a lovely view down the valley to wake up to, I've got the makings of dinner and breakfast in the van with me, and I have just about decided to do this when we reach the turnaround at the end of the road, and I change my mind.

I doesn't matter how beautiful the place, there are always people who carry their ugliness with them wherever they go. If you can get to it by road, there's a fuckwit with a baseball bat who can and will get there too. I have a closer look at the turnaround and spot some patches of window-glass, not as much as in the parking area at Bethells or Muriwai, but enough for me to decide yet again that Auckland is not a place for campervan overnights outside of a campground. In fact, even leaving it up here in daylight is a bit of a risk.

I take my boots off, pull a beer out of the fridge and look down the valley. the quail is still calling nearby and a fat tui lands in a manuka bush about a foot from the back window. The camera is packed.

I climb back in the driver's seat, and head on towards home, and catch up with Miranda as soon as I am in phone range. False alarm, and she'll be home about the same time I get there. Alice is asleep on the bed in the back.