On the Coromandel

Dark fir trees and pink pampas grass

I have long been attracted by the Coromandel. It is on North Island to the west of Auckland and is a peninsula which juts out north into the Pacific Ocean. On it west coast is a large wide inlet known as the Firth of Thames. Along its spine is a moutain range called the Coromandel Range. It took us about one hour to drive to its main town of Thames from Sylvia Park in Auckland. This journey was south down highway one, east along highway two until highway twenty-five branches off and swings north. This highway goes on through Thames and on to the town of Coromandel.

This whole area was populated during the gold rush days. The gold is not alluvial and the first diggings were abandoned until later when the gold here was found to be worth the effort of digging for. The gold quickly became uneconomic to mine and so the towns were given over to the tourist trade. There are many tramping tracks over the Range, the beaches are golden soft sand, there is wildlife and hot springs. In short this is the holiday paradise for Aucklanders.

Mountain peaks in the Coromandel Range

Having had a coffee and cake in Thames; next to Warehouse and not far from Pak n' Save we decided that we would make the trip across the Range to east coast of the island. Once again it is stunningly beautiful. Some locals had to spoil it with fly-tipping (would you believe). We chose to head to Pauanui, which is said to be the home of the rich and NZ's famous. Here we had a good lunch and Speights Ale before exploring the beach area. The car park straddles the harbour, on the river mouth on the left and the beautiful sands on the right. There is a ferry which makes the crossing to the other side of the town, known as Tainua. Tainua is the money generating tourist side of town and a hugh distance by road from where we were.

The Ocean at Pauanui

The Beach at Pauanui

Having explored, we made our way back across the range and headed towards Thames, but turned left into Kaureranga which is a very small town on a road leading to the DOC (Department of Conservation) information centre and the start of a number of tramping tracks. The road up starts with a number of beauiltiful original, colonial houses. Next there is a housing estate and at the side of the road is the village store run by a homely lady shop keeper. When we went in for our 'Magnum' ice lolly (By the way, a sweet here is called a lolly - a lolly is called a lolly on a stick) the shop was full of young school children on the way home from the local school. There are no signs in these places restricting the number of such youngsters.

The temporary information centre will be replaced by a smart new one by the end of March. Here we were told of a 15 minute walk to a lovely pool. We decided to do this. Fabulous.

Reflections in the Pool

We drove out of the site, remembering to warn others not to attempt to drive in the same way. The spikes go down when you approach them in one direction, but would mercilessly rip all your tyres off in the other direction.

On the way back we looked for a pub to have a pub meal. But, I noticed a sign pointing to a 'Subway' sandwich restuarant off the the motorway, changed my mind, attempted to find said place, but where was it. Intead we toured more back roads, finding our way onto the old South Road and along it was a pub/motel. This turned out to be a trucker's bar where we enjoyed different ambience, a plate of chips between us topped with fish in batter and a sausage between us. For me, this was rounded off with a glass of Tue Ale and mum again failed to get her ginger beer, getting a glass of fruit juice instead.

The journey was not quite ended. As we approached base, the sky began to go a rosy-red. So, we headed for St Heliers beach. I set up my camera on the rocks out into the sea and took a series of awesome sunset pictures.

Sunset From St Heliers Bay