The Day of Failure and Before

Friday 10th

After a quiet day indoors, Irene and I went off for a walk down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was very warm and many people were out on the beaches enjoying food and other social activities. Zoe had gone off to her first Brownie camp with her mum.

St Heliers beach as the shadows
 began moving in.

Rangitoto and the first sunset colours.

Looking from Kohi beach as the
city lights were coming on.

Darkness at St Heliers

It was one of those rain or no-rain weekends and on Saturday we were indoors for the morning, but we drove out to Sylvia Park for a few bits from the 'Warehouse' and 'PAK'nSAVE'. Sally came home in the afternoon.

On Sunday Zoe was still away. Emily went to a party with Ian and Sally had a sleep while Irene and I were at church. We arrived at a reasonable time and the car park attendants ushered us in to their multi-storey car park.

It was the usual, lively service, followed by tea/coffee and bacon and egg pie, which I thought was delicious. The cafe even had an EFTPOS card reading machine.

Late in the afternoon Zoe returned and was pretty tired after the weekend.

On Monday the weather was again uncertain. We took the girls off to school and Kindergarten and, because it was cloudy, they did not have sun block. We did some  house work. Having done some cleaning the builders turned up with angle-grinders and soon there was much more dust than we had cleared. We then set off to our favourite seat at Glover Park which overlooks Rangitoto and Browns Island. After sitting to eat lunch the sketchpads were brought out. However, after an hour after an hour the heat became too intense and we went off down through the park to the cliff tops and down to the beach. Most sheltered benches were taken, but we found a reasonably covered one, and  finished the drawings before going back to the house.

Glover Park

Our bench. It had become quite rickety.

Walking along the board-walk to find shade.

Today - Tuesday we had the car and set off to find the 'Fairy Falls'. These are in the Waitakere mountains. According to the web site, the entrance to the falls track was on Mountain Road. And it was a mountain road; steep and windy and fortunately traffic free. There was a small, rough car park and an entrance. At this point, stiff bristles had been set in a piece of board walk and there were bottles of chemicals to spray our shoes, in order  to protect the kauri trees from a nasty fungal disease.


Immediately, the track was testing. It was narrow, with some gravelling and a steep drop to the left. At one place, where trees had fallen, a path way had been cut through the tree trunk. There were places where trampers had done track repairs and we found it necessary to throw pieces of foliage over to make a more walkable path. At one point, there was an open view of the city, but mostly the track was enclosed by dense bush.


We were encouraged when we came across a brand new, substantial bridge, but eventually, the track led to a fast flowing stream and the only crossing was either using uneven stones or wading through. That, for us, was the end of the walk.

View Across the Bush

Logs cut to create a pathway

Recently built bridge

Home-made track improvement

The end of our attempt to get to the falls

 Once at the car we had a drink and some fruit and decided to go on the Arataki Visitors Centre, where we had been on a previous visit. The top of Mountain Road turned on to the aptly named Scenic Drive. A little way along it we came to a better car park at a different entrance to Fairy Falls. Here the track was better laid, but it was still going to take one and a half hours. We thought that we had walked enough and made our our way on.

City view from Arataki

Looking down over Maori totem pole

The Arataki Visitors Centre is a beautiful building in  lovely grounds. It is a starting point for a number of tracks and has fabulous views of the Waitake Mountains. Unfortunately, the coffee machine was out of order. Having taken a few pictures, we moved on to Titirangi. This followed the same plan as we had followed some years before. Except, this time, we were going to get down to Titirangi beach and visit the town's art gallery.


We were a little early for coffee, so went past the town centre and onwards downhill. This did not lead us to the beach, but to a boat ramp. Having gone back to collect my camera, I found that Irene had already left the boat ramp and had gone around the headland on to the grit covered bay. The land of New Zealand could well be described as a land of bays and trees. This bay was small and no exception and there was little choice, but to cross it to the next headland. The clear water was tempting as a way to wash off the tramping track dirt, which we did.

Shoe cleaning

I waded out to try to get my bearings, as at this point we were on the Tasman side of Auckland and were looking towards the airport over Manukau Harbour, with none of the familiar islands of the Pacific side. I find it quite amazing that in Auckland the distance between an inlet from the Tasman and an inlet from the Pacific is about 1/3 of a mile, but there is no canal through.

Stripy pattern on rock

Headland beginning to flood

When I got back to my shoes, I found that they were close to drifting out into the sea. The tide had turned and we needed to take a higher line to the headland, just getting over before we would have had to wade again.

Panorama from the bay

Having still not got to coffee and Titirangi beach we set off. The beach was quite disappointing. There was little to see and no coffee. 

Titirangi beach

Finding the car park and the cafe that we had been in previously was easy and we had some nice chocolate cake and carrot cake before heading off to the gallery. Naturally, the gallery was closed and so back to base we travelled; pausing briefly for mum to take some photos of the large sailing boats off Devonport.