After eight days on the road, we decided that today would be a lazy day. There is not a real lot to do around Whangareii so it didn’t matter if we spent some time this morning doing personal tasks such as lying in bed and doing some washing.
Eventually, we decided to head around the harbour towards Whangarei Heads and see whatever views that we came across. There were a number of small villages along the road and considering the banks of letter boxes that saw at various intersections, we think that the population was larger than it first seemed.
We came across a number of pleasant coastal views around Paroa Bay including the dominant Mt Manai with its steep sides and ridges.
Eventually, we came to Macleod Bay with its domed hill that sits on the northern entrance to the harbor. There was a new picnic table on a green grassed area where we stopped to eat our sandwich.
After lunch, we set across the Isthmus to the appropriately named ‘Ocean Beach’. There was a nice view from the lookout. I noticed a plaque describing the destruction of a New Zealand vessel by a mine during WW2. It was the only naval incident in NZ waters during the war. Sadly, five men died in this incident.
From there, we set our GPS to the main sight that planned to visit today – the Whangarei Falls. The road took us across country on a winding road past small farms and grazing land.
The falls were actually not far from the city of Whangerai and were very scenic. The Hātea River drops 26 metres over a basalt lava flow into a scenic pond. There are some gravel and dirt walkways through the native bush that form a loop around the falls, over a bridge and then back to the car park. I enjoyed photographing the falls as well as the very pretty river valley below them.
