An evening at Te Araroa, #EastCape.

Mountains steep (📷1),
Meadows deep (📷2).
Seafaring souls (📷3),
Heavenly goals (📷4).

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Wakatiri | Lottin Point is the most northerly extent of #Gisborne District (📷1). Looking across Kawakawa Bay from Haupara Pt towards Te Araroa (📷2). In Te Araroa’s school grounds is NZ’s oldest (600+ yrs) & largest (21.2m high/ 40m wide) pōhutukawa, named Te Waha-o-Rerekohu (📷3). The name may relate to a Māori store house formerly on site; one has been reconstructed (📷4).

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Raukokore’s wooden Anglican church is a local landmark, built 1894, with free-range 🐎 horses minding the grass (📷1). It’s still in use & in immaculate condition (📷2). On the back wall are pencil drawings by a boy named Taika Waititi, who spent some of his childhood here (📷3). He would go on to become a well-known Kiwi 🎥 filmmaker; “Boy” was set in nearby Waihau Bay (📷4).

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Eastern BOP coastal scenery from SH35. Fishing from the long beach between Pehitairi & Hawai (📷1). Whituare Bay (📷2). Small settlement of Houpoto (📷3). Mouth of the Mōtū River (📷4).

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Tauranga Bridge (📷1) is south from Ōpōtiki on SH2, in Waioeka Gorge Scenic Reserve. Built in 1922 to replace an earlier one destroyed by flood in 1918, it spans the Waioeka River (📷2) & served settler farms in Tauranga Valley. A 1.5h loop track from here involves 2 stream crossings, incld. at mouth of Tauranga Stream (📷3). A symmetrical railing knot in No. 8 wire (📷4).

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Hukutaia Domain nr. Ōpōtiki contains many species of trees, birds & #fungi. A walk here is especially “fruitful” for spotting Favolaschia claudopus, the orange pore fungus. Viewed from the top you can appreciate why it’s sometimes likened to a ping-pong bat (📷1) with prominent pores on the underside (📷2). Also saw Cerrena zonata (📷3) & Auricularia cornea/ ear #fungus (📷4).

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Hukutaia Domain nr. Ōpōtiki is a 5ha reserve amidst farmland (📷1). Within is Taketakerau | The Burial Tree, a large 2,000+ yr old endemic Vitex lucens/ pūriri into which the Upokorehe iwi set the bones of their distinguished dead, rendering it tapu | sacred (📷2). Although bones are gone the tree has guardian carvings (📷3). The pink pūriri flowers were past their best (📷4).

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An advantage of being “on site” in a camper is witnessing changing light thru the day. Whakaari | White Is, seen from Ōpōtiki’s Hukuwai Beach Recreation Reserve, smoked shades of white, grey & blue (📷1). Light can also change our mood—from irritation over fly-tipping (for which us freedom campers will be blamed) to joy at the reds & golds of sunset on Hukuwai Beach (📷2–4).

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The 11km-long Ōhope Beach on the ocean side of Ōhope Spit identifies as NZ’s “most-loved beach” (📷1). Large shallow estuary of Ōhiwa Harbour on the landward side (📷2). A wildlife refuge at the Spit’s tip allows endangered #birds to nest safely, overlooked by Onekawa Pā across harbour entrance (📷3). A Sterna striata/ white-fronted tern returns with shoal fish in beak (📷4).

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“Kiwi Boy” #art on Whakatāne riverfront (📷1) shares whakapapa with a bench-sitting bird in Auckland Botanical Gardens; several less anthropomorphic #kiwi sculptures also decorate bank. According to AI species classifier app, this painted gull-like local is probably Homo sapiens (📷2). Stern of ceremonial waka housed nr. river mouth (📷3), which is hazardous to navigate (📷4).

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