This is the seventeenth in my series of short reflections on different places in Australia and New Zealand, which I visited in November 2019. Today is the first of my posts on New Zealand’s North Island.
We flew into Auckland from Brisbane, and our first experience of the spectacular scenery was in West Auckland. Driving along the narrow, winding Piha Road, I was particularly struck by the rich, vibrant forests rising up high on either side of us, in which we identified giant tree ferns, casuarina, honeysuckle, callistemon and pandanus. The intense green reminded me of the paintings of Gaugin in Tahiti.
First we drove to the car park for visitors to Karekare Beach – where scenes were filmed for The Piano.
In fact, it’s hard to go to any spectacular New Zealand location that hasn’t already featured in a major film. Later on our trip we were to visit the Hobbiton movie set in Matamata that was used for The Lord of the Rings films, and the sublime Cathedral Cove which featured in the opening scene of Prince Caspian.
The west coast of Auckland we also found to be a glorious setting, as we walked along the black sand track that leads to the beach, past rich flora and greenery.
Signs warned visitors of dangerous rip currents and advised swimmers only to use the area between the flags, when the lifesavers from the Karekare Surf Club were on duty.
Karekare is known by the Maori people as Wai Karekare, ‘the bay of the boisterous seas’, and we found there a carved Maori ‘pou‘, symbolising the spiritual guardianship of Karekare.
Karekare Beach itself is awe-inspiring, despite the fact that, as you can see, the weather for us was rather more moody than when the film camera crew were here.
Late we drove to Piha village, and walked on Piha beach crowned by Lion rock. Another amazing location, which is also a Tsunami evacuation zone, as warning signs made us well aware.
SC Skillman, psychological, suspense, paranormal fiction & non-fiction. My next book, Paranormal Warwickshire, will be published by Amberley Publishing on 15th June 2020 and is available to pre-order now either online, or from the publisher’s website, or from your local bookshop.
scskillman.com 
I really enjoyed reading this, Sheila. There are so many of these things I’ve never done, even though I’ve visited NZ three times! Always busy visiting the relatives there I guess. Next time though we will really have to do some of these things, especially see the locations for ‘Lord of the Rings’ Thanks for sharing.
I’m glad you enjoyed reading about my visits in New Zealand. The 16 day trip was a bit of a whistle stop tour as you will see from all the posts still to come, which I have now written and scheduled. We saw so many spectacular and wonderful highlights of the North Island, and many of these places deserved a stay of several days each. I understand the South Island is more rugged and has even more dramatic and majestic scenery, as can be seen from the various locations of scenes in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films.