Manukau Heads Light House and Grahams Beach

After saying goodbye to Clarks Beach and the Shand’s we packed up and continued our trip south along the west coast.

Hunter was as anxious as ever. He has been shaking and panting every time we drive somewhere and all the homeopathic environmental sprays and mouth sprays have not helped much at all. Today I gave him a homeopathic remedy in capsule form, but still not much improvement. I think he is going to have to learn to get over  this himself. It is strange that all through our weeks of travelling last year, we saw no sign of this behaviour. Poor little boy!

Our first stop was at Glenbrook Beach. Again, this was a very charming place, made all the more beautiful by the calm sunny day. There were even some children swimming and splashing about in the water although I didn’t think it was that warm. Oscar enjoyed it though and even Hunter had a short swim.

The beach is not large, with stones at one end but a lovely sandy beach at the other. We had lunch looking out over the water and watching the fish jump. A local told me that they get lovely trevally out from the beach.

After lunch it was on towards our planned destination of Grahams Beach, but as it was early we decided we had time to go and see the light house at Manukau Heads. It was quite a windy, narrow road, but a much better drive than I remember the one out to the East Cape light house being.

The light house was originally built 144 years ago following the shipwreck of the navy boat Orpheus with the loss of 189 lives. This remains New Zealands worst shipping disaster. The light house ceased to be manned in 1957 and was abandoned altogether in 1986. Smart locals removed items of value and placed them in the Waiuku Museum, and they were retrieved when the light house was re-built by a group of keep locals – opened in September 2006 by the then Prime Minister Helen Clark.

The views from the light house are beautiful, and the bar looks somewhat menacing. I can see why our son in law Blair has such a respect for it.

After a good walk around and exploration of the light house we continued on to Grahams Beach, near the tip of the Awhitu Peninsula. This was another lovely place and once again we were the only visitors in the park over property.

The Iron Maiden was unlike any we had seen before and made us smile. The property is just over the road from the reserve and the beach, and the property itself was quite a large area, so room for the dogs to be on long leads. We had a quick walk on the beach but the evenings are getting noticeably cooler so we didn’t linger.

Bruce got the barbeque fired up and we had a lovely dinner of red wine and beef sausages and veges, before a relaxing evening.