Mokau

We left Garth and DrewAnne’s place on Sunday, late morning and headed back to Otorohanga. Our goal was to get a few groceries, and to empty our black and grey water tanks ready for the journey onwards. The forecast was for heavy rain so we had thought that we may stay another night at the NZMCA park. However, the weather wasn’t actually too bad, so after doing our chores we decided to continue our journey south.

It turned out to be a good call as the weather improved the further south we went. The countryside was nothing short of spectacular in places with steep hills of artistic limestone formations. Unfortunately there were few places to stop for photos and the places where you could stop didn’t have the views.

We had heard a government minister stating on the news a couple of nights before that 90% of NZ waterways were fenced from stock now, I would have to say that must be a dream of his, rather than fact.. Along river after river we saw no sign of fences and every sign of stock grazing right next to the water. As before the level of sedimentation in the rivers was extremely high and the waters were all a deep muddy brown.

Awakino was the next town and we had a quick drive around but it consisted of 1 block of houses and not much else. A little further on was a place where we could access the beach, so we took the dogs for a walk.

There were several other people with dogs and horses all enjoying the large expanse of black sand.

Believe it or not, it was here that we gathered a harvest of walnuts in their shells. They were an unusual thing to find on the beach but there were plenty of them, so we collected a few for later use.

We piled back into the motorhome and continued on toward Mokau, which wasn’t far down the road. We elected to stay at the Tainui-Wetere Sports Domain for the night and were not sorry with our choice. Again, we were the only ones there, but we felt safe and secure. Best of all, the ground was solid under our wheels so no getting stuck here!

It was just on sun down so we took the dogs for a short walk over the dunes to the Mokau river mouth. The water was still, and we would see the ripples from little fish. It was a shame we did not come to the beach with our fishing rods! Still, we had a walk around and enjoyed the views of the sun setting across the river mouth.

Just as we were about to leave a bit of mist started rolling in from the sea. It added a new moodiness to the scene, but did not progress to cover the whole landscape.

We made our way back to our camp and enjoyed a peaceful night. There was a bit of traffic noise – there are a lot of trucks using that road, but we were back far enough for it not to bother us.

The next morning, after our usual leisurely start, we headed back into Mokau to explore the township. On our list of to do’s was to have a whitebait fritter. Mokau is famous for it’s whitebait. We had a small one each, but in Judy’s opinion it was nothing on the whitebait fritters we purchased at the Otira Hotel in the South Island. Those ones were truly memorable!

The views from the back of the township of Mokau were amazing and Mount Taranaki could be clearly seen in the distance. The coastline here is pretty rugged and the dirty rivers make the ocean brown for a long way out to sea.