A PLEASANT PLACE FOR A HOLIDAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

A PLEASANT PLACE FOR A HOLIDAY.

[BY E.S.G.]

Pkoplk who are in search of some spot where they tan spend a quiet, but not too tame, week of the Christmas holidays might find their ideal in some of the pretty little bays about the estuary of the Mahurangi. In the first place it is very easy to come and go. The steamers sail nearly every ■ day at Christmas time, and the trip is ah agreeable one. The average landsman, whose sick soul heaves with the heaving ocean, is inclined to shudder at the bare idea of an ordinary sea voyage, but even he is sometimes haunted by tempting visions of gliding over unruffled water on a- calm summer day, with just enough of a fair breeze to flap the sail. There is a chance of realising this dream by a midsummer trip to the Heads. The vessels never leave the shelter of neighbouring shores and islands for the whole distance, and in the estuary itself the water is as calm as in the nooks of the Waitemat-a. From Orewa onward the scenery, though never grand, is exceedingly pretty," and from some points of view rich in retried loveliness. You come in sight of one little Bay after another, with the wavelets rippling up to the gentle curves of the beach ; point after point more or less wooded with tree, kowhai, karaka, and pohutukawa, and an occasional tree fern. Here and there a, " sugar loaf" islet stands out conspicuously beyond headland of the coast, joined to it at low tide by a long, projecting reef. Perhaps the prettiest of these nooks, is the little beach of Waiwera, with steep forested hills closing round it on all sides except the seaward. Waiwera with its baths and hot springs is a charming sanatorium. Two bays further up is Jackson's comfortable homestead, where, after the American fashion, summer boarders are received. A row of tall Scotch firs ward off any chance wind that might blow too though the air at this season is strangely soft a.nd mild. Behind the firs is a sweet-smelling garden with big bushes of eld fashioned lavender, heliotrope, and rosemary, with scented carnations and delicate bright-coloured pelargoniums, and farther back, close To the hills, a wealth of roses, growing almost wild. The bay in front is curved like the moon in its "first quarter, and its little shelly beach, clear and white as a moonbeam, lies between two projecting points, one of which is richly ooded, while the other green height, just dotted with trees, gives an exquisite panorama of the estuary-dented coast, sea-creeks running far inland, peninsulas and islets all in the loveliest tints of blue and green, with here and there the white sail of a yacht visible, or the wings of a gannet as it dives into the waves. From this steep cliff, tradition says, a Maori maid once threw herself into the tide a- la Sappho. A mile or two across the water is Mahurangi Heads, with its wharf. This is another enchanting spot for a holiday. A road runs from the wharf uphill, and along the top of the rise between the bush scrub, bordered by flowering tea-tree and sprays of swectbriar, there are glimpses of blue water on either hand. My favourite peep was one between the wooded shoulders of two hills, above a recess of the shore. Towering dark pines in the foreground here throw into relief the blue Italian sky, and beyond lies spread the estuary with its broken coasts and bluffs, and right in the centre rises a little islet hill, with a crest of pine trees. These are not the only places where summer visitors can stay, but all are of the same type. These shores seem designed by Nature for pleasure and rest. The river scenery is delicious, either in blue noons or in the pale rose and saffron and w.liite of the evening sky, .or under the silver and shade of the moon. The hills are high enough to stimulate anyone to gentle exertion, but not steep enough to exhaust a child. There are easy walks round about. The bush is not top far to reach, and not too impenetrable to walk through. In the gully young kauri trees stand straight as pillars, old puriris spread their brandies fa. and wide, groups of nikaus and punga and grass trees give that look 'of tropical luxuriance which makes Maoriland forests enchanting to the imagination. Along one creek are a few Maori canoes, relics of unrecorded times, and there are also logs of a bygone generation of kauri giants. One of these is a great hollow trunk, so large that a man of six foot can stand upright in it, as it measures its length along the ground, and a whole picnic party once took shelter in it from the rain. i

Besides walking there is plenty of boating to be had. The settlers about Mahurangi, like the South Sea. Islanders, spend a good part of their lives on the water. AD these numerous bays otter attractions to picnickers. Oyster picnics (only in the season, of course, and with due license), can be arranged at, very short notice, tor the rocky reefs abound with fine fat bivalves, and one needs only the accompaniments mentioned by the Carpenter and the Walrus to make impromptu oyster teas or lunches or moonlight .sapper's. A few lively companions can soon make successful gipsy parties by land or water. Fishing oft' the points is another diversion, while more adventurous spirits can go yachting to the lovely island of Kuwait, or to the neighbouring shores. The clear,'shallow ( aitei makes bathing practicable for the most timid. Three or four times a week the steamers give visitors a chance of an excursion up the river to Warkworth, where a quarter of a mile or so above the wharf the stream abruptly ends. Up the stream the scenery varies. In some places bare, brown, and dismal shores show clay rifts, while farther on beautifully 01 '- ested hills form the bank, so you have the novel experience of steaming'through the bush. But ugly or pretty the Mahurangi is always interesting. It is a typical river o p this Northern region—yellow and muddy and deep, bordered on each side with grey-ish-green mangrove trees, a complete contrast to .Southern rivers, with their flat riverbeds miles broad, formed of grey shingle and traversed by clear, Hashing streams that unite only at flood time.

At midsummer, when all the thousand pohutlikawa trees that clothe the banks are out in full splendour, the estuary is a brilliant sight, a harmonj of azure" and flaming red that only Nature could devise. For those who sketch or paiut, for those who want a quiet place to read novels or to listen' to the settlers' romantic yarns, or hairbreadth escapes, shark stories, and memories of native chiefs and hermits on lonely islands, for those- who merely want to lounge and dream away the hours under the shade of forest trees and by the seashore, Mahurangi is the very place to while away a few days of midsummer leisure