BEACHES OF THE WEST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18641, 23 February 1924, Page 1 (Supplement)

BEACHES OF THE WEST.

HOLIDAY-MAKING AT PIHA.

BY ELSIE K. MORTON.

Year by year Aucklanders are coming to realise more fully the wonderful heritage of natural beauty, the unparalleled opportunities for healthful holiday-making, that lie at their doors. North and east and south they go when the summer sun rides high, but they have not yet turned their faces to the west. On summer days, when the beaches in and around Auckland are thronged with their thousands, when all the roads .to the sea are thick with the dust of charabancs and flying motor-cars, a little handful of pioneers of the west, three or four score, perhaps, picnic beside wonderful beaches that curve in unbroken lino to the mists of the horizon, where the surge of the surf and the song of the cicada on the high black cliffs are the only sounds that echo through the still summer air from dawn to sunset.

Muriwai, Te Henga, Anawata, Piha, Karekare one of those wonderful resorts of the west has its own special features of interest, Muriwai. its unbroken miles of shining sand; Te Henga, its caves and reedy river; Karekare, its majestic cliffs; Piha, its narrow gateway where the ocean others in mighty strength and thunders through the walls of The Gap to the lagoon inside. Why is it, one wonders, that Aucklanders are so slow to recognise the claims of this splendid West Coast ? Why do they flock by their thousands to the over-crowded beaches of the harbour resorts while these magnificent tracts cf forest and hillside and ocean-beach are neglected by all save a handful of people, who come year after year because of the ocean voices that are ever calling them to return ?

A regular motor service has done much to popularise the West Coast beaches this year, but the fact remains that one great reason why Aucklanders are not thronging them in their thousands every fine week-end is that, their beauty and charm are, to a great extent, still unknown to the majority of holiday-makers. " Society Where None intrudes." But the true west-coaster needs no crowds, no massed picnic effects, to complete his enjoyment of these haunts he has made his own. He prefers the coast as it is, as he has always known it. To him, there, is " society where none intrudes," his is the joy of ownership of empty reaches of untrodden sand, the stillness and peace that lies in the valleys and on the rugged heights, all the wealth of unspoiled beauty and charm, that will vanish when the great body of Auckland's holiday-makers have at last claimed the West Coast even as they have claimed all the popular harbour resorts of the Waiternata.

To some, the golden sands and smooth rippling waters, the safety and placidity of the harbour beaches, will always make strongest appeal. The West Coast is not for such as these. It is for those who glory in the stark, rugged grandeur of headlands where, the ocean thunders and thrashes, where crested waves sweep up the black sands in swirling tiumult, where the sun sinks down beyond the rim of the world in a ball of flaming firo and the surge of the sea from dusk to dawn is a muffled bell tolling in the caverns of the deep. Down the Boad to Piha. .Arid so, with glad hearts, we turned our faces westward once again when the ocean voices called, and soon we were journeying down the well-known road to the sea. Karekare we knew well, had known and loved for many and many a year., Piha we knew less well, so we went there to find fresh, beauties, to treaa new and unfamiliar ways. We found them in a series of beautiful valleys, where little tracks wandered past still lagoons., margined with bulrushes and raupo, sown thickly with water-lilies; in magnificent groves of pohutukawa and nikau, in a glade where tea-tree and flax and cabbage-palm made an avenue of sylvan beauty right down to the rim of tho beach. That is the great attraction of Piha. It is a wide, shallow bay, without the usual girdle of sandhills, 'where shady groves extend from the Piha valley right along the edge of the beach, giving direct access to the sweeping stretch of level sand.

At the head of the valley is the little settlement where a few years ago, the btishmen had their homes. They have finished their work and gone, but there are signs of their habitation in the swings, sec-sa^ - , and maypole in the old schol playground, in the dance-hall that is now a well-run store, in the cottages on the hillside that are the homes of summer campers. And then, of course, there were Piha's own special and unique possessions, the Blow-hole, the Gap, and the Lion Rock. These remarkable features give Piha a charm all its own, even in a region where there is so much to enthrall, so much to capture an allegiance that never failsThe Lion is amazingly lion-like: He sits sturdily out on the edge of the black beach, gazing steadfastly-, into the west,. The great ocean rollers swirl in round his feet, leap at his throat under the lash of mighty storms, hurl impotently upon his shoulders all the pent-up fury of the gods of wind and sea. The red eve of the westering sun burns with baleful glare straight into the face of the Lion, the great gales of the Tasman come thundering and shouting down to lash him with white wrath, but a thousand years of burning sun and sands, of countless raging storms, have left him unseated, and the cicadas sit on his eyebrow all day and shrill their defiance at the leaping waves. Slippery Hock and the Gap.

Just beyond, where the tail of the Lion sweeps the wet sands to the south, lies one of the most rugged and picturesque strips of coast-line in the west. It gives easy access, at low tide, to the Gap, a walk of perhaps fifteen minutes from Piha beach. But the visitor must be very sure of his tides, for here 'he must pass Slippery Rock, where the cliff falls down sheer from the sky to the sea, and where, at high tide, the water boils and leaps and thrashes in sublime fury. Many a story is told of over-daring, or perchance unwary, picnickers, who have been caught at Slippery Rock, and compelled to -wait for hours till the turn of.the tide, or who have made a dash across the narrow strip of sand and climbed to safety even with the waves swirling round their shoulders. But at low tide there is no hint "d danger, only a ramble of sheer delight across rocks set with lovely little marine gardens, where pink and mauve star-fish < ling to the wet rocks, where seaanemones wave their handsome tentacles and enormous crabs scuttle hurriedly into cracks and crevices as soon as human voices are heard. When the tide is in and the sea is rough the scene at the Gap is aweinspiring, magnificent. The great- ocean breakers surge into the narrow break in the high cliffs, and hurl 'themselves on the rocky barrier with tempestuous fury. Clouds of spray mount to the cliff-top 'as the waves thunder into the lagoon inside. The water is brown with the swirl of kelp, its long strands floating like writhing snakes under the snowy smother of foam and spray. But when the tide falls, there is nothing but a calm, sweet beauty in the little lagoon inside the Gap. The water is marvellously clear and green, so clear that as you dive, the tiny broken shells can be counted on the sandy floor twelve feet down. When the West Coast comes to .be known as it surely will be known within a few years, the Gap will take its place as one of the most magnificent features of the coastal scenery of New Zealand. When that day comes, thousands will flock out to gaze upon the Lion, to walk through the shady valleys, to picnic under the pohutukawas, and swim and frolic in the little lagoon, and then PjJia .will come into its own.