Thursday 20 June 2024

Leader: Owen Cox

We met at the deli in Beach Road, Paekakariki and soon left the lycra-clad coffee drinkers and made our way across the quiet, old state highway and up the Paekakariki Hill Road for 100 metres, before heading up the Waikakariki stream.

We checked the old water supply, put in for the steam trains, before having a short stop at the junction to the Fly by Wire set up. Chris went to check the base (take off spot) and this seemed to be all in place. We continued ascending, quite steeply, to the ridge leading to the radio masts where we jumped the fence and enjoyed the view overlooking Paekakariki from 200 metres above. The weather was a bit cloudy but this was the first of the spectacular views having the beach, township, steam train apparatus, QE2 park etc. etc. all laid out before us.

We dragged ourselves away from that view and continued ascending at a slightly gentler incline past the radio masts and along to our high point having overlooked Transmission Gully along the way. We had lunch in a sheltered spot at an elevation of about 350 metres which was a stunning place to overlook the landscape from – islands near and far, new and old sand dunes, fault lines, peat swamps, the uplifted horst greywacke backbone of the country, Ruapehu in the distance. I’m sure I got a glimpse of some moraine – just about as good as it gets!

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and we had to continue on, down through the old cattle yards and down a ridge with each knoll providing different views and Owen providing an expert commentary on the history of all we could see. We descended to the Hill Road, carefully avoiding the Ongaonga along the way. Then 20 metres down the road we dropped off the south side and made our way through the regenerating coastal scrub which featured some very nice Kohekohe in flower. We walked under some bush that Owen and Robert Hawke had planted several moons ago. Once we joined the escarpment track we were almost home so made short work of the final kilometre.

P.S. If you consider doing this trip, and it is very worthwhile as the views are spectacular, make sure you take Owen as he is a wealth of knowledge and expert in the area.

Those on the trip were:

Owen Cox, Glenda Robb, Chris Keating, Brian Solomon and Molly the dog.

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.