Tasman Every Day

This is Kaiteriteri Beach as seen from the southern end of Kaka Point. The brown patch behind the cluster of shops is the Kaiteriteri Inlet at low tide, and next to the shops is the mostly-empty campground. The hill behind the campground is covered in native bush, while the ones further away host exotic forest blocks.

Where Takaka Hill Highway (State Highway 60) starts its climb up over Takaka Hill, the Riwaka Valley Road turns off to the left. At the very end of that road, there’s a carpark and a short walkway that goes up alongside the Riuwaka River to the Riuwaka Resurgence. The river starts under Takaka Hill, flowing through limestone caves before its pure, filtered waters emerge out into the open, at the Resurgence. The first part of the river is made up of a series of clear pools flowing down the valley. As for Riwaka versus Riuwaka, “Riwaka” is a spelling mistake, the correct spelling is “Riuwaka”, which has been the river’s official name since 2014. The name refers to the pools that emerge from under the mountain.

This is part of a large chunk of rock on the beach at Split Apple Rock, and you can see how wave action is working on this rock, starting to break off smaller pieces.

This handful of sand is typical of the beaches in the Abel Tasman National Park. The bedrock underlying the park is Separation Point Granite, which erodes and crumbles into what you see here. The iron in the granite is what gives the sand its orangey-pink colour. You can see here how coarse the grains are. They drop out of the surf quickly, which is why the area’s waters are so clear.

Once you get down to the beach from Moonraker Way, Split Apple Rock is just off the coast. The peaks in the distance are the Marlborough Sounds. The birds on the large rock behind Split Apple Rock are spotted shags (Stictocarbo punctatus), which are common along the coast in the Abel Tasman. During the breeding season, both males and females develop a punky, shaggy crest, which is where the name “shag” comes from.

It’s easy to tell manuka and kanuka apart when they’re flowering, but how do you tell when they’re not flowering? It’s all in the foliage. The flowers and pods in the centre of the photo mark the tree as manuka. Its leaves are smaller and firmer, spiky to the touch. The clump of leaves being held alongside the manuka flowers are from a nearby kanuka tree, and they’re much softer to the touch. Manuka leaves are prickly, you can’t really grab a clump of them in your fist comfortably.

Manuka and kanuka are two New Zealand native trees that people find difficult to tell apart. It’s easy when they’re flowering: manuka flowers are set further apart on the branches than kanuka flowers, and manuka flowers don’t form the dense sprays that kanuka flowers do. These are manuka flowers.

This is another pic of the walk from Moonraker Way to Split Apple Rock beach. I can’t help but think the guy who named Moonraker Way must’ve been a huge James Bond fan. Or was he a Wiltshireman? An old story goes that revenue collectors caught some Wiltshiremen raking a pond to retrieve kegs of contraband brandy. The Wiltshiremen claimed they were “raking out the moon”, hoping that their apparent madness would get them out of the scrap they were in, earning them the name “moonrakers”. I’m pretty sure, though, that the name is a sailing reference, for the moonraker sail found on square-rigged ships.

This is Kaiteriteri Beach, as seen from Kaka Point. The sky is blue, the sea is flat, and the beach looks beautiful and inviting, almost like summer, but it’s not. What’s the giveway? No kayaks in the water, no people on the beach. On a typical day at the height of summer, Kaiteriteri and its surrounding bays can host around 8,000 people a day. This photo was taken on an August afternoon, and although it was warm enough to walk around and take photos, it’s far too cold for anyone to be trying out the water.