This is the place

I walk. It’s how I shake my stress off. My favourite walk is along a section of the Hatea River Walkway which is actually 4 kilometres from the beginning at the Town Basin to the end at Whangarei Falls. The section I love to walk is from Whareora Road (off Mill Road) to Mair Park, where you can pop up onto Rurumoki Street, turn right onto Hatea Drive, right again onto Mill Road, and there’s the loop of 45 minutes.

Starting at Whareora Road and looking towards Whareora, the track begins on the right, just over the bridge and down a few stairs. Tall trees line the river-bank and the first 100 metres or so takes you behind tree-shaded residences and a picnic lawn before moving into the bush on a wide gravel walkway. The river babbles merrily along on your right while the sun reaches through the canopy to illuminate just one special little bush or branch, here and there. There’s a picnic table another 50 metres in, on the left hand side set up the bank a little and completely shaded by tall trees.

The walkway tracks up and down, round tight bends and long curves, into little dells and rich-smelling stream-fed nooks. It’s crossed by square wooden drains which can be very slippery in the wet. I know, I smashed my knee when I zipped, slippery-do, across one once. This section of the Walkway is much favoured by locals who stride through fast and purposeful solo, cruise through chatting with companions, negotiate tight corners on the occasional young-mounted bike, stream as herding elephants on marathon training, or amble with the dog who more often than not is sodden and smelling carpet-like from stick-chasing in the river.

Mothers walk softly with little kids through here, pointing out plants and identifying the bird calls. Tui favour this area too and it is rare to walk through without hearing at least one, clicking and whirring and ringing out their songs in the afternoon air. Early morning, I’m often first through the walkway. I know because all the spider webs break across my nose and eyes. I think of early Maori who must have used this path, though not all citified as it is now. I think of them especially when I’m walking at dawn and there is a lull over the bush which is still rubbing the sleep from its’ eyes, a sacred silence. Here grow Nikau Palms, Ti-Tree, Puriri, Totara, and many more native trees and bushes. The Walkway, which has several boardwalks, is well tended by DoC who carry out regular poisoning in the bush of wandering jew, loquats, ginger and other introduced competition for native flora.

Quite some way along, the path splits off to the left onto the cruder Ponga track, then further along the main path, it splits again also to the left onto the Hokianga Track leading to the lookout; 45 mins. And not too much further along again, there’s another split up to the steep left on the Drummond Track leading to Parahaki; 40 mins. That’s a good stretch straight up for your legs but after rain the track is muddy and treacherous. A few minutes past the Hokianga Track fork, the walkway drops down onto the grassed flat of Mair Park and lifts easily up to the wooden bridge built on stone towers.

At the other end of the bridge, you can follow the path-proper or split off the walkway and go through the bush with it’s pungent leaf-littered floor, boulders covered with mosses and lichen, through tall puriri and small kawakawa, over tree roots, under the bird-singing canopy to come out onto a wide gravel-strewn path which leads up to another playground and grassed park on Rurumoki Street. If you choose instead to follow the walkway, it leads along grassed picnic areas to where the river widens. Here ducks and seagulls congregate, always on the lookout for those mothers who bring their toddlers with bags of stale bread to feed the duckies.

Mair Park and the Hatea River Walkway are places of rejuvenation. They are cool, even in high summer, and peaceful. Perhaps it’s the effect of flowing water. When there is serious sustained precipitation, it certainly is not peaceful in there. Then the river becomes an opaque mud colour, and rampages down the watercourse, roaring as it goes, bringing with it logs and other detritus as it rushes into the Town Basin. In this state the Hatea can easily burst it’s banks along the walkway, but I’ve only seen that three times. Mostly it’s birdsong, sun-dappled pathways, humus-filled fragrant air, water babbling over and around rocks, trees moving with the breeze, and people coming the other way.