A good crowd of over tewnty people turned up on a sunny day to do another perennial Club favourite, the Goldies Bush section of the Te Henga Walkway inland from Muriwai. One of the past occasions when the Club did this trip was the 1996 end-of-year BBQ with the barbeque held at the Massey home of Jon Collins who founded the Club back in 1979. We left The Bracken soon after 8am and met up with more people at McDonalds in Lincoln. After a short breakfast stop there we carried on through the Waitakere township to the start of the Goldie’s Bush track at the end of Horsemans Rd. Once in the bush, we took the right-hand track that dropped down gradually to a lookout overlooking the Mokoroa Falls, an impressive sight of a broad stream cascading over a sharp edge.

From there we dropped down to the Mokoroa Stream and to the base of the waterfalls - the main waterfall we could see from the lookout, and another smaller fall to the right of that.

We then followed downstream from the falls for over an hour, a very interesting assortment of across-river wading, tracks on either bank of the stream, rock-hopping, scrambling down tiny waterfalls, etc.

In one place the track went around a large almost sheer rock face with rough steps cut into it - some of us instead crossed the crest of a small waterfall and followed a rough track through the bush on the other side. Eventually we came to where the main Goldies Bush track crossed the stream, a delightful place for a quick stop. We then climbed up along a well formed track to Constable Road - I’m sure we heard the sounds of barking dogs on the way up, or was it that two teenagers in our group had a good acting ability?????   Once out on the road we walked along it for about ten minutes to come to the start of the Bethells section of the Te Henga Walkway on top of a ridge, an excellent place to have lunch with views of Bethells township to the south and Muriwai beach to the north, and the broad expanse of the Tasman Sea to the west. Afterwards we returned to the Goldies Bush track and dropped down to the stream, then carried on along the well-formed bush track up the other side.  Near the top we went off the track to look at the remains of a very large tree that had died and fallen over many many many years ago. We were out at the carpark about 3:30pm, and Laurie boiled up afternoon tea on the back of his truck before we headed back home - via the ice-cream shop at Waitakere, of course!