Auckland’s newest Regional Park, only 11 months old, was the venue of a pleasant afternoon’s tramping. Although the park has not been officially opened (it would need to be developed first with walking tracks, toilets and maybe a hideous giant picture-frame such as is found in the other Regional Parks as a publicity gimmick) it was accessible to the public once the Auckland Regional Council took it over on 1 April 1999, and a basic road-end car park established. The park takes it name from the owners of the farm block the park was originally part of; it occupies about one-third of the block with the remaining two-thirds still the Scandrett farm estate. Because of the distance travelled - Scandrett Regional Park is past Algies Bay (Warkworth) and over an hour’s drive from Auckland - we did not arrive till 3pm. We set out along the ridge past the car park and soon came to the clifftops on the southeast side of Mullet Point. We could look out across to a group of small islands - Motutara, Moturekareka, Motuketekete and Motuora. Barbara gave a brief talk about these small islands, and John mentioned that on one of them (Moturekareka) there lived a hermit up till the late 1970s who would row across to nearby Kawau Island every couple of weeks for supplies.

As we carried on along the clifftops, we steadily dropped down till we reached the point itself, where we had a rest stop. It was impossible to get down to the rocky coast here because of the cliffs, so we followed the northern side of the point a short way till we could find a way down to the rocks, at the start of a patch of pine trees. From there we went out to the point where there were a couple of fishermen enjoying the calm sunny weather. We could see across to Kawau Island and in the hazy distance Little Barrier Island - both these islands visited by the same group of people from the Club, Kawau in March 1999 when sea conditions forced postponement of a trip to Little Barrier Island, and just one week ago when their third attempt at getting to Little Barrier Island was successful.

We went along the foreshore to Scandrett Bay, a quiet beach with a row of baches and caravans on the foreshore. It would have been lovely to have a swim but the tide was out. However there were the original Scandrett farm buildings to see - the original homestead was declared unsafe and was off-limits, a couple of other farm buildings were used as storage, and the old cow shed which deserved a good look-over. About six cows would have been milked at a time in the shed in its heyday; the cows would be led into the cubicles and once milked would be let out by lever-operated doors behind each cubicle. Some of the milking-machine pipes and other structures still remained, as was an old valve radio that would no doubt have blared out Merv Smith’s Early Bird Show as the cow-cockies did this daily chore before breakfast, and perhaps Mark Bennett’s Drive Time as they repeated the ritual before their dinner at night. It was a short uphill walk along a farm road back to the carpark - we were out about 5pm. We toasted our tummies to the success of discovering a new Regional Park at an ice-cream shop in Warkworth on the way home. COST: $9 ($7 from North Shore)