Fifteen people took advantage of a lovely day to explore what is probably New Zealand’s largest island made entirely of sand dunes, which lies off the Tapora flats on the central Kaipara Harbour. This was followed with a visit to Geratic Park at the end of Journey’s End Rd. We left The Bracken about 8:15am and travelled to Wellsford to meet three more people at the McDonalds/Caltex petrol station. From there we travelled in convoy to Okahukura Rd on the Tapora Flats about 30km west of Wellsford, then set out along a public access track across a farm to come to the foreshore. This island was a five minute walk across a broad belt of sand that is covered by only a few inches of water right on high tide. Once at the island we followed its edge southwards before cutting across it, climbing onto sand dunes and pushing our way through an interdune flat covered in bulrushes. We came out to the firm sand beach on the western edge, looking out to the entrance of Kaipara Harbour. We could see the South Kaipara Head, which the Club visited in 1999, and the North Kaipara Head, which was visited by the Club in 1994 and due to be visited again sometime soon. Several people had taken their 4whd vehicles to the beach for a spot of fishing - one fisherman had already caught two schnapper.

We stopped for lunch up in the dunes out of the breeze before carrying on along the marram-covered dunes lining the northwestern edge of the island and up onto a large and high belt of bare dunes, on the landward side of which was a belt of native bush. This was no doubt the highest part of the island, and we could see all the way from the northern Kaipara harbour towards Dargaville to the southern Kaipara harbour towards Helensville, and could envisage the days of when steamers plied the harbour between those two towns before the highways were made. It was a pleasant walk following the ridge of this sand dune belt southwards, but it soon gave way to vegetation-covered dunes, which we followed for a while before dropping down into a broad flat of thick bulrush grass. We had to push our way through this for quite a while to come out onto the sandy vehicle track that the fishermen use to get to the island’s western beach, and thence across the sand flat and farm track to finish back where we left the cars, soon after 2pm. We drove on along Okahukura Rd and turned into Journey’s End Rd and travelled to the end at the tiny settlement of Bird Beach. Several years ago the local residents started up a display of sculptures made of driftwood, dead branches and other bits and pieces, all painted up, in the grassy area behind a patch of tall mangrove trees. This came to be known as Geratic Park, named after the movie Jurassic Park - many of these sculptures represented dinosaurs and other reptiles. We were there about 45 minutes looking at these artworks as well as similar things along the road frontages of the nearby houses. There was one tree made of jandals, and a couple of sculptures incorporating plastic dolls. Another tree had leaves made of clothes pegs, and there were several caricatures of people as well. David started chatting to one of the local residents, who happens to go to the same church in Wellsford as he does. It was about 4pm by the time we were away - two carloads headed for Parakai hot pools wile the other two carloads headed home to Auckland. Those who went to the hot pools had a lovely swim and meal at Aquatic Park and were back in Auckland by about 8pm. COST: travel $14, hot pools $10.