14 people turned up for a chance to visit one of Auckland’s newest regional parks, a yet-unnamed farm park on the South Kaipara peninsula a few km before South Head on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour. We left The Bracken soon after 8am and met up with more people at Parakai before driving in a convoy of five cars to the carpark at the top end of the regional park.  A car was then  placed at the end of the South Head Road, our planned finish point for the tramp. It was just after 10am when we set out along a poled route across open farmland. We dropped quickly down to the floor of the valley to come out to the seashore about an hour later and our morning break. Andrew read out to us Philippians 4:4-9, a Bible passage that commands us to always rejoice in God,  never worry about anything but pray about it instead, thanking God afterwards, and to keep our minds fixed on what is good, true, right, pure and lovely. The tide was right in and as we had to wait for it to turn before carrying along the coastline, some of us went in for a swim in the calm clear waters. It was lovely and refreshing even though the water was only up to our tummies. We carried along the coast for about 1km with the tide right in for our lunch stop at a delightful spot near Muriwai Pa. There was an old tractor that had been left in the sand for maybe some months; it was not there this time a year ago. We waited till about 2:30pm for the tide to drop enough for us to continue around the headland to a beach strewn with fallen trees. It was easy going around the rocks of Parataha Point, wading knee deep in places. There was another stretch of sandy beach before we negotiated the next rocky headland. We followed a stretch of quicksand that was up to our knees in places; we found it was easiest to walk along the edge of the water. Te Kawau Point appeared to be straightforward and we thought we would get around it in no time, but suddenly we saw a vertical drop ahead that was impossible to get around. We had no option but to turn back and go at least as far as the long sandy beach where there were some houses. When we asked a lady there if we could allow us to cross their private land to reach the South Head Road, she directed us to a walkway that turned inland from the start of the headland. This turned out to be a well-overgrown public walkway with walkway signs along a “paper road” - we were “wading” in vegetation up to our thighs in places.

This brought us out to the road soon after 4pm, and Russell was able to thumb a ride to the end of the road where his car had been left. Five minutes later he arrived to take the four other drivers back to the start point while the rest of us began to walk along the road to save time. We had been going only about twenty minutes when the cars came to pick us up to head home to Auckland to finish off an interesting day in a “first-for-the-club” location.