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BETWEEN Auckland and Cape Rēinga, 320 km or 200 miles further northward, the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand tapers into a subtropical peninsula known as Northland in English and, in Māori, Te Tai Tokerau, which means the north coast.
In Māori lore the North Island is also likened, because of its shape, to a fish caught by the demigod Māui — Te Ika a Māui, specifically a stingray — and Te Tai Tokerau to its tail.
Because it is so long and thin and tail-like, there is, indeed, no shortage of coast on Te Tai Tokerau: a green, subtropical peninsula also known as the winterless north and traversed by the Twin Coast Discovery Highway.
Many famous holiday spots, such as the Bay of Islands, are scattered up and down the two coasts of the peninsula.
I’ve done some earlier posts about this region. There’s one that introduces the so-called Winterless North in general, another one about hiking to Cape Brett near the Bay of Islands, and another about Northland’s biggest city, Whangārei.
This post is about the Poor Knights Islands, rated as one of the top ten diving spots in the world, and the nearby Tūtūkākā Coast, near Whangarei, which National Geographic Travel has also lately rated as one of the top three coastal destinations in the world.
This whole area bathes in a warm current from the tropics. That’s part of the reason why the region is called the winterless north.
East of the Tūtūkākā Coast there lie the Poor Knights Islands, a famous diving spot with clear water and some very exotic wildlife on the land as well. You can see them on the map just above and in this 3D satellite image as well.
The tropical current that I mentioned above fully bathes the Poor Knights.
The waters around the Poor Knights are also very clear because the islands are far from any river that might make the seawater muddy.
The clear water makes the Poor Knights a popular diving destination, rated as one of the top 10 dive spots in the world by no less than Jacques Cousteau, according to the following video.
In combination with a local upwelling of nutrients, the warm current also gives them a rich undersea life for divers to admire.
Tūtūkākā town is the departure point for charters to the Poor Knights.
I spent a little time near a place called Whale Bay, close to Matapōuri Bay. These are on the map just above as well.
Like the rest of the Tūtūkākā coast, they are both very rugged and scenic. I have more to say about these bays further below.
The next day, I went on what was known as the Perfect Day Cruise. It cost NZ $245 to snorkel for an hour out at the Poor Knights Islands. We left at 11 and got back in at Tūtūkākā town at 4.
The Poor Knights Islands were named by Captain Cook, either in honour of a mediaeval charity that provided doles to poor knights (seriously) or in honour of French Toast, more often known in those days as Poor Knights (seriously, also).
Nobody knows which of the two explanations is the correct one. They have individual Māori names, the two main ones being called Tawhiti Rahi, which is the biggest one, and Aorangi. I don’t think that there was a separate Māori name for the whole group, though Tawhiti Rahi is also used as a synonym for the archipelago.
As you can see from the next two photos, the Poor Knights Islands have lots of caves and sea arches.
We explored Rikoriko Cave, the world’s largest sea cave by volume. Rikoriko means the dappled waters, and looking toward the cave entrance, you can see why.
Apparently, Kiri Te Kanawa and Split Enz have sung at Rikoriko Cave, and while we were there an opera singer from the USA got up and sang.
Out on the islands, there were kayaks and platforms for people to go on.
I snorkelled for about an hour and I saw some really big snapper, which have become numerous since the Poor Knights became a marine reserve in 1981.
And I saw schools of trevally, and blue maomao, and some people saw stingrays.
The snorkelling tour season is from November to April, but there are dive boats all year round.
And there were other islands. We went through an especially impressive archway called the Southern Archway, on Archway Island.
The Poor Knights Islands are volcanic in origin but became a relic as the hot spot moved to Ruapehu.
Māori lived there till 1820, but they were attacked in the Musket Wars and the islands have been uninhabited since then.
We saw a gannet colony as well.
The Poor Knights also have stunted pōhutukawa, they are really small and they grow everywhere. When they are in flower it is stunning.
Because the islands are some 20 km from the mainland and its introduced predators, there are still reasonable numbers of unusually large invertebrates of the sort with which the mainland used to teem before the introduction of rats and other predators.
These include the New Zealand giant centipede, Cormocephalus rubriceps, which is up to 25 cm long. A relative of the giant centipede of the Amazon, Scolopendra gigantea, the New Zealand giant centipede is the sort of thing you would expect to see in an Indiana Jones movie.
There was also a giant-sized wētā that was endemic to the islands, Deinacrida fallai, along with several other species of big wētā.
For more, you might wish to consult a webpage called ‘Critters of the Poor Knights Islands,’ which describes the New Zealand giant centipede as “Large, fast and venomous — a very good reason to keep your tent firmly zipped closed.”
The Poor Knights also support an distinctive set of land plants. These have been replanted in a garden in Tūtūkākā called the Tawhiti Uni Waerenga, meaning the garden or cleared area, of a nearby marae called Tawhiti Nui. It is also known as the Poor Knights Garden. The garden is located at the Tūtūkākā Marina, from where the Poor Knights charter boats also set out.
And so, the Poor Knights are a little bit like New Zealand’s answer to the Galapagos.
In addition to declaring the Poor Knights a marine reserve, the New Zealand Department of Conservation, or one of its forerunners, also put people on the islands who killed a whole lot of pigs and thus helped its distinctive land-side ecology to regenerate.
There is an especially detailed, if rather elderly, web guide to the Poor Knights Marine Reserve by Dr J. Floor Anthoni of Seafriends, here.
Here’s a photo of an old sea chart, on an information panel, showing Ngunguru Bay (1), a tributary of the Ngunguru River called Bowler Creek (2), a rocky point in Tūtūkākā Harbour (3), and Phillip Island in Tūtūkākā Harbour (4).
On an earlier trip north from Auckland, in the wet December of 2022, I had planned to stay in Whangārei. But there was nothing in Whangārei on Airbnb for under $120 a night.
I headed for Tūtūkākā town via Ngunguru and stayed at the Tūtūkākā Holiday Park, $20 a night in the backpackers’ section. I’ve stayed there on earlier trips as well, so that’s how I know it’s a bargain, especially for such a touristy coast. You can’t miss the giant fish, a fibreglass representation of a marlin.
Among its other claims to fame, the east coast of Te Tai Tokerau has long been internationally famous for the catching of marlin, a gigantic tropical fish, by which Ernest Hemingway types would prove their manliness by wrestling it onto the boat and then posing for photographs. In the 1920s, the American writer Zane Grey dubbed the area the “angler’s El Dorado.”
It takes a long time to tire the marlin out, so many people today regard marlin fishing as a cruel sport, akin to bullfighting and fox hunting. Even so, the mighty marlin itself remains a symbol of the east coast of Te Tai Tokerau.
Tūtūkākā means a snaring tree (tūtū) in which parrots (kākā) are caught. I don’t know if parrots used to be unusually common there. But there were lots of other birds, including the ubiquitous wet-weather ducks.
(The weather is often wet in New Zealand’s Christmas holiday season, even though it is in the middle of summer. And that summer would turn out to be exceptionally wet in the northern part of the country, with Auckland recording its most torrential rainfall ever, and flooding drastically, on the 27th of January 2023.)
Tūtūkākā town has changed quite a bit. It used to be very sleepy, but now it is touristy, with a packed yacht marina. I talk about that in the following video, which includes a pan around the present-day marina.
It was really good that I pressed on to Tūtūkākā and its holiday park because, this time, I discovered two trails to hike.
One was a walk called Tāne Moana, through a big kauri forest, which used to be part of the Te Araroa Trail but no longer was because of kauri dieback.
The kauri forest was saved from being logged out when the government banned kauri logging in 1974.
There was a magnificent kauri tree there, the Tāne Moana after which the track is named. And then I bumped into a guy there who was working for the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC), trapping weasels.
He said that many of the Northland kiwi prefer pine forests. So, at night, you would be able to see many kiwi in the pine forests.
The other walk was the Tūtūkākā Head Track, or tracks, which led to a lighthouse and also to Tūtūkākā Beach.
Tūtūkākā Head, the lighthouse, and a nearby lookout are all on Kukutauwhao Island, which you can walk to even though it is an island, though the relevant DOC webpage says, in bold, as of the time of writing, that “Crossing … is difficult around high tide or in rough conditions.”
Apparently, the kiwi used to survive rather well in this area, not only in the kauri forest but also in the pine forests, until the pine forests were felled. Most pines in Aotearoa New Zealand question are exotic (non-native) species, either Norfolk Island Pines or commercial plantation pines from California, and are conventionally thought to have no value to the native wildlife. But it seems that judgment is hasty. Indeed, I’ve seen masses of tūī, local relatives of the New Guinea birds of paradise, living in exotic pine trees in Queenstown.
So, that was a real experience. I made a video of my Tūtūkākā hikes:
Near the Poor Knights Garden, in the vicinity of Rona Place, I spotted this very tropical-Polynesian-style café. New Zealanders are so fortunate: they have it all right here.
A little further north, there is Matapōuri Bay.
I made a video here, too.
There are some beautiful tidal pools at Matapōuri Bay called the Mermaid Pools. But a rāhui, or traditional tribal ban, was placed on them in 2019 because of visitors making a mess and polluting the pools. The ban is intended to last for several years.
Across the peninsula from Matapōuri Bay, to the northwest, there is Whale Bay, which has basic facilities such as toilets but not much else to spoil the charm, and which is described on the tutukakacoastnz.com website as:
Idyllic white sand, bush fringed beach.
Walking access only from either the car park on Matapouri Road (30 mins round trip), through groves of ancient Puriri trees or via Matapouri Bay (40 mins one way).
The best beach to swim at is Sandy Bay, to the north of Tūtūkākā township, Matapōuri Bay and Whale Bay.
I headed a little further north still, to Whananaki South, which lies across an estuary from Whananaki North. The estuary is full of birdlife.
The two Whananakis are united by the longest footbridge in the Southern Hemisphere.
Fortunately, you can drive around the head of the estuary as well, and there is a very attractive beach on the northern side called Moureeses Bay.
I made a short video at Whananaki as well.
Whananaki South has a Freedom Camping area. That’s worth bearing in mind.
There’s still quite a bit more of the Tūtūkākā Coast to the north of Moureeses Bay, but I will have to explore that bit, along with the pūriri of Whale Bay, next time I am up there!
If you liked this post, check out my award-winning book about the North Island, available from a-maverick.com.
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