Giveaways
RIDING on the Sky Waka at Whakapapa in the central North Island, I was getting quite frozen by mountain mist and temperatures of two or three degrees below zero.
So, it was a relief to find that the next place I went, the surf town of Raglan, was a lot warmer.
Raglan is on the west coast of the North Island, west of Hamilton (Kirikiriroa) and near the eroded volcanoes called Pirongia and Karioi, of which the latter commands a really good view out over the Tasman Sea.
At least when the weather is fine, at any rate.
Like much of the west coast of New Zealand, Raglan has stormy black-sand beaches, popular with surfers who take advantage of waves whipped up by the westerly winds that blow over the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere in our latitudes, around and around Antarctica, with comparatively little interruption from the land. When I was there, the cinema was showing classic surf movies including one that was about Raglan itself.
The waves look small in a photograph and as seen from a distance, with a line of spray above, but of course, they are huge.
The black sands come from extinct volcanoes, plus the merely dormant Taranaki. They contain magnetic black iron oxide and various other minerals, and plans to suck them up for mining are controversial locally.
I love the west coast of New Zealand. The east coast is more popular with holidaymakers, as it has lots of sheltered bays, white-sand beaches, and a less rainy climate. But the west coast is wild and elemental.
And you pretty much have it to yourself, as hardly anyone lives there.
Raglan would be huge for tourists if it was on the east coast. On the west coast, it is little more than a village with a really rough and ready charm.
There are lots of niche industries, including the making of chocolate. Recycling is huge in Raglan, and there was a woman who made bags out of recycled surf kites!
There are lots of notices of things that are on.
Including these ones, outside a place called the Yot Club. By the way, check out the speeding pigeon! I only noticed that afterward.
An old ad, for the even older Harbour View Hotel, bills Raglan as ‘the Brighton of the Waikato’, the region centred on Hamilton.
At the Raglan Holiday Park Papahua, I saw a sign listing the things to do around Raglan today.
The list of things to do includes Te Toto Gorge, on the seaward side of Mt Karioi, which has historic Māori gardens and an ocean lookout. You can also climb Mt Karioi by another route to view the sea from the summit at 756 m (2,480 ft). There are lots of walks to do in and around Raglan.
Here’s one of the three bridges you can walk across over the inner harbour.
There was a great little museum that I visited.
The traditional Māori name for Raglan is Whāingaroa. It was for a long time a fairly densely settled area, rich in food resources.
The name Whāingaroa was used by the British in colonial times as well as the name Raglan, after the commander of the British forces in the Crimean War, Lord Raglan, though the latter eventually won out among English speakers.
Whāingaroa means ‘the long pursuit’, a reference to the long, final quest of the Tainui, one of the oceangoing vessels that bore the Polynesian ancestors of the Māori to Aotearoa, for a safe harbour on the surf-pounded west coast.
Though Raglan bears the name Whāingaroa, the Tainui finally berthed at Kāwhia Harbour, a little to the south. The vessels that bore the ancestors of the Māori to Aotearoa are usually referred to in English as canoes, and in Māori as waka, a word that normally means the same thing; but of course, in reality, they were probably large oceangoing catamarans.
The museum had a photo of the fondly remembered local (and national) Māori activist Tuaiwa Haupai Kereopa Rickard. Among her other achievements, Eva Rickard, as she was more commonly known to the nation as a whole, helped to lead a 1978 protest against the continued alienation of Māori land taken by the government during World War II for an airstrip and then vested control of the land with the local county council, which leased a portion of it out as a 9-hole golf course. The flashpoint for the protest was the extension of the golf course to 18 homes, in ways that transgressed upon an urupā, or traditional Māori burial ground, while another sacred site was turned into an effluent pond. The estate was eventually returned to full Māori ownership and control in 1991. The golf course remains in operation upon it, nonetheless.
The museum also had a surf history display, which included a note about how wave prediction was largely invented in Raglan.
Another big attraction is Wairēinga or ‘leaping waters’, also known as the Bridal Veil Falls.
Here’s a video I made, of the beach with a full rainbow, and of Wairēinga.
Finally, I went to Waingaro Hot Springs, just to the north of Raglan.
Subscribe to our mailing list to receive free giveaways!
