This Summer's Beach

For this blog I have blatently stolen content from somewhere else (Viewauckland.co.nz), but it fits with how I feel about a certain place.

Will has joined the Surf Lifesavers at Karekare on the West Coast of Auckland. There are plenty of reasons behind this, but two of the most important are to give back to the community and to spend a good chunk of the summer somewhere that we absolutely love.

For anyone who has visited us, Karekare is an almost essential stop on the Auckland tour - the wild waves, shimmering black sand and awesome cliffs. More recently we have discovered the bush walks, waterfalls and I hear that there are caves too.

Will and I hired a very funky bach in Karekare for our 5th wedding anniversary and had a wonderful car-free, sunny weekend with bush walks in the morning and swimming in the sea in the afternoon (made possible by the surf club).

Anyway, onto the plagiarism:
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Scrambling across the southern rocks and jumping down onto the sand below, you’re swamped by the sheer magnitude of this untamed space.

Black sand—miles of it. Rocky shards framed by fenced-off hills and smashing waves. And tiny little you, pressing virgin footprints onto this colossal tidal canvas.

You’re a small speck surrounded by a massive force. But rather than seeming inconsequential, you feel a part of this powerful place.

Perhaps it’s the lack of urbanisation that makes Karekare so special. You can thank the locals for that. Fiercely protecting the place for years, they’ve stopped it from becoming another tourist freak show or jigsaw of multi-million dollar ‘baches’.

In 1993, Jane Campion’s The Piano made Karekare an overnight superstar and everybody was talking about this black sand beach. They may not have been there, but you can bet they were on their way.

After all, who wanted to be the only Aucklander who couldn’t say, “Karekare ... know it well. Could tell right off the bat that movie was filmed there.”

International tourists also came to check the place out. It was a bit of a spectacle. Disembarking from scenic coaches, bus drivers tied plastic shopping bags around the Prada heels of ill-equipped women.

They teetered, with Foodtown bags rustling around their ankles, across the creek, along the flank of a sand bank, and stood where that baby-grand had once been.

Thankfully, Karekare’s no longer the screen idol it once was, and buses don’t visit as often. Nevertheless, movie makers still love this location…

At this beach there is a cave; a dark hollow carpeted in damp sands. Void of warmth and comfort, it became the shelter of a grieving woman. The very sea that crashed outside her cave had scooped life from her husband’s lungs. Newly married, and now newly widowed, she was adrift with sorrow.

She called to her lost lover, begging him to return. He did, in the form of a local fisherman, and through this incarnation she finally resolved her love—and loss.

So goes the story of Memory and Desire, a kiwi film directed by Niki Caro and set at Karekare Beach. Could any location have been more perfect for this tale than this wild, alluring west coast strand? Not likely.