PRACTICAL MAGIC
The beach I’m about to describe has no name. Well, it does, actually, but I choose not to divulge it. Suffice to say that it’s on the East Coast of the North Island, somewhere between Gisborne and Cape Palliser.
Any more information than that carries the risk that curious people might be encouraged to check it out. They might then succumb to its charm, as my family and I did many decades ago, and decide to build ostentatious holiday homes with garages underneath for their wretched jet skis. And that would be the end of it.
As it is, my beloved beach remains relatively unspoilt and largely unknown, other than to people from the surrounding region.
Campervans often find their way there, but their owners seem to grasp that this is a special place, worthy of protection. In this respect, humans are thankfully dissimilar to ants and bees, which feel compelled to rush home and skite to their mates about their latest find.
Call me paranoid, but I’ve seen what has happened elsewhere to beaches I once loved. For example, on the Coromandel Peninsula, spots my family camped at in the 1960s – amid kānuka trees at the end of winding, dusty metal roads often scarcely better than farm tracks – have been transformed into bland subdivisions that look as
