ABOUT TOWN TE HĀPUA
The Far North: a sense of distance is written into its name. Even from Auckland, where I live, the north lengthens towards the end of our world: this is Te Hiku o te Ika a Māui, the tail of the fish. Driving north takes much longer than I imagine it will, even once the traffic clogging greater Auckland disperses. The further north I go, the number of roads diminishes; the number of harbours grows.
When I was a child, my family drove north for most of our summer holidays. Once we ventured up to Cape Rēinga, based at a motel in Kaitaia: we played mini-golf on a course that was more paddock than green, and frolicked on Ninety Mile Beach; one night on the motel’s black-and-white television. More often we spent holidays closer to home — at Pākiri Beach, our papakāinga, at Stanmore Bay on the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, or in Paihia in the Bay of Islands. We drove to Whangārei for weddings and to Warkworth for land meetings. My father seemed to have directions to everywhere in the north imprinted in his brain, though perhaps this was function of Northland’s scant roads. When I grew up and wanted to visit the Bay of Islands again, I asked to borrow a map. “You don’t need a map,” he said. “Just drive north and turn right.”
