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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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As we drove along the Bay of Plenty coast Rose had picked out where she wanted to stay for the night. It was at a camping ground in the Waimana Valley, which is in the Northern Te Urewera National Park. On the road to the valley we passed a sign saying we were entering the lands of the Tuhoe Nation and to respect them, this was no problem as being trampers we’re not about to destroy any part of a national park. A bit further down the road we came across a road closed sign. There was a bus and a few cars around so Rose got out to see if anyone was around, no-one answered her calls. We thought we’d continue on down the road to see how far we’d get, thinking it had been washed out or something. The road was in good condition and we made it to the Ogilvies campsite that where we wanted to spend the night.
While we were putting up the tent and making dinner every car that went past slowed down to 10kms and starred at us. Rose was getting a bit unnerved by it; it almost felt like deliverance country. Then a guy drove over to where we were camped, gets out of his car and asks “Are there any more of yous?” about then we noticed the gun on his passenger seat. It turned out he was going hunting and was just checking we didn’t have any friends wandering round in the bush. After dinner it was dark so we went to bed for the night.
We awoke to a beautiful day, in the peaceful valley. We had been planning on going on an overnight tramp somewhere in the valley but decided it wasn’t really that safe to leave our car unattended. On the way in we had passed over 50 burnout or dead cars, Marc didn’t really want his to suffer that fate. We thought seeing as we’d come this far we might as well drive down to the next campsite and check it out. There were several families at 8 Acres Campsite who gave us friendly waves and we drove through. They probably all wondered what we were doing there as we obviously weren’t Maori, but no one seemed bothered by our presence.
The next day we met a DOC ranger who explained the situation to us. The Tuhoe tried to make a Treaty claim, but they didn’t sign the Treaty so the government didn’t give them anything. Some of the land is owned by an American logging company who found an old goat skin saying that the Tuhoe give their lands to the crown. So now the iwi have blocked off the land stopping the council and DOC from getting in. All this probably explains why one of the toilets at the campsite had been burnt. After we returned from holiday I looked at the DOC website and it advised that the road was closed and not to go down there, oops. It’s a shame really because it’s a beautiful unspoilt valley which I’m sure has lots of great tramping in it.
previous travel blog entry
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