TravelScribble.blogspot.com: Great Barrier Island vignettes 2020, Part 1

I drafted these blogs, carefree, shortly after I visited Great Barrier in January. I’m sombre now as coronavirus sweeps the world. But hey, we’re lucky enough to live in New Zealand, and the Barrier beckons beautiful as ever. So I’m posting the blogs unchanged. I’ve written a little story, as is my wont, but you can skip to the photos if that’s what you prefer.

Plane at Claris aerodrome. Photo Ann Barrie 2020

Sunday January 12, 2020. Early afternoon. Auckland Airport Regional Lounge

I pace up and down. ‘It’s past the time when they said we’d board. Do you think we missed the call,’ I say to my friend Gail.

‘Hmmm. We’re probably on Barrier time already.’

‘Go back to the check-in counter,’ I insist, ‘and ask what’s happening.’

Gail wanders off, and my stress levels rise when she doesn’t reappear after five minutes. We were at High School together 45 years ago, but this is our first time travelling with just the two of us. Was she always this laid back?

I march to the counter demanding, ‘What’s happening with our flight?’

The Great Barrier Air employee gestures at four young people who are also waiting, and says he will make the call in a minute. We are joined by an older woman with chic grey hair and long silver earrings; she’s dressed in white pants and a blue striped chambray shirt, and is carrying a sheaf of roses. She introduces herself. I smile at the lilt in her voice, and she explains she is Irish, fell in love with a New Zealander in London and has lived on the Barrier for 25 years.

The seven of us are driven in a buggy to our plane – a Cessna Grand Caravan – and we file into our seats. The pilot, already up front, gives us a safety briefing, and leaves us to fasten our 3-point belts. It all seems very casual, and this makes me a little nervous.

We are quickly airborne, and cool air rushes past my face. It will take 30 minutes to fly from Auckland Airport to Great Barrier, and we have almost 360° views. There’s a flat sea with white trails from small craft far beneath us. Waiheke Island is to our right. Cape Colville is to our left; and then a small island. ‘That’s Hauturu Little Barrier’, the Irishwoman explains. ‘And those are the Broken Islands. We don’t usually approach from this direction.’ We make a smooth landing onto a short sealed strip, then bump across the grass toward Claris Airport terminal. (This aerodrome is uncontrolled, but I’m assured the planes have the latest technology.) There’s no publicly funded transport on Great Barrier, but visitors can pre-arrange island transport – you can hire a car or a bike, or use the shuttle transfer service.

Gail’s brother David is kindly waiting with his car to meet us, even though we could have trundled our suitcases to his house, which is nearby. A former school teacher, he has lived on Great Barrier for many years and runs the quaint and quirky Milk Honey and Grain Museum, and, in the house alongside the museum, the Wiltshire Manor Backpackers.

Wiltshire Manor Accommodation, Great Barrier Island. Photo Ann Barrie 2020.

Milk Honey & Grain Museum, Great Barrier Island. Photo Ann Barrie 2020.

By the time we return from the airport, a ginger-headed man who loves to yarn, and cheerfully accepts the nickname ‘Linger Longer’, is sitting in David’s living room. The islanders need each other, and I soon learn that David is patient with the many visitors who drop in on him. We have tea and Christmas cake, and LL issues a lunch invitation for Tuesday before driving north to his home in Port Fitzroy.

David takes us for a pre-dinner swim at Medlands, a beautiful white sand surf beach. He is a tall man and he strides confidently into the breakers, with me following. Gail wisely stays in the shallows. After being dumped roughly, I follow her example. She says one of the locals was caught in a rip there some years ago, and managed to extricate himself, but for a long time was too embarrassed to mention it. There are no lifeguards on Great Barrier.

Knowing that most things need to be freighted in to Great Barrier and are expensive, we have arrived with suitcases packed with food, although we find David’s larder and fridge well-stocked. He has installed modern gas rings in the back packers’ kitchen, but delights in using old-fashioned methods in his own quarters at the back of the house. He warms my giant sausage roll in his camp oven whilst boiling potatoes on his other hob, and we eat this with tomatoes, avocado and salad greens. Gail and I are both tired, so we retire early to our shared bedroom in the backpackers’ quarters. I’m already feeling as if I’m overseas, out of my usual comfort and time zone.