Adventures in the back blocks of Hawke’s Bay
Posted 20 March 2009 // Kerryn Pollock
Art deco for the art deco fans
Recently I had the good fortune to visit Hawke’s Bay because I’m writing about this region for Te Ara’s ‘Places‘ theme. It wasn’t a research trip as such, rather an exploratory tour. When you’re studying a place, its people and environment, it’s essential to go there and experience it first hand – especially if you’re an outsider to the place, like I am. I can do a lot of research from Wellington, but I learned that personal observation is an important way of making the desk-based research process real.
One of the best things I did on my trip was spend some time exploring rural Hawke’s Bay. As art deco fans arrived in Napier, aboard their vintage cars, I left in my Toyota Corolla rental for the back blocks. I spent one day driving along the east coast, and another up the Taihape road, and then over to State Highway 5, stopping at the settlements along the way. I hardly saw another person during these two days, so I relied on personal observation as a way of gathering information.
On the way back down SH5 I saw a road heading towards the Maungaharuru Range marked by a heritage site sign, so I decided to head down it. I found myself going up hill and down dale along a winding, narrow gravel road, through forestry and farming country, and Department of Conservation reserves.
Road to nowhere?
My roadmap was pretty basic, and I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going. I prayed I wasn’t heading for a dead end (this happened the day before down the coast, when I mistook a four-wheel-drive track on the map for a road). I was a bit disconcerted to see regular signs warning me to watch out for logging trucks, but as it turned out I was the only person on the road that afternoon.
Though you’re never really that far from signs of human life in Hawke’s Bay, I was struck by the relative isolation of much of the region. The accounts I’d read about lonely farming wives and the back-breaking task of turning forested hill country into (often barely profitable) farms made complete sense. The gravel roads that populate the rural districts provide a tangible link to these past lives, and still makes a trip to town for some farming families (and visiting writers) a moderate expedition in 2009.
The signpost to civilisation
I was very pleased when I came across the squiggle on the map that was the road out of the ranges and down to Tutira on State Highway 2. By this stage the shearing shed and flock of sheep I drove past was a welcome sign of civilisation.
I never did come across that heritage site. But I saw and learned enough during my drive along this road, and others like it, to make my expeditions worthwhile.
I thought I knew the back routes of HB fairly well, after trying for years to find new and interesting ways to get from Wellington to Napier, when my parents lived in the latter and I was in the former, but I had to go back to the map to follow some of your peregrinations. The Maungaharuru heritage site is a mystery - could it have been where the first blackberry was planted in NZ? That would be a site to memorialise, if we do memorialise invasive pests (there must be a gorse memorial somewhere in the South Island)! W. H. Guthrie-Smith’s Tutira includes a sketch entitled ‘Pioneer planting blackberry on the Napier-Tutira-Maungaharuru trail’.
Great to see fellow Kiwi’s getting out there into the backblocks.