Cape Kidnappers and the wineries
No visit to Napier and Hastings is complete without a visit to the world’s most accessible mainland gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers and an exploration of the region’s surrounding seventy or so wineries.
Brief history
After James Cook’s ill-starred initial encounter with Maori at Gisborne, he sailed to the southern limit of Hawke Bay and anchored off the jagged peninsula known to the Ngati Kahungunu as Te Matua-a-maui, “the fishhook of Maui” – a reference to the origin of the North Island, which was, as legend has it, dragged from the oceans by Maui. Here, Maori traders noticed two young Tahitian interpreters aboard the Endeavour; believing them to be held against their will, the traders captured one of them and paddled away. The boy escaped back to the ship but Cook subsequently marked the point on his chart as Cape Kidnappers.
Neither Cook nor Joseph Banks, both meticulous in recording flora and fauna, mentioned any gannets on the peninsula’s final shark-tooth flourish of pinnacles. However, a hundred years later, twenty or so pairs were recorded, and now there are 20,000 birds – making this the largest mainland gannet colony in the world.
The Cape Kidnappers gannets
Gannets (closely related to boobies) are big birds that can live for as long as thirty years. They’re distinguished by their gold-and-black head markings and a complete lack of fear of humans. The birds at Cape Kidnappers start nesting in June, laying their eggs from early July through to October, with the chicks hatching six weeks later. Once fledged, at around fifteen weeks, the young gannets embark on their inaugural flight, a marathon, as-yet-unexplained 3000km journey to Australia, where they spend a couple of years before flying back to spend the rest of their life in New Zealand, returning to their place of birth to breed each year. It is thought that the birds mate for life, using the same or an adjacent nest each year, but recent observation indicates that adultery does occur – usually because of mistaken identity.
During the breeding season (July–mid-Oct), the cape is closed to the public. One of the three colonies, the Saddle, is reserved for scientific study and allows no public access. The remaining two colonies, Plateau and Black Reef, are open outside the breeding season, and at the former you will get within a metre or so of the birds. When pairs reunite, after a fishing- or nest-material-gathering trip, you can get close enough to hear their beaks clack together in greeting.
Hawke’s Bay wine country
Napier and Hastings are almost entirely encircled by the Hawke’s Bay’s wine country, one of New Zealand’s largest and most exalted grape-growing regions. Largely the province of boutique producers, it is threaded by the Hawke’s Bay wine trail, which wends past 35-odd wineries, some offering free tastings and many with a restaurant, or at least the chance to picnic in landscaped grounds.
With a climatic pattern similar to that of the great Bordeaux vineyards, Hawke’s Bay produces fine Chardonnay and lots of Merlot. Cabernet Sauvignon is also big but struggles to ripen in cooler summers. Many winemakers are now setting Hawke’s Bay up to become New Zealand’s flagship producer of Syrah, a subtler version of the Aussie Shiraz (though it is made from the same grape) that utilises the original European name.
Much of the country covered by the wine trail is also part of the region’s art and food trails.
Brief history
Hawke’s Bay is New Zealand’s longest-established wine-growing region: French Marist missionaries planted the first vines in 1851, ostensibly to produce sacramental wine. The excess was sold, and the commercial aspect of the operation continues today as the Mission Estate Winery. Some fifty years later, other wineries began to spring up, favouring open-textured gravel terraces alongside the Tutaekuri, Ngaruroro and Tukituki rivers, which retain the day’s heat and are free from moist sea breezes. In this arena the vineyards of the Gimblett Road – the so-called Gimblett Gravels – produce increasingly world-renowned wines.
Gisborne
New Zealand’s easternmost city, GISBORNE, is the first to catch the sun each day, and, thanks to the isolating mountain ranges all about it has been spared from overdevelopment. Warmed by long hours of sunshine, broad straight streets are lined with squat weatherboard houses and shops and interspersed with expansive parkland hugging the Pacific, the harbour and three rivers – the Taruheru, Turanganui and Waimata.
Brief history
It was here in October 1769 that James Cook first set foot on the soil of Aotearoa, an event commemorated by a shoreside statue. He immediately ran into conflict with local Maori, killing several of them before sailing away empty-handed. He named the landing site Poverty Bay, since “it did not afford a single item we wanted, except a little firewood”. Despite the fertility of the surrounding lands, the name stuck, though many Maori prefer Turanganui a Kiwa – honouring a Polynesian navigator.
Early nineteenth-century Poverty Bay remained staunchly Maori and few Pakeha moved here, discouraged by both the Hau Hau rebellion and Te Kooti’s uprising. It wasn’t until the 1870s that Europeans arrived in numbers to farm the rich alluvial river flats. After a decent port was constructed in the 1920s, sheep farming and market gardening took off, followed more recently by the grape harvest and the rise of plantation forestry. Today Gisborne’s Maori and Pakeha population is almost exactly 50:50, and the city’s relaxed pace and easy-going beach culture make it appealing to visitors in search of a little sun and surf.
Gisborne tours and activities
Gisborne offers one of New Zealand’s few opportunities for heart-pounding shark encounters, albeit (thankfully for some) from the safety of a cage. The reef is worth a look, too, or you can try your hand at surfing. Wine tours are also popular, and a good way to see the surrounding countryside.
Hastings
Inland HASTINGS, 20km south of Napier, was once a rival to its northern neighbour as Hawke’s Bay’s premier city, buoyed by the wealth generated by the surrounding farmland and orchards. Napier’s ascendancy as a tourist destination put Hastings firmly in second place, though it does have an attractive core of buildings, erected after the same 1931 earthquake that rocked Napier. Hastings was saved from the worst effects of the ensuing fires, which were quenched using the artesian water beneath the city before they could take hold.
After the earthquake, Hastings embraced the Californian-inspired Spanish Mission style of architecture: roughcast stucco walls, arched windows, small balconies, barley-twist columns and heavily overhung roofs clad in terracotta tiles. The finest examples can be seen in an hour or so, using the self-guided Art Deco Hastings walk leaflet ($2 from the i-SITE). If time is short, limit your wanderings to Heretaunga Street East, taking in the gorgeous bronzework and sumptuous lead lighting of the Westerman Building or, at the corner of Hastings Street, the Hawke’s Bay Opera House – built fifteen years before the earthquake, but remodelled to create the region’s finest Spanish Mission facade.
The city is also at the heart of the wonderful Hawke’s Bay wine country, and most of its vineyards are within easy reach. Apples, pears and peaches also continue to be grown in huge quantities, and the harvest provides work (see Long names and famous flutes).
Hastings’ more upmarket neighbour is Havelock North, 3km southeast and at the foot of the striking ridgeline of Te Mata Peak. There isn’t a great deal to it, and the only diversion is a drive up the peak, or try out the local bars and cafés that line its cobbled streets.
Napier
Laidback, seaside NAPIER is Hawke’s Bay’s largest city (population 54,000) and one of New Zealand’s most likeable regional centres, thanks to its Mediterranean climate, affordable prices and the world’s best-preserved collection of small-scale Art Deco architecture, built after the earthquake that devastated the city in 1931 (see The earthquake).
Thanks to the whim of mid-nineteenth-century Land Commissioner Alfred Domett, the grid of streets in the city’s Art Deco commercial centre bears the names of literary luminaries – Tennyson, Thackeray, Byron, Dickens, Shakespeare, Milton and more. Bisecting it all is the partly pedestrianized main thoroughfare of Emerson Street, whose terracotta paving and palm trees run from Clive Square – one-time site of a makeshift “Tin Town” while the city was being rebuilt after the earthquake – to the Norfolk pine-fringed Marine Parade, Napier’s main beach.
Around the northeastern side of Bluff Hill (Mataruahou), about 5km from the city centre, lies the original settlement site of Ahuriri, now home to trendy restaurants, cafés, bars and boutiques.
Napier makes a perfect base from which to visit the gannet colony at Cape Kidnappers as well as the vat-load of world-class wineries on the surrounding plains (see The Cape Kidnappers gannets).
Brief history
In 1769, James Cook sailed past Ahuriri, the current site of Napier, noting the sea-girt Bluff Hill linked to the mainland by two slender shingle banks and backed by a superb saltwater lagoon – the only substantial sheltered mooring between Gisborne and Wellington. Nonetheless, after a less-than-cordial encounter with the native Ngati Kahungunu people he anchored just to the south, off what came to be known as Cape Kidnappers. Some thirty years later, when early whalers followed in Cook’s wake, Ahuriri was all but deserted, the Ngati Kahungunu having been driven out by rivals equipped with European guns. During the uneasy peace of the early colonial years, Maori returned to the Napier area, which weathered the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s relatively unscathed. The port boomed, but by the early years of the twentieth century all the available land was used up.
Art Deco Napier
The 1931 earthquake saw Napier rebuilt in line with the times. Although Art Deco embraced
modernity, glorifying progress, the machine age and the Gatsby-style high life, the onset
of the Great Depression pared down these excesses, and Napier’s version was informed by
the privations of an austere era. At the same time, the architects looked for inspiration to
California’s Santa Barbara – which, just six years earlier, had suffered the same fate and risen
from the ashes. They adopted fountains (a symbol of renewal), sunbursts, chevrons, lightning
flashes and fluting to embellish the highly formalized but asymmetric designs. In Napier,
what emerged was a conglomeration of early-twentieth-century design, combining elements
of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Californian Spanish Mission style, Egyptian and Mayan
motifs, stylized floral designs and even Maori imagery. For the best part of half a century,
the city’s residents merely daubed the buildings in grey or muted blue paint. Fortunately,
this meant that when a few savvy visionaries recognized the city’s potential in the mid-1980s
and formed the Art Deco Trust, everything was still intact. The trust continues to promote
the preservation of buildings and provides funding for shopkeepers to pick out distinctive
architectural detail in pastel colours similar to those originally used.
You can get a sense of Art Deco Napier by wandering along the half-dozen streets of the
city centre, notably Emerson Street. Worth special attention here is the ASB Bank, on the
corner of Hastings Street. Its exterior is adorned with fern shoots and a mask from the head of
a taiaha (a long fighting club), while its interior has a fine Maori rafter design. On Tennyson
Street, look for the flamboyant Daily Telegraph building, with stylized fountains, and the
Municipal Theatre, built in the late 1930s in a strikingly geometric form.
National Aquarium of New Zealand
The National Aquarium of New Zealand is one of the finest in the country, with distinct marine environments from Africa, Asia and Australia, plus a substantial New Zealand section. At the time of writing, a display for penguins rescued from the defunct Marine World was under construction; once open it should add to the aquarium’s already excellent reputation.
The most spectacular section is the ocean tank, its Perspex walk-through tunnel giving intimate views of rays and assorted sharks; try to time your visit for one of the hand-feeding sessions. There’s more hand feeding at the reef tank, plus behind-the- scenes tours and the chance to swim with the sharks in the ocean tank. Within the controlled environment of the tank and without shark cages or nets this is a rare chance to come face-to-face with these ‘monsters’ of the deep.
There are also excellent non-aquatic sections on New Zealand’s reptilian tuatara, and a nocturnal kiwi house.