Designer gal pals, Rotoiti reunion and Coromandel Capers

Lake Rotoiti as the sun breaks through and calm returns after the first cyclone.

Summer madness in New Zealand! Gorgeous weeks of soft balmy weather punctuated by short sharp tropical cyclones ravishing the green hills and blue bays, flooding rivers and streams and creating havoc on holiday makers and business's along the coast.

Sadly for us our dear little Wee Woody sank in last Sundays cyclone. Tragedy as it was going like a dream and we had many months of fun to be had out of him. Now the trusty Merc engine is stripped down to parts soaking in a  tray of oil, the boat seats are adorning some far off beach or underwater garden! Pip and the McGregor clan brought Wee Woodster back from the deep looking very sorry and bedraggled. (Pics to come later)

 All the while I was in Auckland deep into getting a quick smart reno under way on our old home. Carpet and vinyl, tick, painter, tick, new loos, tick, kitchen appliances, not quite,  kitchen refinisher, tick, Tree shaper, tick! February is the month for all this action which I hope will transform our rather tired house into someone’s next home.

Chrissy Simmen and Sue Kirk, of interior design duo Kirk and Simmen, came to town to help me finalize colours etc, then took me on a stomp around the hotspots of Auckland fashion Monday last. First up was ‘Department Store’ in Takapuna, a total concept store put together by the likes of Karen Walker and Stephen Marr with separate floors showcasing Simon James homewares, Karen Walker, Top Shop and Stephen Marr hair and beauty. After scooping up a few goodies we sipped lime infused tea and woolfed down delicious chicken stuffed toasted sandwiches and banana bread laced with nuts and sesame seeds

Green and Glorious, the cool style of Department Store, Takapuna

Back over the bridge, Ponsonby is overflowing with unique and eclectic boutiques. Sass and Bide was full of temptation. Lovely slouchy pink jumpers teamed with snakeskin hotpants or ink streaked white maxi’s. We loved the jodhpur jeans in camel too. Along the road Miss Crabbs showings were too die for. Divinely tailored silk dresses and cobweb like hand knits reminiscent of the styles I once created for Suzanne Turley’s Downstairs boutique in Parnell circa 1977-8. Trelise Cooper’s Seconds store is the design junky’s secret. On any given day you can find a wondrous collection of rainbow coloured raiment at discount prices. We walked off with all sorts of goodies including a lovely grey damask three quarter sleeved coat.

Miss Crabb, Macy Home, Sass & Bide, Chrissy.

Newmarket is the destination for shoe shopping with more choice than I had imagined. The gorgeous dress shops of Nuffield Street and the Teed St area make Newmarche a treat for window shopping and totally disastrous for the bank balance. Country Road had some very cool clogs and very high suede sandals which sadly stayed on the shelf.

A quick dip into Martha’s to check out the linen fabrics for my house reno and we were done for the day. Phew!

Dinner at down the roat at Mama Rosa at the Melanesia Rd shops was seriously yummy. This place has been around for at least 30 years and still dishes up traditional Italian. My Terakihi with lemon and capers was fresh and delish. Chrissy’s seafood risotto was generously laden with scallops and prawns and succulent fish.

The girls had given me lots of great tips for the staging of the house by the time I waved them off the following morning.

Our catch!!; Susie and Rosie; Three bathin' maidens! in hot rock pool.

After a few hours busting my guts clearing weeds, leaf litter and the remnants of spring bulbs from the garden I joined my friend Susie for the three hour trip south to Lake Rotoiti. For the next the two days we indulged in a girls reunion with old friend Rosie at her lake house there. After a huge cyclone just days ago, the sun came old, flood waters receded and we were treated to picture perfect lake weather. Warm sunny skies. Fresh clear air. We did early morning fishing on the mirror calm lake as the sun came up. Sadly no edible results ensued, just a renewed awareness of the beauty all around. We even tried jigging on Lake Tarawera later in the day, under the instructive eye of Darren from Clearwater cruises, to no avail. We three are now mistresses of the jig however ! Not a dance, but a combo of tiny flies weighted by a sinker, danced off the lake bottom with a jigging movement of hand and rod. After a lesson attaching  lure’s the only little critter we landed was a 10cm long smelt! Along the way we learnt about the history of Lake Tarawera, its once huge volcano and the cataclysmic eruption in 1886 which buried Maori villages and the famous Pink and White terraces for eternity. The area sits on hundreds of fault lines on the Ring of Fire and is surrounded by old volcanoes. Darren talked of the next eruption here as a ‘not if’ but ‘when’ occurrence.  Might be a thousand years or one hundred. Mt Okataina is growing at a rate of one foot per year!!!! Deciding to live in the moment we three dived off the launch and swam like Maori maidens !!! to a rock pool filled with hot thermal water gushing from a crack in the rock. After languishing there we swam back to the boat for another quick fish before heading back to Rotoiti.

Okere Falls Store, store produce, our old bach, tied up at the Okere Falls jetty, little island in Okere Bay

After being abroad for six years it was a true pleasure to be back at the lake with my girlfriends. My family had a  remote lakehouse in a secluded bay for forty years or so.  I grew up half fish half boat walla, taking long walks in the bush and exploring every cove by dingy, learning to smoke illicit cigarettes just out of parental sight around the point, taking our little boat to the hot pools for dips in the thermal water, holidaying until my late teens when the house was sold. It’s still my favourite place to be, a mix of memories filled with Maori legends and spirits and ghosts of people and times enjoyed, a childhood idyll full of fun and blue skies. As I sit in Rosie’s boat visions of other times whip through my mind, of what was once but is long gone. I am filled with a sense of profound greatfullness that  I am able to come back here with my girlfriends who shared those times so long ago.

Before heading back to Auckland we stopped in to see another dear friend, Jo and her daughter Becca at their lakehouse. After quick trial of her inflatable paddle boards and a leisurely chat on the deck, Susie and I headed back to the city via the Okere Falls store for good coffee and sustenance. Visits to this old general store for milk and bread had been a daily adventure during my childhood in the sixties. Trips were made by boat, then a quick run barefoot across the tarmac holding a jerry can for petrol at the old bowser and the hope that we’d get an icecream for our troubles. Memories of the local widows standing around chatting outside the store, dressed in black with blue inked moko’s on their chins, grey hair tucked into headscarves. True pre-teen independence was the day I was allowed to take the boat and my sister and little brother to the store on my own! Parental confidence that I could captain my little boat and defy the pull of the rapids, rushing down into the falls and the Kaituna river, to tie up safely at the jetty, where the water was the swiftest running in the whole lake, was an integral part of my growth and independence as a kid. 

Now the old store has been reincarnated as a gourmet deli and café offering a stunning array of artisanal products and coffee complete with beer garden at rear and self composting toilets! Business here is boosted by the Kaituna river rafting operation nearby which takes adventure seeking punters over the Okere falls and large drop off at Hinemoa’s Steps downriver. 

Back home alone in Auckland, I survey the fine work Clive the tree doctor had done. The house definitely is starting to look trim and tidy again, on the outside at least.

Today my little family are off south again to Whangapoua to visit Vicky and her family for Auckland Anniversary Weekend festivities. With a cyclone forecast we could be in for some rough seas and wild weather.