There was a steady wind clawing at the streets of Wellington the day I drove “over the hill”. It blew off Cook Strait and gathered momentum towards the Rimutakas where it hit out at anything in its path.At the summit there is a place to pull over. From there I could look back down the wind-tortured road I had just climbed and look east to see the shimmering plains of the Wairarapa. To the first Europeans they must have looked like the promised land. A plaque there says that on November 26, 1841, a party led by Robert Stokes and John Child made the first European crossing of the range with the help of two Maori guides. It took them several days. Today, by car, it is about a two-hour journey.
From these tops, the great wide pastoral expanse of the plain rolls out into the hazy distance. It is dissected by the snaking path of the Ruamahanga River and interrupted by the vast muddy puddle of Lake Wairarapa – a scene not exactly as the first pioneers had seen it, but if I half-closed my eyes the intermittent evidence of human tenancy almost disappeared.
On the map, this south-eastern corner of the North Island ends in a wide indentation east of Wellington city called Palliser Bay, a coast known for its wild, rocky wind-savaged shore. There is nothing between it and the Antarctic and the icy southerly winds roll up the surface of the sea into high white horses which race at the beaches like the charge of the Light Brigade.
The eastern extremity of the bay is marked by a great lobe of rock growing straight out of the surf which is the southernmost tip of the North Island. Its distinctive lighthouse has flashed warnings to vessels negotiating the capricious water of Cook Strait for the last 100 years. None-the-less, the coast is scattered with memorial stones, testimony to the 30 or so ships now moored in Davey Jones’ locker.
In May 1844, a group of pioneers, in what would prove to be a long and daring footslog, drove a flock of sheep from Wellington along the rugged rocky coastline to the Wairarapa, to establish the first of the great New Zealand sheep stations. And from that time to this, the area is known for some of the finest Romney sheep studs in the country.
Of course life, in the valley in which the early dreams of these pioneers first saw light has moved on. Small towns – Featherston, Greytown, Martinborough Carterton – dot the plains and tiny old-time fishing villages such as Ngawi and Lake Ferry are sprinkled along the coast.
In the last 20 years, the towns have earned themselves a reputation for sophisticated food, wine and hospitality and a burgeoning wine industry produces some of the world’s best pinot noirs outside of Burgundy, widely applauded for their bold, deep-scented qualities.
Around the Martinborough area there are now around 35 wineries (most of them boutique, family-owned enterprises) and, building on this reputation, comes some classy accommodation, food outlets, craft-and-art galleries, and highly sought after restaurants.
But don’t leave the towns before you’ve seen the country.
Despite the years of occupancy, the settlements, the houses and the attractive farmland, human presence in the Wairarapa Valley seems temporary and inconsequential between the broad-shouldered mountain ranges shrugging heavenward and the great open sky. The winds of change blow gently here, for it’s nature that still has the upper hand.
From Motorhomes, Caravans and Destinations. (
www.motorhomesandcaravans.co.nz)
Author: Jill Malcolm
New Zealand - RV / Motorhome / Campervan Exchange International Travel Destination.
