Open Writing

Is it the chef, the setting or the distance travelled, which makes this the best carrot cake and cappuccino I have tasted? I don’t know but I have my ideas. Perhaps you can help me?

To get here is a long drive. First along tar-seal to the turn off for Westhaven and the Anotori river, then gravel roads and slow pace all the way, through forest and bush, and out to the Inlet, a veritable inland sea which opens in front of you.

Twice a day it empties its water through narrow headlands, leaving behind the mighty mud flats full of wading birds, and creeks, which snake up through tongues of land into the bush with its hidden secrets. A land of trolls and hobbits and taniwhas. Full of trees you only see in fairytale picture books, entwined by climbers and epiphytes and carpeted by mosses, more shades of green than you can imagine, seemingly impenetrable jungle.

We trundle along, crossing bridges over streams, now free from tide and banked by mud flats. But what’s this? At one of our favourite stopping places there is a pile of bikes and towels. Below us a crowd of kids are running along the banks, throwing their pet dogs into the creek and jumping in after them. Wet through and covered in mud, boys and girls together, doing what kids should do, doing what kids used to do, enjoying themselves, running wild, uninhibited and unthreatened. No doubt in their minds that the bikes and towels, left carelessly in a pile, would be there on their return.

“Where are you from?” we ask. “Oh he lives up there and she lives over there and I live up that hill.” Our eyes seek the houses we expect to see but only bush fills them. The drives, letterboxes and school bus signs, we had passed unnoticed, should have told us otherwise.

Here live families from homes where time has stood still. Kids go to school each day on the bus, go out fishing with dad in the boat, maybe bring back fresh crayfish, certainly fresh fish, for mum to add to her vegetables and salads, straight from the garden beside the door. Fruit from the trees or strawberries and raspberries are theirs for the picking.

Life as it used to be. No television, video games, or internet and teletexting will fatten these young bodies; the creek, swimming, boats and the bush are their recreation. In years to come, when they have gone away, pursued their own careers, careers encouraged by small High Schools where pupils matter and are really known, will they look back on these golden years and wish their children could share them?

I looked on these children and thought of the freedom my own children had experienced in the Scottish Highlands and knew for certain the value of closeness to nature.

We wander on, meandering round the inlets, over causeways and up hills, entering national parks and marine reserves and look down on the harbour where the crayfish boats bring in their precious cargo, until we reach Mangarahau, (how these Maori names roll off the tongue,) an old coal mining settlement and a place where flax used to be milled.

Once Mangarahau was a fair-sized settlement with its own school. Now few people live there and the school has been converted into a backpackers hostel. It was a one teacher school which, at its peak, boasted fifteen pupils. By chance we met its last teacher, revisiting his old haunts, and we compared notes on the merits of teaching in a large High School with its hundreds of pupils whose names you could never remember, with the seven he had taught. With a good teacher and parental support, what heights those seven could have reached, no way would they have slipped through the system, unnoticed, and emerged unable to read.

Now Mangarahau is a place you pass through or maybe stop to walk the nature trail round the lake. With luck you might see the elusive fern bird amongst the reeds and you will certainly hear the bittern booming out his call to his mate. The native orchid blooms in the late spring and other alpine plants flower on high ground. Huge limestone crags, sculptured by weather and time, add the backdrop and the flax, once prized for its fibre before the advent of synthetics and now, as fossil fuels begin to run out, regaining its place in industry, is bursting into its crimson flowers. Cicadas chirrup and butterflies flit around you, while frogs croak in the stream which flows slowly into the lake. Try and see them. You will be lucky if you do for they are faster than you and duck for cover as you approach.

Mangarahau, just beyond the end of Westhaven Inlet, dairy and beef country now, and here in the middle of nowhere is a terrific little café. It isn’t open all year round, just weekends at the beginning and end of the season, all week during it. But the food! Out of this world. I think they make the best carrot cake I have tasted and the coffee, divine. It is a rustic sort of place, made of old bleached wood, tables and benches scattered around outside, a veranda to find shade under and the “olde worlde,” look inside, with a potbelly stove for warmth in winter.

The owner knows us. He calls us the white and red roses, aware of our Yorkshire and Lancashire backgrounds. We have watched him build the place and design the grounds. We chat about what has happened since we last met each other. He is from South Africa and his wife from Germany. They have lived in Ireland and know Britain well, and now they live in this out of the way place at the back of beyond. We sit and look out at the limestone crags as we sip our coffee and eat our cake, a very pleasant way to pause at the end of this trip. Carrot cake and cappuccino at Mangarahau.

Time has passed. We return. The inlet is no longer a mud flat. The tide has come in and transformed it into a shining sea of blue, truly a sea in its own right. Those creeks snaking up into the bush, are now blue lakes, reflecting the greens. The sun is setting in that blaze of colour we expect to see on the West Coast and we are returning from another kind of world.