The outdoor enthusiast’s guide to Great Barrier Island

How to spend a week on Great Barrier Island. Photo / Aucklandnz
The ultimate guide to a week on Great Barrier Island for outdoor enthusiasts, by Eleanor Hughes
No street lights, no traffic lights, cellphone coverage is patchy. Reliant on generators and solar power for electricity; little open after 5.30pm … Four and a half hours from Auckland by ferry, or 30 minutes by plane, slow-paced Great Barrier Island – home to about 1000 people – could be another world away.
Ensure that your pre-planning includes organising a shuttle before arriving by ferry at Tryphena Wharf at the island’s southern end (and road end). Or hire a car, hitch a lift, or walk …
READ MORE: ‘Dark delights’ of Great Barrier Island
Stay in Tryphena, a stretch of tiny settlements scattered around Tryphena Harbour. From Tryphena Wharf to Stonewall Village it’s a pleasant, 5km-ish walk overlooking (and alongside) sandy beaches on bush-lined, quiet Shoal Bay Road. Most spectacular in summer, pōhutukawa and sporadic homes dot the way.
Stop for a bite at Mulberry General Store and Café on the walk northwards. At the rear of Gooseberry Flat Cemetery discover some of the settler’s weathered headstones.
Opposite Pah Beach, Stonewall Village’s general store is next door to the intimate Currach Irish Pub, housed within a 120-year-old villa. Once a Blackwell family homestead (one of the 1840s pioneering families), early photos line the walls.
Further along the waterfront, find 1800s stone walls and an old waterwheel used to power a mill to grind wheat, a lathe for woodturning, and a wood milling saw. Over the bridge is an 1880s-built white, wooden schoolhouse.
Spend a day walking tracks off Cape Barrier Road, not far from Tryphena Wharf. Dolphin Bay Walkway is a three-hour return excursion among mānuka and nīkau palms to Dolphin and Ross Bays. There are steep descents to Ross Bay, which has no easy beach access but grants views of Coromandel Peninsula and bush-covered, rocky coastline towards Tryphena. Retracing your steps upwards and follow another steep descent, this leads to rocky Dolphin Bay, which is good for snorkelling and fishing on a calm day.
Top tip: Whalers Lookout is an hour’s walk with a chance of spotting Brydes Whales.
The 25km Aotea Track can be walked from either of its Whangaparapa Road ends. Enjoy a soak in Kaitoke Hot Springs on the last day by starting from DoC’s Green Campsite end.
Tramline Track South, once used to transport timber from the island’s interior to coastal Whangaparapara, traverses verdant native bush and bridged, rock-bottomed creeks before turning steep-ish to gravel, mānuka-lined Forest Road. Scramble up the 10-minute trail to 280m-high Maungapiko. Panoramic views take in densely forested ridges, Little Barrier Island and Port FitzRoy’s island-dotted harbour. Shadeless Forest Road ascends further, providing more views, to reach Kaiaraara Hut after about six hours. It’s 20m from boulder-bottomed Kaiaraara Stream, perfect for washing away the sweat.
It’s only three hours to Mt Heale Hut so spend time crossing Kaiaraara Stream swingbridge and walking to unsealed Kaiaraara Bay Road to look over Rarohara Bay and out to Kaikōura Island, the Hauraki Gulf’s seventh largest island. Perhaps continue on to swim at Akapoua DoC Campsite on the Akapoua Bay’s shoreline, or walk a further 20 minutes to Port FitzRoy.
Return to Kaiaraara Hut, where picturesque Kaiaraara Kauri Dams Track follows nīkau palm and fern-lined Kaiaraara Stream littered with car-sized boulders. Ascend, to view the 1927-constructed, Lower Kauri Dam remains, one of seven which drove logs downstream to Kaiaraara Bay. Karst-like rocks and sheer cliffs are stunning further on, across a densely forested valley. More than 1000 stairs are ascended, crossing an endangered black petrel nesting site and giving peeks of Port FitzRoy and Little Barrier Island. At South Fork Track junction a two-minute side track to Harikamata/Mount Hobson summit, the island’s 627m high point, provides breathtaking 360-degree views.
It’s downhill now, with jagged Mt Heale ahead, to cross the rocky saddle between Mt Hobson and Mt Heale, reaching Mt Heale Hut where sunsets can streak orange beyond green-coated ridges and volcano-like Little Barrier.
A four-hour walk from Mt Hutt to the track end follows a ridgeline winding between ferns, moss and low-growing vegetation to descend into taller bush. Tramline Track North, where a logging camp was sited, follows Kaitoke Creek, before one final ascent to look over Kaitoke Wetlands, the east coast, and to the jutting peaks of Mt Hobson, The Pinnacle and Windy Canyon. Sulphur smells pervade, descending to Kaitoke Hot Springs where there are likely numerous day-walkers. It’s blissful soaking in narrow Kaitoke Stream’s hot spots below overhanging bush. Whangaparapara Road is a flat, 40-minute walk away, passing head-height reeds around Kaitoke Swamp. Shuttles can be pre-booked for pick-ups.
Head for Claris, dotted with baches and homes, and location of the airfield, as well as a general store, Barrier Burga Shak, My Fat Puku Café, and a gallery. Gray House Museum, housed within an early 1900s homestead, displays pioneering artefacts and island history. GBI Milk, Honey, and Grain Museum is quirky, crammed with photos, artefacts and information on everything from the island’s whaling to hippydom.
White sand Kaitoke Beach is a 1km walk away.
Hiring an electric bike for the day from Motubikes in Claris, allows a 10am return the following day. Take a morning Startrek Tour by Motubike 25km northwards to Port FitzRoy hearing island stories before exploring independently later.
Visit Pinnacle Lookout where steep-sided, bush-covered peaks jut spectacularly across the skyline. A 15-minute return walk to Windy Canyon, between dwarfing, sheer rocks cloaked in greenery framing distant, bush-topped rock cliffs, gives views over the green-hued north, curving, whitish-gold Whangapoua Beach and Whangapoua Estuary stretching inland. Pass scenic sandy bays and DoC campsites on the bush-lined, undulating road winding to sheltered Port FitzRoy and its General Store. Returning to Claris there are multiple scenic beaches, including Awana Bay, popular with surfers, to look out over or explore.
Drive partially-gravelled Whangaparapara Road passing the 1900-built Oreville stamping battery’s concrete foundations, from gold and silver mining days that ended in 1920. Whangaparapara Harbour, 13km from Claris, is home to Great Barrier Lodge, established 1922. Whangaparapara Road ends at the wharf where a shed features material on Great Barrier’s mining and whaling industries and the whales which were hunted until 1962. On the return drive, stop and walk the two-hour trail to The Green Camp and on to a bay where the early 1900s Kauri Timber Company sawmill operated. Foundations, a steam tractor and chimney stack remain. At low tide, Whangaparapara whaling station slipways and buildings can be reached … Or drive to the golden sands of pohutukawa-shaded Okupu on Blind Bay Road and relax.
While “motubiking”, head to Medlands Beach, 6.8km south of Claris, for Good Heavens’ stargazing experience; Great Barrier is a Dark Sky Sanctuary. Arrive before dusk to enjoy the curving, white sand beach hemmed by headlands at either end.
Learn about nebula, galaxies, constellations, planets and stars, viewing through binoculars and telescope. Hear of Te Waka o Rangi, the waka of the sky and its journey across it, and the Southern Hemisphere’s white, misty Magellanic Clouds, once used to navigate the southern seas. It’s magical viewing the sparkling sky, the sea only metres away.
Shuttle to predator-controlled Glenfern Sanctuary, and perhaps stay in one of the island’s oldest homesteads – the 1901-built Fitzroy House. The two-hour, scenic Glenfern Loop track crosses streams, short bridges, and a suspension bridge to a platform above the bush canopy surrounding a 600-year old kauri with views of Port FitzRoy. Sunset Rock also provides stunning views over the harbour.
Of course, you could just ignore the above and lie on the beach for a week!
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland Domestic Terminal to Claris Airport on Great Barrier Island in 30 minutes. Alternatively, the ferry from Wynyard Quarter takes approx. 4.5 hours.
DETAILS
greatbarrier.co.nz