Heading North to the top of the Country

From one end of the country to the other - had to pop up North to Mangonui to deliver a piece of glass from out of an old kiln for my mum's garden! The glass is retrieved from the bottom of a decommissioned industrial glass kiln and is rare because it only comes out at the end of the life of a kiln. Makes a great garden ornament.

Mangonui is at the very top of New Zealand's North Island approx 4 1/2 hours drive North of Auckland. Maori named it Mangonui after a chief discovered the harbour hidden within a bay (Doubtless Bay) when he was led there by a giant shark. (Mango - Shark; Nui - big!) It is a fishing village guarded by two large hills at either side of its entrance - which 200 years ago were fortified pa's or Maori villages. The local tribe is called Ngati Kahu.
Mangonui is famous in New Zealand because of its Fish and Chip shop out over the water. It is, apart from being one of the earliest Maori settlements, one of the first areas settled by Europeans and as such as some lovely old colonial architecture.
My kids both attended the local school in the 80's and 90's and my daughter had her first job in the local grocery store - also on stilts out over the water. June is mid winter in NZ and the weather in Northland is never really cold (unlike Southland) but it sure gets stormy. So the photo of the wharf is on a dark and stormy day. In the summer it can get nicely hot and dry and as such its a great vacation area. During the winter the place gets very quiet with just the locals keeping the place ticking over.