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Another million dollar camping ground.   With entertainment!    This is the beach at Tokerau.

At 2 a.m. Cynthia woke smelling smoke.  Initially thinking it was the chap in the next camper smoking fish, thought nothing of it.  Having decided that the smell probably wasn't fish, found that there was a large grass fire in the dunes along the coast. 

It all seemed safe enough though and the fire chappies (aren't they young) were rushing up and down the beach with their lights flashing.  Sorry, no pics.  Went back to bed.  6.30 a.m. and the firemen woke us and suggested that it might be prudent to move because the wind had changed.  So we'll return another time

(Below left)  Whangarei Falls; you can walk to the bottom but I had the wrong shoes on, lol.     Then, as I was driving towards Auckland I thought I could see pink sheep.  Great for pink jumpers or socks?  And no, I haven't cheated!

They're at Sheepworld and have been coloured to catch the tourists, it works!

Back at Gulf Harbour, little Chips was still around.  He's a young herring gull (?) with a damaged wing.  He can't fly but gets well fed.

The evening entertainment at Gulf Harbour began at 6.30 p.m.

Of course, there's a boatyard there too

(Left) Tree fern in a friend's garden, (Mid/Right) This could have been my first car, except mine had 4 doors, and a model of a typical 1920s house with modern car port!  Snapped at a visit to Marsden Park near Auckland.  It's an interesting place, there are model boats, a great train layout and the cars include a Lotus 11 and a DeLorian

We stayed at the beach in Cornwallis for 2 days.  Nice spot that has a bit of sadness to it.  There seem to be several versions of this story.   Here's mine.

In 1840, a Company produced a smart brochure offering homes and land in the New Zealand town of Cornwallis. There were elaborate town plans and work was plentiful, in fact £101 would buy a house, a large piece of land and a guarantee of a year's good wages.

A boat, the Brilliant, was specially fitted out and sailed from Scotland. After an eventful journey, the settlers arrived 10 months later. They would have been totally devastated to find that there was no town and bush stretched right down to the waters edge. The local Maori took pity on them and hastily built them raupo huts.

There was dispute, even, as to their right to occupy the land for which they had paid. The Company had yet to prove its claim to the land purchased back in 1838 and possession was still in dispute.

To buy the title to land on the other side of the world, to endure the hardships and suffering of a protracted sea voyage and to then be told that possession of your land hangs in the balance would be enough to cause many to collect their belongings and return home.

But to those who came on the Brilliant, and perhaps because of the suffering they had already endured, this was one more challenge to overcome. One man, Lachlan McLachlan encouraged the settlers to persevere.

They set to work with a spirit to lay out the township of Cornwallis as they had dreamed it would be, as they expected it and as they wanted it.

A timber mill was established and the town survived until 1843 when the mill closed because cheaper timber was available more easily elsewhere.

The settlers were, in the long run, treated rather well by the Government. For every £1 that they had invested in Cornwallis, the Treasury issued them with credit to the value of £4 with which they could buy land to the equivalent value elsewhere in the country.

Lachlan McLachlan's son John eventually bought the land at Cornwallis and on his death in 1909 gifted it to Auckland as a public park.

There is a monument to Lachlan McLachlan on a headland overlooking Cornwallis beach, you may even see it when you are flying into, or out of Auckland.

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