Awanui Day to celebrate the Far North tiny town

The annual Awanui Day, which is built around the Northland Riders' Motorcycle Club's Treble T Poker Run to Cape Reinga, when up to 600 bikes take part. Awanui Day, is on Saturday

The tiny town of Awanui in the Far North hopes its biggest day of the year on Saturday will be the harbinger for more good news - national awards.

The town, which has a population of less than 400, is hosting its annual Awanui Day celebrations on Saturday, when thousands will pour into the town to honour the place.

The event comes just five days before Awanui will find out if it has won either of the two award categories in which it was a finalist in the Keep NZ Beautiful Awards.

Awanui Day is built around the Northland Riders’ Motorcycle Club’s Treble T Poker Run to Cape Reinga and also features plenty of family-friendly entertainment.

Awanui businessman and Te Hiku Community Board member Bill Subritzky said the rally attracted up to 600 motorcycles, which would arrive on Friday, then, after breakfast, head off on the 90km ride to the cape, then head back from about 10.30am on Saturday.

He said Awanui Day events would start at 8am, with plenty of street stalls and entertainment plus activities at Awanui Park.

“There’ll be 500-600 bikes on the ride to the cape and back, so that’s a lot of bikes and a lot of people coming to town. Next year is the 30th anniversary of the Northland Riders and many of those people that come will have been coming back year after year. It’s such a great event,” Subritzky said.

“We started Awanui Day about 12 or 13 years ago as a bit of an experiment around the race, but it just took off and now we have people coming from around Northland and elsewhere, and we have stallholders from around the region wanting to take part. It’s really grown into an amazing day.”

The Awanui Progressive and Ratepayers Association was right behind the event, he said, and the aim was to make Awanui the centre of activities - and a real destination - for people going to Cape Reinga.

“You can’t get to the cape without going through Awanui and we want the town to show off Far North hospitality to anybody heading up there.

“Awanui Day is always a great event, with 30 or so stalls, and is just such a great way for the community to come together and show off the town.”

As well as the bike ride and entertainment, Awanui Day was a great chance to show off the Far North’s arts, crafts and artisan food producers, many of which would have displays on the day. Riverside Museum would be displaying photos from the town’s long history and there would be hot rods, custom and classic cars, with a number of demonstrations, including martial arts.

The town had really progressed over the past few years, thanks partly to the Te Hiku Open Spaces Revitalisation Project, on which work began in April 2021, funded by a $7 million grant from the Government’s Provincial Growth Fund.

That revitalisation work has led to Awanui being a finalist in two Keep NZ Beautiful Awards- with the winners announced at a grand ball and awards ceremony in Wellington on November 9.

Awanui and Leigh, 100km north of Auckland, are the two finalists in the Most Beautiful Tiny Town category, while the town’s Te Hiku o te Ika toilet block has been named as one of three finalists in the Top Loo category. The other finalists are Okere Falls Scenic, Rotorua, and Waiuku Public Toilets, South Auckland.