The name Kaitaia means abundance of food. Doubtless Bay was named by Captain James Cook who, in sighting it, is reputed to have said 'doubtless a bay'.
The top of the North Island is the tail of the mythical stingray and New Zealand's northernmost township is the only place in the world where a sign welcomes visitors in English, Maori and Croatian.
This is Ngati Kahu, Ngati Kuri and Te Rarawa territory and it was Te Rarawa leader, Nopera Pana-kareao, who invited missionaries to the area. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by 61 chiefs on 28 April 1840.
Europeans began arriving in the 1850s and the settlement expanded as kauri gum diggers, many of whom were Dalmatians, moved north. The legacy of the Yugoslav diaspora is still apparent in the surnames.
The region's most distinctive feature is the long stretch of Ninety Mile Beach or Te Oneroa-a-Tohe, and it isn't 90 miles long but 55 miles or 88 kilometres. It's suggested that when missionaries travelled on horse back, an average day's ride would be 30 miles and it took three days to travel the beach. They didn't account for the slower pace of horses walking on sand. It only seemed like they had covered 90 miles.
