KEY POINTS:
Cape Reinga, a popular visitor destination, will get a $6.5 million Government-funded facelift.
The investment, to be announced in the Budget, will be channelled through the Department of Conservation allowing the department to spend the money over two years on redeveloping visitor facilities on the Cape Reinga site.
Cape Reinga (Te Rerenga Wairua) already attracts more than 120,000 visitors a year - 400 a day - to the spectacular meeting place of the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea.
Rugged cliffs mark the departing point, according to Maori belief, of spirits of the dead as they journey home to ancestral Hawaiki.
Work now proposed for the area will focus on car parking, power generation, roads, walking tracks, eco-friendly toilets, landscaping and replanting.
The work, due to start this year, comprises the first stage of a two-stage project to redevelop and upgrade facilities for the increasing number of visitors to Cape Reinga.
The $6.5 million investment will help prepare the area for construction of a proposed multi-million dollar visitor centre, says Associate Minister of Conservation Mahara Okeroa.
Highway authority Transit New Zealand expects to start sealing the last 19km of State Highway 1 between Waitiki Landing and the cape within the next few weeks as part of a three-year sealing job.
The $10 million visitor centre - the second stage of redevelopment - is in the hands of a group including representatives of Far North iwi Ngati Kuri and Te Aupouri, Enterprise Northland and the Department of Conservation.
A start on the visitor centre complex is expected to be made around the middle of next year, depending on funding and approval for necessary resource consents.
The new centre is expected to open in 2009.
The redevelopments are designed to offer visitors more information and interpretation about the area's geography, plants, wildlife and significance to Maori.
Project group spokesman Mike Simm says there is no on-site interpretation now - "basically just a carpark and a lighthouse at the top of New Zealand".
He says the location of the new visitor centre has been chosen by local iwi and will have minimal impact on the environment.
It would welcome, inform and educate visitors about unique geographic, environmental and cultural characteristics of the area.
Redevelopment options for Cape Reinga have been under discussion by iwi, agencies and tourism operators for six years.
Agencies expect visitor numbers to Cape Reinga to rise to more than 200,000 a year.
Mr Okeroa was to travel to the cape today with Northland Labour list MPs Dover Samuels and Shane Jones.
The minister says the Government believes Cape Reinga can grow further as a destination and deliver considerable economic and social benefits to the Far North.
