KEY POINTS:
Nightfall in The Park Top 10 Ninety Mile Beach, Waipapakauri. Even mid-week, the motorcamp at the southern finger of the wild Far North beach is half-full.
Clouds mask the stars, but the drizzle's lifted enough for German travellers Catherine and Marieke to play cards on the picnic table next to their van. The Girl From Ipanema playing quiet and tinny on their portable stereo is the sole festive note in the camping ground. Motor campers tend to keep to themselves after dark.
Catherine, a 31-year-old occupational therapist, and Marieke, a 30-year-old arts manager, didn't plan on staying here. Arriving in Auckland on Monday, they bought their van with the intention of free-camping around the country.
Three months of parking up as their fancy took them, in carparks, beaches, back-roads and fields: the off-the-beaten-track dream of independent wanderers the industry knows as FITS - free independent travellers.
Their guide at Kawiti Glow Worms Caves in the Bay of Islands was the first to warn them against it.
"We'd just left the spot where we camped overnight, in the middle of the forest, dead-end road, very remote," Marieke said. "But we didn't know (about the Dutch couple) so we weren't scared, because you never hear these things about New Zealand."
It was the woman who approached them in a carpark near Waitangi on Wednesday who frightened them out of the dark and into a camping ground.
"She said, 'Do you know two guys have been watching you for the last hour or so? Are you planning to stay?' And then it was easy. We made up our mind to go."
Their shock that such a thing could happen is typical of travellers we encountered at Northland's most scenic spots last week. Most are not frightened but philosophical about the horrific attack on a honeymooning Dutch couple at Haruru Falls a week ago, despite the two men who committed the crime still being on the run.
Take a tourist-eye's view, and it's easy to see how travellers could be lulled into a false sense of complacency about the land of hobbits and sheep, especially in the chilled-out North.
On a weekday afternoon back in the Haruru Falls carpark, the small, shaded dirt clearing in native bush just out of Waitangi where the Dutch couple in their Toyota Hiace were ambushed by masked men, you can't see any vestiges of violence. It's silly to expect any, you realise. As if terror and cruelty leave imprints on a place. There are walkers in raincoats and sturdy footwear, a garrulous tui, rangers clearing cuttings.
It's beautiful, peaceful: the mythical image we sell to tourists, a laidback Eden before the Fall.
Even knowing the attackers are still at large, it's hard to take seriously the only hint of menace: a faded police sign warning about car theft, and beneath, a small-print list of bylaws containing a prohibition against camping here. A steel bar that's now being installed to block the entrance at night imparts a sterner warning.
The five-hour drive the couple's captors took them on reached as far south as Whangarei before they were abandoned in Towai, a tiny farming settlement 15km south of Kawakawa.
In terror, they would have driven past scenes of pastoral tranquillity: sleeping cattle, tumbling fields, roadside flowers, little streams.
Of course, we New Zealanders know that ugly things happen in beautiful places. But given the brilliant sales job we do on our country, can we blame tourists who believe it's a benign, Western outpost peopled by friendly, if slightly kooky folk?
Susanne Beer, a 25-year-old German, doesn't feel vulnerable going solo in her yellow-roofed Mazda Bongo.
"It's cool, I like it," she says. "I've no problems with my partner, I can do what I want. I'm always on camping places. The locals say to me I should be careful."
In September, United States travel guru Laura McKenzie ranked Aotearoa New Zealand in the world's top five safest travel destinations (Monte Carlo came first). Yet in July, major British insurer Norwich Union analysed its claims and found New Zealand was the fourth worst place for theft (and road accidents).
Northland's violent crime rate of 160 reported offences per 10,000 people in the year to June 2006 is higher than the national rate of 123 offences per 10,000, and has risen overall across the past decade (Northland police say family violence accounts for most of this figure).
Dishonesty crimes have fallen slightly in the region, and Northland's rate is slightly lower than the national rate.
But this crime had the sickly whiff of premeditation to it, of predators patiently watching from the shadows. Chief investigator Detective Mike Pannet of Kaikohe police confirms it.
"We are investigating the possibility that (the attackers) had been watching the carpark. Clearly there was a degree of preparation involved."
Through the bush and across the Waitangi River from the carpark is Haruru Falls Resort Panorama, run by husband and wife Henry Gerritsen and Jan Gerritsen-Molloy.
They get a lot of Dutch guests - Gerritsen is Dutch and flies the flag at their gate. Two weeks ago they hosted a 24-campervan fleet of middle-aged Dutch travellers. They've also noticed a jump in Australian families staying over the school holidays.
"The increase in campervans over the last three or four years has been phenomenal," says Greymouth-born Gerritsen-Molloy as she sips a Diet Coke. She looks across the resort's pool and neat grounds to the low waterfalls and narrows her eyes.
"To be able to live on the river like this, and have the waterfall as your front lawn, it's a blessing. And it's a hell of a kick when something tragic like this happens that should never have happened."
Tourism is the local economy's backbone. About 887,000 international visitors came to Northland in the year to September - more than visited Rotorua. This is the most serious attack on tourists Gerritsen-Molloy can recall in the area, and she doesn't want it tarring the Bay's idyllic reputation. She's turned away media, instructed staff not to talk about the attack to visitors. "As a community we've banded together to stop speculation and support the police."
Last week, a Bay of Islands motelier emailed the Herald on Sunday anonymously saying the region's business association had "been berating the Far North District Council and the police for at least six months, warning them of the unchecked and meteoric rise in crime within the region".
Friday night's attack, he said, "As far as locals will tell you, it was an accident waiting to happen."
However, when we rang the association contact, he said the concerns were now being addressed.
Just south of Paihia, Beachside Holiday Park owner Dusty Miller wears paint-flecked blue shorts, a Bob Charles shirt and the air of a man who's seen it all. "I don't think it's going to have an effect on people using our facilities. Maybe [it has on] Dutch people who were thinking about travelling to New Zealand."
Miller estimates 90 per cent of his guests haven't even heard about the attack. He asks a Swiss woman checking her email; she didn't know. "It's better to go to a camping place," she says.
"They're not really interested in the news going on in our area," Miller continues. "Normally that kind of stuff buzzes around the camp. It probably will now."
The Swiss woman, Malin Richiter, is cruising the country in a temperamental Toyota LiteAce with three friends, all Swiss and in their early 20s.
She joins them at a picnic table spread with maps and guidebooks in German, and starts the buzz. As the news of the attack sinks in, their reactions follow the normal pattern.
"It's frightening because last night we slept also on a wild camping place," says Richiter. Then, "things like that happen everywhere".
Despite high-profile cases like the couple's abduction and last year's murder of German hitch-hiker Bridget Bauer in Taranaki, campervan rentals are on the rise. Rental Vehicle Association executive director John Collyns estimates of the total 18,000-strong rental fleet, 5000 vehicles are campervans.
Nor is the Kiwi tradition of loading up a van and following your nose on the wane.
In Matauri Bay - one of those remote northern bays that make you coo like an airhead on first sight - retired Christchurch couple Gloria and Kevin Forman are cosy in their carpeted 7m Nissan Civilian bus. While the drizzle coalesces into dense rain outside, Gloria's doing Sudoku - she just picked it up - and Kevin's writing to two of their nine children.
Seasoned DIY travellers, they caravaned for 25 years before buying the bus, and are two of the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association's 28,837 members.
They're one month into a four-month trip. Because the bus's appliances and lights run on solar power, they can free-camp. Their judgment is well-honed. "You can just feel comfortable about a place," says Kevin. They stopped at Haruru Falls six hours before the attack, he says. "It wasn't the sort of place we'd stay because it was very secluded."
Says Gloria of the honeymooners, "We feel sorry for them. I suppose it just reminds us how careful we need to be."
What the travel guides say
Tourism New Zealand's official consumer site
"New Zealand's awesome landscapes, lush forests, amazing wildlife and pleasant climate make it a haven for many outdoor activities, and a great place to unwind. New Zealand society is diverse, sophisticated, and multicultural, and the honesty, friendliness, and openness of Kiwis will impress you."
Lonely Planet website
"...a country of rare seismic beauty...New Zealand isn't all caves, glaciers and geysers, though its natural marvels are epic in scope and you'd be mad not to sample at least some of them. On your way between albatross colonies and fjords check out the pleasures of its cities, which combine big-town cool with small-town charm."
The Rough Guide
"Although...Presbyterian and Anglican values have proved hard to shake off, the Kiwi psyche has become infused with Maori generosity and hospitality, coupled with a colonial mateyness and the unerring belief that whatever happens, 'she'll be right'. However, an underlying inferiority complex seems to linger: you may well find yourself interrogated as to your opinions of the country almost before you leave the airport."
Fodors website
"The Bay of Islands is both beautiful, for its lush forests, splendid beaches, and shimmering harbours, and historic, as the place where Westernised New Zealand came into being with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Southeast of Auckland is the rugged and exhilarating Coromandel Peninsula, with mountains stretching the length of its middle and a Pacific coastline afloat with picturesque islands."
How the crime is being reported in Holland
De Telegraaf newspaper
"Hellish honeymoon: Dutch woman raped in front of husband in New Zealand - A massive outrage in New Zealand has been sparked by the gruesome abduction and robbery of a newly wed couple from The Netherlands by two armed men."
"New Zealand is ashamed.
The tragedy with the Dutch is big news in New Zealand. The New Zealanders reacted with horror when heard what happened to the newly wed couple."
www.nu.nl
"Honeymoon ends in nightmare:
The Dutch couple that in NZ during their honeymoon got kidnapped, robbed and raped had shortly before the incident been warned not to sleep at remote parking spots."
Feedback at www.ad.nl
"I want to thank everybody for the messages! Except the press! Brother, Roermond (Netherlands)."
"Ridiculous! Really ashamed that these people are named and pictured on this website! You should be ashamed. I cannot imagine how traumatised these people are at the moment and their direct family is not around to comfort them. Take the pictures away, they've been hurt enough!"
