Dialogue: Softly, softly on big plans for the Cape

By TONY GEE

Tourist icon Cape Reinga, a shining light in the Far North visitor industry, can do much more than offer stunning seascape views, a lighthouse, picnic area, toilet block and little else. Even the men's can cope with only three at a time answering calls of nature, and the store selling postcards, Cape-linked souvenirs and gifts closed some time ago after a fire partially burned it.

There is little local argument that the Cape can and should offer more to the 200,000-plus international and New Zealand visitors who go there each year to see rolling Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean swells meet at the place Maori know as Te Rerenga Wairua, where spirits of the dead are said to depart for the ancient ancestral Maori home of Hawaiiki.

Tourists can still get their mail stamped with that special Cape Reinga postmark, but that's done now in Kaitaia, 113km to the south, on letters posted in an outdoor mailbox at the Cape. In winter, howling winds blow rain into the box, soaking mail, says Kaitaia-based tour operator Robin Lilley, whose company has the contract to collect and deliver mail from the Cape six days a week.

Efforts to improve visitor facilities in the Cape area are finally being made, but progress is painfully slow. Little physical progress is likely until the issue of local iwi Ngati Kuri's land claim to much of the area now administered by the Department of Conservation is settled.

This is crucial to determine land ownership and consequent future funding for a visitors' centre, the iwi's trust board chairman, Graeme Neho, says. He believes, however, that a settlement is likely this year, after pushes for Far North iwi claim results by Treaty Negotiations Minister Margaret Wilson.

Proposals for a visitors' centre in the area have been around for years. Bay of Islands tour operator Fullers, which runs up to five busloads of people a day to the Cape, put forward a plan in 1993. It suggested a centre be built on land designated as a special area of historic interest, run by a local trust group and financed by the Government - a Milford Sound-type tourism operation.

Nothing happened, but the Fullers executive director in Paihia, Mike Simm, says something is definitely needed at Cape Reinga. He endorses comments made late last year by Eric Stephens, chairman of tourism promotion group Destination Northland, who raised a storm of protest from the kaitiaki (guardians) of the area, Ngati Kuri, when he described Cape visitor facilities as "virtual sheds" and the area as a disgrace.

What was needed was a visitor centre with facilities for explaining the Cape's cultural, environmental and historical significance - a financially viable icon to educate, entertain and provide significant employment.

Although he "copped a lot of flak" for his comments, Mr Stephens believes his remarks were fair, just and rational at the time, and still apply. "As far as we're aware, nothing has changed from Destination Northland's point of view."

Mr Simm agrees. "We have to put something in place which enhances the significance and understanding of Maori culture - something with the Maori, conservation and geographical aspects of the area."

Ngati Kuri's Mr Neho wants no input from Destination Northland about facilities at the Cape, which he says are no business of that organisations. "We won't be deterred from making progress. Our working party group with DoC is still on track."

The DoC area manager in Kaitaia, Steve McGill, confirms that a Cape Reinga visitor centre working group, consisting of DoC and Ngati Kuri Trust Board representatives, plans to meet in Whangarei early next month. They will look at a visitor centre and other options and draw up a consultants' brief for a centre design, building on completed feasibility studies. The exercise is aimed at putting together a proposal to put to the Government for funding. Tourism operators working in the Cape area will be invited to have input into the centre design, as will other interested groups. "Everbody's aspirations will be taken into account," says Mr McGill.

When final costings are done, Mr McGill hopes DoC and Ngati Kuri will have a proposal, which could involve up to $3.5 million, to put to the Government for consideration by June or July.