TV host campaigns to save Coromandel paradise

Award-winning TV host Phil Keoghan is throwing his weight behind the campaign to stop development at New Chums Beach. Photo / Alan Gibson

The host of American television show The Amazing Race is joining the campaign to save a pristine Coromandel beach from development.

New Zealand-born Phil Keoghan will hold an event for New Chums Beach at nearby Matarangi Beach, north of Whitianga, in January to call for New Chums' preservation - and is inviting Prime Minister John Key.

Keoghan said he had visited more than 100 countries while filming The Amazing Race and had seen incredible beaches, but nothing compared to New Chums.

"It's one of the most breathtakingly stunning places in the world."

The only access to the cove is via a half-hour trek wading across a tidal river, clambering over boulders and climbing a mud track.

"There's something quite magical about coming over the top of that hill, walking through the trees, and seeing the beach that opens up out of nowhere."

Keoghan owns a bach at a neighbouring beach, and his family have spent the past 20 summers in the Coromandel.

He hopes to get thousands of people out on January 3 to form letters spelling a message to raise awareness.

"Sometimes you feel like with everything going on in the world you can't take on every battle and fight for everything you feel strongly about ... But in this case I don't feel like that ... This is just too important.

"We're not talking about some beach that's just run-of-the-mill, that there are millions of in the world. We're talking about a beach that's one of the best - if not the best - in the world."

Keoghan joins a growing campaign against 20 houses planned in the area, eight of them tucked around an otherwise isolated and untouched bay. A boatshed and ramp are to be built towards the beach's northern end.

The consent application has drawn record numbers of submissions in protest, and oral submissions were expected to be heard in November.

But a Thames-Coromandel District Council spokesman said the process had been put on hold while the developers considered their options.

Among many possibilities is taking the case straight to the Environment Court.

A spokesman for the developers said the landowners were working with the Environmental Defence Society to come up with a solution.

They have previously made several concessions to minimise disruption to the beach, but opponents say development would still spoil the pristineisolation.

Mayor-elect Glen Leach, who will be sworn in next week, told a local newspaper, the Informer, that the consents process had been allowed to go so far that the only way the council could intervene would be to buy the land from the developers.

"It will definitely be on the agenda after we are sworn in," he said.

"We'll make changes to the district plan so that this can never happen again to any other beautiful areas we have in our district."