Great Barrier Island: So close and yet so far ...

Sven Stellin has found better uses for the tea tree he used to crush and burn as a farmer. Picture / Jim Eagles

Just over two hours ago I was in a foreign country flirting with a 4m mako shark. Now I'm at my desk at the Herald writing about it.

And I would have been here sooner if the drive from Auckland International Airport hadn't been the usual crawl. The world surely is becoming a smaller place.

True, it's only a 30-minute flight from Auckland to Great Barrier Island, where my mako is presumably still cruising the coastline, and you don't require a passport to get in.

But it's definitely a different land with a special wild beauty, plus - and not many people know this - its own distinctive sky tower, factory shop, fish market, restaurants, wine trail and food festivals.

My reason for visiting this foreign scene was to check out preparations for the newest food festival, the Great Barrier Seafood Celebration, to be held on all four Saturdays in May, when the island will showcase the great dishes its chefs prepare from the seafood found around its shores.

Researching this on your behalf I was obliged to eat spicy paua and mussel fritters, grilled prawns, crayfish, laksa hot pot with mussels and calamari, baby paua and pescatore pizza with mussels, calamari, chunks of grilled gurnard and lots of anchovies. It's a tough job, but that's what they pay me for.

Altogether seven restaurants from the three main settlements - Port Fitzroy, Claris and Tryphena - are taking part in the festival and they've prepared menus to set any seafood lover drooling.

Port Fitzroy is represented by the Boat Club, where the menu revolves around the marvellous local mussels which you can have steamed with coriander and coconut cream or stuffed into a scotch fillet.

Fitzroy is also where you can check out the local sky tower, centrepiece of the Glenfern Sanctuary, a haven for native fauna and flora, created by yachting great Tony Bouzaid.

Over the past 10 years he and his team have transformed the Kotuku Peninsula by laying a grid of 500 bait stations and traps to control rats and feral cats, planting 10,000 native trees and building a network of paths, including a botanic walkway.

Thanks to their work the forest is thronged with kaka, pateke, kereru, tui, grey warblers, fantails, waxeyes, kingfishers, black petrels nesting under the roots of an ancient puriri and - after Bouzaid claps his hands to attract their attention - recently introduced North Island robins.

Towering serenely above all this is the sky tower, a swing bridge leading to a viewing platform in the crown of a 300-year-old kauri tree, with magnificent views across the regenerating forest to the harbour.

It's a magnificent achievement - and a fascinating place to visit - but Bouzaid isn't stopping there. Now he's seeking corporate sponsorship to build a $400,000 predator-proof fence across the peninsula so he can reintroduce the kiwi to Great Barrier. Maybe Sky City could help.

You can reach the sanctuary by road but access to the factory shop is by water, so why not take the Port Fitzroy Harbour Tours shopping cruise? Skipper Alan Phelps is a fount of knowledge and a trip with him is a journey through the history of Fitzroy - defunct mines, abandoned logging operations and failed farms - as well as beautiful islands, mysterious sea caves and mussel farms.

The factory and shop of Barrier Gold offer its own soaps, balms, insect repellents and essential oils using the oil from kanuka and manuka leaves. Owner-operator Sven Stellin meets visitors on the wharf and provides a tour of the factory and shop in a dilapidated old barn.

The still he uses to remove the oils from manuka and kanuka leaves, built with scrap metal, is a joy to behold.

Stellin claims he got into the business extracting cannabis oil - "I was a criminal ... but I saw the light!" - and became interested in finding better uses for the tea tree he used to crush and burn in his days as a farmer.

He and his mother experimented on themselves to discover that kanuka oil is great for for cuts, insects, fungal infections, arthritis and head lice; while manuka helps pimples, mouth ulcers, bad breath and bee stings.

The smell of tea tree oil is amazing, and there are more exotic smells on offer at the Claris entrant in the seafood festival, Angsana Thai Restaurant, where the spicy menu includes mixed seafood soup with lemongrass and coconut cream, stir-fried squid with chilli and basil and a red curry of mussels.

Not far away, at Okupu, is the start of Great Barrier's wine trail. Leave your car at the beach and then wander down the sand, skipping across rocks and jumping streams, until you get to the last house in the bay.

There's no sign, but this is where John Mellars, a self-taught winemaker, has for 13 years been producing his cabernets (in the years when he hasn't tipped the juice out because he didn't like the way it was developing). If he's home you'll get an amiably gruff welcome and the chance to inspect his homemade winery, check a few barrel samples and buy bottles of the 2003.

From there the wine trail leads to Tryphena and Oasis Lodge, where Michael and Penny Gardner have been growing grapes there for 10 years. Early on they had a succession of crop failures but now, with the help of Kumeu winemaker Tim Harris, they reckon they're on the right track.

The 2004 is selling well and, says Penny, "we're very enthusiastic about the 2005 which was a perfect year".

There is a third winery on the way - Riviera Charters operator Kim Watts has planted grapes on his property overlooking Puriri Bay - but for now that's the end of the wine trail.

Oasis is also taking part in the seafood celebration with a menu focusing around the barbecue where Michael Gardner - the local pharmacist but also a legendary surfer and fisherman - will be using his expertise to produce dishes such as barbecued tuna steaks with a citrus mayonnaise and barbecued billfish with aioli.

The rest of the restaurants in the seafood festival are also in Tryphena.

On the seafront in Puriri Bay is Bob and Tipi's Waterfront Lodge, run by Marjorie Harris and husband Peter, a former fisherman who "really knows fish and how to cook it".

For the festival he has come up with dishes such as an entree of bruschetta topped with kina roe - "because people often don't like the idea of eating kina and I thought this might encourage them to try" - and a delicious laksa hot pot with mussels and calamari cooked with cumin, coriander and sweet chili.

At Pah beach, the Currach Irish Pub is offering a Celtic flavour with its Irish tapas, which the night I was there consisted of great mussel and paua fritters, grilled crayfish and prawns.

Near Tryphena Wharf is Stray Possum Lodge. Locals had suggested I try its pescatore pizza, which was piled with seafood and tasted delicious.

The high point of dining on Great Barrier is Earthsong Lodge, perched on a hill above Tryphena, with access only by four-wheel-drive or helicopter. Chef Trevor Rendle, a former Air New Zealand steward, indulges his passion for food and wine by cooking five-course dinners and emerging from the kitchen to explain each course.

A meal there is an amazing experience, with dishes like seared baby paua on a bed of green salsa or crayfish tail steamed in a bamboo basket and served with a juniper berry and thyme-infused capsicum sauce.

Of course the key to the success of all these dishes is fresh seafood from the Great Barrier fishmart, which is best toured with Craig McInman, of Tryphena Charters, described as "the man when it comes to fish".

When you mosey out from the Shoal Bay Wharf on his boat, McInman points to a smorgasbord of seafood: that bay just inside the headland is a great place for big snapper; this swirl in the water indicates a rock where you find kingfish; the cleft in that island has huge crayfish; further out is a spot where you'll find hapuku.

As we cruised round the southern tip of the island, Cape Barrier, passing shipwreck sites, picturesque bays, magnificent cliffs and huge sea caves, he noticed the water had turned blue. "Hey, we might find tuna here."

Sure enough, a few minutes after my lure went into the water I had a skipjack tuna hooked. "What a beauty," said McInman, admiring its beautiful blue colours. Next he thought I might like a snapper to take home so we stopped in a bay. A few minutes later I had a fine fat snapper.

McInman had a rod down himself and started winding in another snapper. "Looks fairly small," he said. "We might ... Whoa. Look at that."

Just as he was about to flick the snapper into the boat a 4m mako had swum quietly up and eaten it.

Meanwhile, my line was back in the water and getting a few bites. Then came a steady heave. "Hey, you've hooked the mako," said McInman.

My rod bent double as the shark cruised off, coming up to the surface about 20m away to give us the eye, before snapping the line.

It was time for us to go too ... and two-and-a-half hours later I was back at my desk.

Checklist - Great Barrier

* Food
See link below for details of the Seafood Celebration, the restaurants and menus on offer. 

* Activities
Glenfern Sanctuary, (09) 429 0091 or see link below.
Barrier Gold, (09) 429 0217 or see link below.
Port Fitzroy Harbour tours, (09) 429 0212.
Tryphena Charters, (09) 429 0596.

* Wineries
John Mellars, (09) 429 0361.
Oasis Lodge,  (09) 429 0021 or see link below.

* Transport
Great Barrier Airlines, 0800 900 600 or see link below.
Aotea Rentals, (09) 429 0474 or see link below.

* Accommodation
Earthsong Lodge,  (09) 429 0030 or see link below.
Pigeons Lodge,  (09) 429 0437 or see link below.
Shoal Bay Lodge,  (09) 429 0890 or see link below.
 
* Jim Eagles was hosted by Destination Great Barrier.