Great Barrier: No barrier to exploration

Great Barrier Island is a Pacific wilderness on Auckland's doorstep.

The Mazda Fun Top is a rattly wee two-doored beast with a low-geared sewing machine engine and a sunroof. I booked the cheapest car GBI Rent-A-Car had and when we land at Claris Airfield, Fiona from Scotland - she fell for a local bloke while on holiday - assures us it's perfect for most Great Barrier Island roads, even some marked 4WD only.

We load our gear in the back and hit the road but only go 500m before Sam spies the Claris Texas sign and stops, declaring it's lunchtime. And what a treat it is. I, somewhat patronisingly, expected old-fashioned fodder - pies and sausage rolls - but am delighted with my vegetarian panini and funky salad. Sam says his nachos are terrific washed down with good coffee.

The sun is shining and the road calling so we slide open the sunroof and head north. The tar seal soon disappears. Sam slows down and gets into the swing of skinny dirt roads wriggling up and down steep hills and locals, who drive unnervingly fast. There are wide views of bush, beach and wild waves in broken layers caused by a tropical storm invisibly far east.

Our first stop is Harataonga Bay with its perfect beach. The only footprints are those of many birds. Oystercatchers, terns, shore plovers and dotterels pick around the stream and shore, a kingfisher scans his world from a pohutukawa pedestal and skylarks, little sky-high specks, trill grandly.

A dell behind the sand-hills is impenetrably full of lush nikau palms, hundreds of them. Kereru feast on red puriri berries, fantail flit nearby and a kaka, a native parrot, does upside down tricks in trees.

The road to Whangapoua Beach, our next stop, has the added excitement of farm gates and herds of cows that prefer to ruminate on the road rather than on pasture. They are so nonchalant I pat their fat glossy rumps as we drive by.

The beach is a wide crescent of tumbling surf and hard sand with Rakitu Island looking a picture beyond. We walk to the north end and find the mass grave of 121 people who drowned when the SS Wairarapa sank on rocks at Miners Head in 1894.

Only weeks before the fateful night the boat set a speed record sailing from Sydney to Auckland and the captain was intent on breaking this record again, so he kept a fast clip despite thickening fog and nervous crew. Just after midnight the ship crashed into rocks, water rushed into a huge hole and the passengers, who made it to the slanting deck, found themselves sliding down it into the sea.

It was stormy and most of the lifeboats were swamped when they hit the water though some stronger swimmers made it to shore, dodging drowning horses and floating cargo. At dawn crew got a line from the shipwreck to shore and about 50 people crossed to safety this way. In the final tally over half the people on board had drowned.

Reckless boy racers have been around forever, it seems. It was probably a small consolation to loved ones of the lost that their bones rest under pohutukawa trees by a beach of heavenly beauty.

The island is slender here and Katherine Bay, on the west side, is only 5km away. The ambience is different but equally lovely with bush touching the rocky shore, a calm sea and a pretty stream meandering across stones. Ten houses shelter under trees, fishing boats bob in the bay, dinghies rest on grassy banks and kids play in the gentle shallows.

The island is 30km long and half that at its widest, but it's mountainous with steep ridges and deeply hewn valleys so driving from Katherine Bay, in the north, to Tryphena, near the southern end, where we have booked a B&B, takes a while. Tryphena with its hall, medical centre, sports club, school and a scattering of homes competes with Claris for the title of the island's biggest town. We eat at the Irish pub - the only place still open at 8.15pm - and it's humming and the fare is hearty and hot.

By 10pm the only things out are the stars and moreporks, so an early night is followed by an early morning with tuis going, "car don, car don, car don!" and kakas screeching in the tree a couple of metres from our window.

Fun Top is waiting so we tackle the road to Cape Barrier, the southernmost tip. In one place half the road has fallen into a deep hole but the blokes from the local council are on the job; four are down the hole fixing things. And good on them - they won't let me take a photo until they have all put on their regulation luminous orange vests.

The final 2km, frighteningly steep and deeply gouged, are too challenging for even plucky Fun Top. We talk about walking to Cape Barrier but decide to head north again and walk to the hot springs instead.

The Kaitoke hot springs are in the middle of the island and we have to pass Claris Texas so with a tummy full of fab food, again, we dawdle off on the one-hour bushwalk to the springs.

Initially the track passes through punga and nikau groves and under giant puriri draped with dangling epiphytes. Then manuka dominates and the path is flecked with white petal confetti.

As we edge along a swamp we spot a family of chocolate brown pateke (brown teal) and a few stealthy fern birds who slip into the rushes when they sense us. Both these native birds are almost extinct on the mainland.

The hot springs, and there are three sites in a stream, each have different temperatures from gasping hot to pleasantly warm, and in among the leaf litter I find the bubbling hot parts with my feet. A cascade feeds a hot pool, trees touch overhead, birds sing and the occasional dragonfly swoops down the stream.

It's divine and, as with the best things in life, it's free.

Hot springs, beaches, birds, bush, great food, nice places to stay and a fun car are grand ingredients for a terrific holiday.

- DETOURS, HoS