In the third of our summer series celebrating the best Kiwi beaches, Tessa Duder reflects on a bastion of coastal beauty in the heart of Auckland's North Shore.
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KEY POINTS:
Christmas Eve, nearing midnight, full moon, half tide: I drive down Hauraki Road to my favourite access to my favourite beach and am rewarded by a broad silver pathway across the exposed sands and deeper water to the comforting hump that is Rangitoto and, beyond its left-hand flank, access to the open sea.
Out there, familiar beacons and buoys flash, the green navigation lights of small craft speed silently back into harbour. Along the tide mark move the silhouettes of a few late-night promenaders, a docile dog or two. Behind me, on the grass, lovers' voices.
Calm sea, balmy air, still-warm sand underfoot. Looking seaward, there's more sense here of birth, re-birth, forgiveness and gratitude for another year gone, a better year ahead, than all the world's malls. I could spend all night here.
You can't, of course, completely ignore the houses banked theatrically along nearly the length of the beach, from the Hauraki Road access to the grassy reserve north of The Strand's road access. This is after all a city beach. You might fantasise, as I sometimes do, that behind the foreshore rises a splendid public park, right up to, or even half way up to Lake Road, laid out with walkways, fountains, seats under majestic pohutukaka.
Tragically, as 19th and early 20th century settlement unfolded, no visionary local politician like George Grey (who kept the Domain and Albert Park from land sharks) or philanthropist (John Logan Campbell, One Tree Hill and Cornwall Park) saved the Takapuna Beach foreshore - or indeed most other North Shore beaches - from private housing.
Chief Patuone was granted the three beachside farm lots of the original 1843 subdivision; since then farms, holiday baches, villas, bungalows and increasingly in the last 20 years multi-millionaires' pads have enjoyed that fabled northerly view over the beach and up the Rangitoto Channel.
Takapuna beach's charms remain to tourists, even to visitors from the Waitemata's southern shores, less than immediately apparent. Driving round Lake or Hurstmere roads, you'd hardly know a beach was anywhere near, let alone a city beach that for my money, has more going for it than other, more famous strands.
Google "famous city beaches" and what do you find: Brazil's Copacabana (cue café culture, hotels and crowds), Miami's South Beach (ditto), Sydney's Manly Beach (ditto) or Bondi Beach (there, watch out for rips, sharks, volleyball crowds, beach markets, and until the 1990s, unbelievably, sewage).
California and Florida city beach promotors make a great fuss about boardwalks and restaurants, Caribbean beaches are prone to hurricanes. July-August at city beaches around the Mediterranean, you literally cannot walk between the beach towels, and often have to pay for the privilege.
Thanks to successive councils holding their nerve over the decades, Takapuna mercifully has no beachside roads, cafes, bars, hotels, restaurants, markets, loud music, posh cars or hawkers of suncream, sunglasses or cheap watches.
The scows nudging onto the beach, the ferries, the horse-drawn carriages, the air pageants, beauty shows and religious gatherings belong to a past era; they now allow occasional yacht regattas, waka ama, concerts.
The roads running down from Lake Road to the sand filter out cars, coffee seekers and commercialism, and leave you with a short walk to a kilometre-long stretch of pale gold sand, the waters swimmable at all points of the tide with no nasties (except, in high summer, the bites of sea lice avoided by peeling off togs immediately on leaving the water).
After a good north-easterly, surfies come out to play and keen gardeners to harvest the ribbons of seaweed blown ashore; joggers and walkers appreciate the firm sand below the high tide mark. There's good holding for yachts and runabouts anchored off for lunch.
Even on the hottest holiday weekend, there's room for everyone. Watching the young families, I remember the two decades when I lived with my own growing family within five minutes drive or 10 minutes walk of the beach. Our vibrant little community grew up together around a line stretching between the southern end of the beach and Hauraki Primary School in Jutland Road, bisected by the Hauraki shops.
Happy hours swimming, sailing, walking, talking and just being were spent on that beach. It was, I now realise, my own time of golden weather.
* Tessa Duder is a best-selling children's author, editor and playwright. She was also the 1959 New Zealand Swimmer of the Year.
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