KEY POINTS:
In the beginning there was Martins Bay, 10km from then-sleepy farming service town Warkworth - out on a dust cloud of a metal road on the Kowhai Coast. We'd pitch the old green and brown, 10 x 10 tent on Boxing Day and camp rain, hail or shine
for four weeks until returning to school, nut brown kids with a new crop of freckles at the end of January.
That was the beach of my childhood - from age three to 17 - and it was life shaping. There I wore my first bikini and first communed with fish with a mask and snorkel rather than the rods and hooks favoured by the male members of my clan. I had my first kiss at the bay, with Neville or was it Brian? I learned to drive the boat there and the Mark III Zephyr and first felt the magic of the sea, night water skiing home to Martins from Kawau under a full moon with the phosphorescence streaming like liquid silver. And we ate giant snapper, so many snapper, hard fought and proudly brought back to camp by my fisher dad.
In my 20s, I had a passing romance with Muriwai. It was a mesmerisingly menacing piece of coast: breezy and benign one day, vicious the next. You could ride for hours on a fast horse and still see nothing but black dunes, crashing breakers, and barking, sun-basking bull seals. But you knew you were truly alive when that West Coast wind whipped you each day.
Then I "came home" to a coastal farm out on the Takatu peninsula, with dreamy beaches, only 15 minutes in a fast boat from Martins Bay. And my heart has never left.
Dad first motored into a bay just around the reef from what is now Tawharanui regional park and nature sanctuary nearly three decades ago. Quick as a flash he bought a section, getting change from $20,000, and we've spent most holidays since over the hill from the best beach in the world. Only 90km from downtown Auckland, and 20km from booming Matakana, Tawharanui is fortuitously light years away from both in pace and perfection. It too is at the end of a killer metal road, which makes me happy because it largely keeps the hordes away.
Tawharanui's gem is Anchor Bay, the park's main beach with an 800m marine park sprawling towards Little Barrier with its ever present cloud beret. The bay has honeycomb cliffs draped by pohutukawa, rock fingers reaching out to sea, warm rock pools for small children to paddle in, caves to explore and the most benign champagne surf which, with the aid of a boogie board, throws young and old skywards and then hurtles them to the silver shore. I escape here whenever I can to lie on the bright sands until the sun warms my innards, then it's on to the board and away, heh heh.
Here there is always life and laughter: happy trampers and bikers heading for the peninsula hills; excited kids mastering the beneficent waves; the excited babble of squadrons of tui; and offended oystercatchers shrieking at the dotty dotterills busily defending their nests in the spinifex.
The whole shebang is run magnificently by the Auckland Regional Council and a band of determined volunteers called TOSSI, the Tawharanui Open Sanctuary Society. The latter deserve medals for turning out one Sunday a month to nurture this burgeoning nature bounty. The predator fence that went in a few years ago has been so successful that 15 kiwi and a small flock of endangered North Island robin (thank you) were released to a place of complete safety just a few months before Christmas.
That was about the time my old dad went to the big fishing grounds in the sky. I think of him still, every day, but at Tawharanui - beach of benevolence and bliss - I can feel him very close at hand.