Taranaki: Flaming away

By COLIN MOORE

The Olympic torch left people in Taranaki smouldering. While other regions got to show off their tourist finery to the cameras that followed the flame, Taranaki - gas supplier to the nation - was bypassed.

The snub caused some muttering from those who understand the value of free publicity, and you can't blame them. When did you last see Taranaki fronting a national tourist drive?

Dairy cows are not as sexy as the America's Cup and the provincial rugby team is barely a cyclone in a teacup.

That's probably why former Herald illustrations editor Rob Tucker, newly returned to his hometown of New Plymouth and co-opted onto the Taranaki Tourism Board, insists that Travel sees for itself that there is more to Taranaki than natural gas.

After his Herald days Tucker developed a photographic career in Auckland and Christchurch, focusing on anything from fashion to football and including Sir Michael Fay's America's Cup campaigns.

He knows what makes a good picture and he reckons his old province is full of them - if only people would take a look.

It's not hard to persuade a surf-mad son, doting mum and adventurous daughter to accept the invitation. So here we are motoring down Highway 3 for a rendezvous with an old colleague with a mission.

The first impression is not too promising. It's around lunchtime when we get to an area that a local tourist group brochure calls "Taranaki's favourite holiday spot" and are tempted into a pub promising bistro meals.

It's no doubt a popular local, and the pool-players and drinkers on their high stools will not complain about the pong of stale tobacco smoke and spilt beer, nor be concerned by the logging-camp cook who comes to the food counter.

But time has passed by such pubs as travellers' stopovers - and so do we. Instead, we get into the heart of New Plymouth and a cafe to do any town proud. Places such as the Zanziba cafe and bar have sprung up throughout New Zealand in the past decade, often in the unlikeliest spots.

If tourism is most often the impetus, it is the locals who benefit, and there is no shortage of them for lunch this Saturday. The blackboard menu is superb and five of us tuck into such dishes as cajun chicken, salmon and avocado salad and chicken pilaf which, with wine and soft drinks, totals $103 for the group.

Our evening meal is a major contrast, though not because of any absence of popularity or value for money.

It is difficult to get a seat on a Saturday evening at Marbles in the Devon Hotel and one reason is that there is more food at this pirate-theme, buffet-style restaurant than you can poke a cutlass and a brace of pistols at. Marbles is so successful that it hopes to open elsewhere.

Between lunch and dinner Tucker takes us to another theme in the making. Oakura, just south of New Plymouth, is one of Taranaki's better-known surfing spots, particularly the break at the end of Ahuahu Rd.

On the secluded clifftop overlooking the West Coast rollers and north to the city lights, David Marshall is building a six-unit tourist lodge out of the remains of the Stratford Hospital and an old Nelson wharf.

"Lodge" is an inadequate description for his creation. The use of old timber, French-origin roofing tiles and old windows is a work of art and it seems utterly appropriate that a friend of Marshall's built the Hundertwasser toilets in Kaeo.

Marshall is a self-confessed surf bum who never lets work get in the way when a good surf is running. He plans to have the self-contained units, which are just a few minutes' walk from the beach, open for the coming summer, and at a proposed $120 a night they would be a snip for a romantic weekend.

Another to turn his passion into a livelihood is Dave Chadfield, although many in New Plymouth will not know him by that name. Happy Chaddy is the nickname the former commercial fisherman and professional boxer has carried for years, and it's the name of his tourist cruises to the seal colony at New Plymouth's Sugar Loaf Islands conservation area.

Chaddy spent more than 30 years as a fisherman before selling his quota and coming ashore 11 years ago to use his happy disposition to fish for tourist dollars around one of his favourite spots.

Chaddy's is no ordinary cruise. His good ship is the Rescue III, a 1953 lifeboat from Bridlington, England. It was used at Sumner, Christchurch, before Chaddy sailed it north and fully restored it.

Now it's launched, full of paying passengers, three times a day, weather permitting, from Chaddy's Boat Shed at Port Taranaki.

Sadly, it wasn't permitting for us but Chaddy, who like all good lifeboat skippers lives above his lifeboat, plays the launching music - a song that was written about him and his colourful past - and shows me his fascinating collection of marine bric-a-brac and the stories from British newspapers about the new life for the old Bridlington boat.

You could happily spend a day chatting with Chaddy, who tutors in seamanship, helps the Taranaki Work Trust and Water Safety Council, has won a tourism award, and is true to his nickname.

If Fun Ho! toys were still being made in Inglewood the company would surely cast a model of Chaddy's lifeboat. The factory closed in 1987, but more than 3000 of the collectables of Kiwiana are on display at a museum adjoining the information centre and are well worth a visit.

Just up the road in Egmont National Park is another Taranaki icon. Keith Andersen and his wife, Berta, have been one with the flora and fauna of Egmont National Park since the early 1970s.

The Andersens' Mountain House Motor Lodge inside the national park, and their Alpine Lodge just outside the boundary, are among the handful of public accommodation places in New Zealand's truly alpine areas. They are also the perfect base from which to enjoy a park that is rich in bush walks as well as alpine treks.

Both lodges reflect Berta's Swiss heritage - she came to Mt Taranaki on a working holiday and never left - as well as her talents as a trained chef and Keith's talent for painting.

Few people know Mt Taranaki as well as the Andersens, but I only have time on this whirlwind tour to see enough of the bush and the Manganui skifield to promise myself that I must return. We have an appointment in Hawera with Darren Parata, of Kaitiaki Adventures, to go dam dropping on the Waingongoro River.

It seems a crazy thing to do in mid-winter and I am freezing inside my wetsuit long before I jump in a little above the spillrace of an old hydro-electric dam. After that there is not much time to think about it.

The dam drop is brief and exciting, but two other features make this a special adventure. The trip takes a couple of hours, yet because of a huge oxbow in the Waingongoro we end within 50m of our takeoff point. The island was once a large Maori settlement and Parata's knowledge of Maori lore adds a further dimension to the experience.

From Hawera to New Plymouth the coastal road is dubbed Surf Highway 45, but the surf is not "going off." Son finally gets to surf at Fitzroy Beach in downtown New Plymouth on the morning we leave, and arranging it is probably the smartest public relations move that our Tourism Taranaki friends make. It ensures that there will be another time to sing, "Surf city, here we come."

CASENOTES

For further information: Try the Tourism Taranaki website and the New Plymouth website.

There's also Kaitiaki Adventures, ph 021 461 110; Fun Ho! National Toy Museum, Inglewood, ph (06) 756 7030, e-mail funhotoys@taranaki.ac.nz. Mountain House Motor Lodge, Stratford ph (06) 765 6100, e-mail mountainhouse@xtra.co.nz, website: www.mountainhouse.co.nz. Happy Chaddy's Charters, New Plymouth, ph (06) 758 9133.

Places to eat: Zanziba cafe bar, Devon St, ph (06) 757 8147; Andre' L'escargot Restaurant, (06) 758 4812; Marbles, New Plymouth, ph (06) 759 9099, e-mail marbles@devonhotel.co.nz

Accommodation: The Devon Hotel, New Plymouth, ph (06) 759 9099, e-mail mail@devonhotel.co.nz; Henwood House, bed and breakfast, ph (06) 755 1212, e-mail henwood.house@xtra.co.nz

Coming attractions: Taranaki Rhododendron Festival, October 27 to November 5.

Links:

Tourism Taranaki

New Plymouth website

Kaitiaki Adventures

Mountain House Motor Lodge