Te Aroha Domain's No 7 Bathhouse, in which Maori were segregated from Pakeha bathers. Expand

Te Aroha Domain's No 7 Bathhouse, in which Maori were segregated from Pakeha bathers.

After getting married in Italy and honeymooning in Turkey and Egypt, it was inevitable that our expectations would have to be adjusted. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a week's skiing in Central Otago, but another year on it was looking like takeaways in front of the telly.

However, we decided we could probably afford one night away, as long as it was within easy driving distance of Auckland, ideally a place neither of us had been to, which might offer a decent dinner out and something to do other than worry about the mortgage.

Ticking all the boxes was Te Aroha, in the northeastern Waikato. Its name means "love", it's just over 100km from Auckland, and it has the added bonus of natural hot springs - perfect for a romantic getaway.

One hundred and thirty years ago, it must have taken a massive stretch of the imagination to establish a spa town on a soggy, flax-strewn hillside in the middle of nowhere.

Yet in 1881 the government acquired the Te Aroha Hot Springs Reserve from its Maori owners and set about attempting to transform it into the Bath of the South - albeit with less Georgian architecture and more mud.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was quite the place to go to take in the waters, either by drinking or bathing in them.

Te Aroha is tucked away on the road between Paeroa and Morrinsville, tight up against the bulk of the mountain which gives the town its name.

Our accommodation for the night is the Aroha Mountain Lodge, a B&B run by Greg and Linda Marshall in a converted villa backing on to the historic Te Aroha Domain, said to be the best-preserved Edwardian public park in the country. (They also rent out an old gold-miner's cottage and rooms in another villa nearby which used to be the town's maternity hospital.)

The centrepiece of the domain is the lordly Cadman Building, once a grand bathhouse opened in 1898 which accommodated 13 individual bathrooms.

Closed in the 1960s after the decline of the spa, the building was restored in the 1990s and converted into the town's museum.

The domain itself is a living museum, with buildings, springs and artistically rustic landscape features dotted around its grassy slopes.

A handful of original buildings remain, including the No7 Bathhouse, its carved bargeboards signalling its original role as the segregated Maori bathhouse, and the No2 Bathhouse, the oldest original structure in the domain. The open-air leisure pools next to it - filled with heated town-supply water - are open to all.

You can also still taste the famous waters (very minerally, like sucking on a salty rock) in an octagonal pavilion housing the No8 spring - a replica built by volunteers on the 90s TV show April's Angels after the original blew over in a storm.