Best Beach 2023: Jesse Mulligan nominates Tauranga Bay, Northland

TV and radio host and Viva Dining Out editor Jesse Mulligan says Northland’s Tauranga Bay is his favourite beach. But what’s yours? To find out how to nominate your favourite spots in the Herald’s Best Beach campaign, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Tauranga Bay is a beach in the great Northland tradition: white sands, clear water and completely empty 358 days of the year. And it’s not like it’s difficult to get to. Just 90 minutes north of Whangārei, you turn off the main road, then turn off that road, then turn off that road and you’re there. Though when I say “there”, there really is no “there”. No shops, few houses, just a couple of concrete picnic tables and some seagulls bleating for a feed.

Oh and there’s a campground. According to local rumour it’s owned by an ex-All Black but news doesn’t travel fast around here so perhaps he’s long gone - it’s hard to imagine the investment would be lucrative (imagine sitting in front of the TV in winter watching Dan Carter spruik for Chemist Warehouse and Richie as the face of Fonterra, then looking out at your own personal empire of two German tourists sleeping in a pup tent).

My dad took me to Tauranga Bay and now I take my own kids. I was never much of a beach boy, to be honest, but as a father I feel an obligation to look as though I’m enjoying myself so that my own four children don’t turn out like me - reading books in the car while their peer group learns to surf. So I frolic in the waves, an uptight middle-aged man doing his best impression of carefree fun, and I’ve been pretending so long now I’ve almost convinced myself. My kids catch the vibe and run into the water after me - them splashing each other and diving for pipi, me with a frozen grin bobbing up and down secretly thinking about what I’ll get out next from the library.

I pretend for the benefit of my wife Victoria too, because she loves the beach (the beach in general, but also this beach - the holiday destination she inherited when she took on my surname). And though we’ve been visiting Tauranga Bay for years now, we’re still sometimes surprised.

“Look Daisy, there’s a dolphin in the waves!” Victoria cried out to our 7-year-old a couple of summers ago. “Go out and play with it.”

Daisy followed her mother’s instructions and waded into the water, even though all the other swimmers were heading, with some urgency, in the other direction.

“Babe,” I said, looking at the sleek, dark shape moving slowly through the breakers. “I don’t think that’s a dolphin.”

Well, nobody said communing with nature was risk-free.

Given the number of hours you end up spending at your favourite beach over summer, you’re bound to have the odd mishap. As a youngster my brother came off his surfboard and landed on his head, engendering a long and complicated process where two St John volunteers carried him slowly over the wave-swept rocks on a stretcher (he was fine, eventually). Victoria locked the keys in the boot of our Camry one year (the local AA guy looked a lot like one of those St John volunteers from three decades prior) and one terrifying day my wedding ring slipped off my finger and into the ankle-deep water while I was dithering about a swim.

“I’ve lost my wedding ring!” I yelled to nobody in particular, but a guy further up the beach heard me and ran down to help. I had already moved on to the acceptance stage of this four-figure mistake when he bent down and pulled my platinum band out of the wet sand like it was a pipi.

He handed it to me, began to walk off, then turned and said “My name’s Dave, in case you ever want to thank me publicly”.

Tauranga Bay in Northland is Jesse Mulligan's favourite beach. But what's yours? Photo / Amy Whyte

Thanks Dave.

At one end of the beach is a small DoC reserve where optimistic dotterels lay their eggs. I paid no attention to this patch of spinifex until I started on RNZ and became a born-again conservationist. Now I spend a lot of anxious time standing at the edge of the reserve, trying to pluck up the courage to tell people their dogs should be on a leash. At the other end is Butterfly Bay, according to legend once a winter destination for all the monarch butterflies in the world but, like the All Black campground owner, it’s not clear whether that was true, and if so for how long.

Fewer butterflies aside, literally nothing has changed about Tauranga Bay since I first began visiting in the late 1970s. I hope nothing ever does change. I suppose there is a small chance that New Zealand’s best beach will one day be “discovered”, but not in this lifetime. For now, the sharks and dotterels have the place almost entirely to themselves.

Nominate New Zealand’s Best Beach

The Herald is searching for New Zealand’s Best Beach 2023, and we need your help.

The Best Beach series runs through January and it starts with you. We want you to nominate your favourite beaches from around the country in these five categories:

• Best Family Beach
• Best Surf Beach
• Best City Beach
• Best Camping Beach
• Best Hidden Gem

You can nominate one contender in each category and tell us a little bit about why you think they deserve to win. You can also send us a favourite photo of you and your whānau enjoying these great summer spots.

Nominations are open until the end of Sunday, January 8. From there, your entries will be counted and the 10 most popular nominees in each of the five categories will be named as our finalists. You will then be able to vote for the ultimate winners in each category, which will be crowned at the end of the month. To find the form and read more Best Beach stories, go to nzherald.co.nz/bestbeach