Into the heart of 'Piano' country

By COLIN MOORE

The lunch spot is as busy as a Devonport cafe on a summer Sunday. We are tucking into sandwiches, cups of hot soup, yoghurt and apples - just the nosh for lunch at the Les Ward shelter in one of the best-known spots in the Waitakere Ranges, the Pararaha Valley.

The spot was once the site of Muir's Cottage, the last farmhouse in the area, where trampers would doss down for the night among rats as big as cats.

The rats have gone, along with the cottage, although the modern Auckland Regional Park shelter shows signs that some people spend the night on its floor and scribble inanities on the woodwork.

Gone, too, is the Pararaha sawmill and its workers' cottages.

What remain, and bring the crowd here for lunch on a brisk winter Sunday, are the imposing rock battlements of the Pararaha gorge, dominated by Baldy.

In here the varied origin of the ranges is exposed for all to see. There is a black staircase of lava that flowed from the huge Waitakere Volcano that 20 million years ago sat about 20km off the west coast. It grew to five or six times the size of the central North Island mountain trio.

In some cliff faces are layers of sandstone and mudstone, formed from seabed silt.

To get here we drive to the neighbouring Karekare Valley.

This is Piano country and it's hard to decide whether the award-winning film was specially made for the eerie, mysterious setting or whether the spot was just chosen by a location scout.

The colonial history of the area has striking similarities with the Jane Campion script - isolated farms and loggers, lonely wives, and the nearest neighbours the sawmill in the Pararaha Valley.

A tramline through the swamp and dunes took timber from the Pararaha mill to a wharf at Whatipu. When the mill burned down its Scots manager, Charles Murdoch, decided to rebuild at Karekare - and the volcanic outcrops that blocked the way were going to be no obstacle.

Picks, crowbars and sledgehammers hacked a tunnel through one 20m outcrop and the cliffs were blasted and gaps bridged until the tramline reached Karekare.

Old photographs show mill workers' cottages nestling in an ethereal grove of pohutukawa trees that were the location of one of The Piano's memorable scenes.

In our case the call is to the beach that has been a popular recreational spot for Aucklanders. .

I usually prefer beaches on the east coast to those on the west, except in the winter when the rugged headlands, black sand and wind-hewn dunes assume the drama of a Bronte novel - or a scene in The Piano.

As we walk south along the beach in a stiff breeze, clumps of spume scud along ahead of us, appearing almost animated.

Ahead are Karekau Pt and Gap Gallery, tributes to a stubborn Scot and colonial determination to mill every tree standing.

Somehow they got the tramline around the cliff and across the gap; today's walkers traverse the obstacle on a path cut into the cliff, protected by steel stanchions and wire netting.

It's easy walking along the beach until the cliffs reach down to the sea again at Tunnel Pt. And here lies a tribute to Murdoch's miscalculations. After chiselling a rail tunnel through the rock and transferring mill machinery from Pararaha to Karekare, they found the steam-engine boiler was too big to squeeze through.

So there it sits, a rusty monument, at the tunnel's southern portal. It is wet and marshy past the tunnel and easy to get waylaid into coastal lagoons before, from the top of a large sand dune, you can see a boardwalk that leads to the Pararaha Valley Track and the Les Ward shelter.

Our return to Karekare is along the top of the coastal battlements on the Zion Hill and Zion Ridge Tracks.

We pass a large group of Women's Outdoor Pursuiters heading in the other direction. Back at Karekare the carpark is full. Horse-drawn buggies may have gone - but the ocean seems as popular as ever.

* colinmoore@xtra.co.nz

Where: Waitakere Ranges Regional Parkland, Karekare-Parahaha Valley circuit.

Walking time: About four hours; 8km. Add another 40 minutes for return trip to Les Ward shelter.

Access: Turn off Scenic Drive on to Piha Rd and, after 11km, left on to Karekare Rd. The circuit can start or finish through the Pohutukawa Glade Walk or north of the Watchman. The rocks around Gap Gallery are not passable near high tide and dangerous in high seas.

More information: AA Leisure Walks, Waitakere, by Kathy Ombler; Auckland Regional Parks, ph (09) 303 1530.