Outdoors: Under sheltering canopy

By COLIN MOORE

By rights there shouldn't be a sizeable kauri left standing in Northland's Puketi Forest. The forest, sandwiched between the Whangaroa Harbour in the east and the Hokianga Harbour in the west, was mercilessly logged for kauri, rimu and totara for more than 120 years.

Puketi spars held the sails aloft on Her Majesty's gunships in the 19th century and kauri was still being milled at Lanes Mill in Totara North in the late 1970s to build fine racing yachts.

The chainsaws were finally stilled when a flock of the rare kokako, or blue wattled crow, was discovered surviving in the Puketi bush and logging banished forever with the advent of the Department of Conservation.

The department, with a limited budget, has concentrated its caretaking mostly on letting Puketi heal itself free of the menace of possum and stoat.

Continuous logging of kauri is no longer a sustainable management option for a forest park. But a trek through some of Puketi's few maintained tracks reveals that the former Forest Service caretakers were not as rapacious as popularly imagined. Kauri to whet the appetite of any spar seeker still stand proudly in the bush.

One of the easiest places to assess the Forest Services' thin legacy - and imagine what might have been before the hills of Northland were raped for timber - is on the Waihoanga Gorge kauri walk. The modest 2.6km loop track is reached from Puketi Rd which skirts the forest's southern boundary and, with Waiare Rd, links SH1, near Okaihau, and SH10, near Kaeo. That makes it accessible to travellers on the Twin Coast Discovery highway.

Tour coaches regularly call at the Manginangina kauri walk near the old forest headquarters that is now a recreation area with camping ground and 24-bunk hut. The 15-minute Manginangina walk has wheelchair access, boardwalks around the kauri giants and and interpretative panels.

But if the fish aren't biting or the surf has died on the coast, it's a good time to pack some snacks and a water bottle and trek through Waihoanga Gorge. The track has its origins in the NZ Walkways system that has sadly shrivelled since a penny-pinching, ideological government disbanded the NZ Walkway Commission.

Fortunately the landowners, June and Ian Wilson, inspired by the noble aims of the Walkways Act, still allow the public to traverse their paddocks to reach the Waihoanga Stream which marks Puketi's southern boundary.

It is perhaps a measure of the nature of landowners in the valley that a little further up the road the end bale in a stack of green plastic-covered haylage has been given a smiley face for the amusement of passing motorists.

A small sign and a stile over the fence indicate the start of the walkway. Marker poles in the paddocks show the direction to a footbridge across the Waihoanga Stream and into the forest.

Officially this is a 2 1/2-hour return walk. You could do it comfortably in about half that but you would also risk missing the enchantment of Puketi. For a start, there are those kokako whose discovery saved the forest from further logging. You will be hard pressed to see them or hear their legendary singing that once echoed around this forest in the early morning but you can take time to meditate on their fate.

At least 100 kokako were in the forest in 1984 but ironically, since logging stopped, the numbers have dwindled to just 11 recorded birds and all are male.

The department hopes to right the balance with female chicks taken from Tiritiri Matangi. In an elaborate plan the Tiritiri chicks are being played tapes of the Puketi kokako song so that they learn the local dialect. They will then be mated with two male Puketi kokako and the offspring reared in Auckland and Hamilton zoos so as to maintain the Puketi genetic stock.

Eventually Puketi will again echo to the kokako's famed bush chorus.

Kaka and kiwi are also struggling to survive in the forest - hence the blitz on stoats and feral cats - and native pigeons, whose unmistakable wing beat we hear on our walk, are threatened by poaching for so-called cultural harvest. Some of the remaining kauri are under threat, too, because until 1952 kauri gumdiggers roamed over the forest and bled living trees. Now some trees, hugely impressive on one side, have begun to rot on the other where water and disease have got into the cruel wounds of the gum collectors.

For all that, the Waihoanga Gorge walkway is much more inspiring than depressing, a living promise for a healthy future.

As well as allowing access, the Wilsons manage and fence their farm in a way that helps to keep pests at bay. Walkways are being built around the sensitive root mounds of kauri close to the track.

From the track there are also views of the tumbling waterfalls in the Waihoanga Gorge where distinctive layers of volcanic and sedimentary soils are visible along the Pirau fault.

Including the Takapau kauri track would turn the Waihoanga Gorge walk into a full day hike but the Takapau track is closed at present for maintenance.

Oddly, it is a lengthy shower of rain that best demonstrates for us the promise of Puketi and other previously logged forests like it. In clear patches high in the forest canopy we can see that the rain is falling quite heavily and we have brought neither raincoat nor jacket for this short outing. Yet down on the forest floor just a few drops penetrate the canopy.

In the half hour it takes us to return to the farm paddocks, when coincidentally the rain eases, we are barely damp. The forest survivors of Puketi have kept us dry.

For further information: Department of Conservation, Kerikeri area office, ph (09) 407 8474.

Mountain biking is permitted on some Puketi Forest trails.

Hut bookings are available through the department's Kerikeri office.

Permits to hunt goats and pigs are available from the department.

* colinmoore@xtra.co.nz