In the Tiger Room at Kauri Cliffs, Jacqui Gibson has an appointment with the past
I meet Michael Venner in the Tiger Room of The Lodge at Kauri Cliffs at 3pm as arranged. He's seated at a wooden banquet table with history books by local authors such as Lorelei Hayes within easy reach. The carved bust of Chief Tāraia Ngākuti Te Tumuhuia has been lifted from the bookcase and rests on the table, a revered visitor from the past.
It's an overcast day in the Bay of Islands, yet the panoramic clifftop views of the Pacific Ocean are still breathtaking. The sea is a flat sheet of metallic blue, undisturbed by the seasonal south-westerlies. The Cavalli Islands, once heavily populated by Northland iwi, cast ethereal shadows on the water.
The Lodge, one of three high-end retreats owned by the New York-based Robertson family, is reportedly full this weekend, quietly buzzing with luxury-loving Kiwis. As evidence to the fact, flutes of champagne are ferried to a couple reclining on plush deckchairs. On the world-class golf course, a guest in a softshell jacket swings a club, while a group of similarly dressed golfers looks on.
This afternoon I've signed up for Kauri Cliffs' Guided Heritage Discovery tour with Michael, a guest relations manager with tribal links to the region. The tour was introduced five years ago to round out the range of activities you can do at this exclusive 2500ha property. Other ways to spend your time include sea kayaking, beach barbecuing, penguin spotting and 4x4 adventuring to Cape Reinga. After the tour, I'm off to the spa.
Michael explains his three-hour tour was designed to feed a growing appetite for New Zealand history from overseas guests.
"They told us they want a sense of place when they come here. Some knew about the historical significance of the Bay of Islands and Waitangi but wanted to know more about the unique cultural heritage of the region. Otherwise, to be frank, one beautiful place is the same as the next, right? It's the layered story of this land that engages many people, especially when they hear it from someone with a whakapapa or family connection to it."
Michael tells me the Robertsons, for their part in the narrative, will celebrate 20 years in New Zealand's luxury travel sector this year, a legacy that began at Kauri Cliffs in 2001.
Though US billionaire and family patriarch Julian Robertson brought his wife, Josie, and the couple's three kids to New Zealand on a family holiday in 1978, it wasn't until 1995 that the family opted to buy the then coastal sheep station.
Skip forward to today and here lies the Robertson's vision: a world-class property, designed around an award-winning golf course, inspired and developed further into stylish lodge accommodation by Josie, and managed today by son Jay, as chief executive of all three lodges.
The family are in New Zealand for the long haul, says Michael, as we hop into a golf buggy and drive to the property's clifftop perimeter.
They come to New Zealand every summer, visiting all three properties, but stay longest at Kauri Cliffs in the Owner's Cottage. They've donated major artworks worth $115 million to Auckland Art Gallery and invested in Dry River winery. They fund University of Auckland research, local forest regeneration and kiwi preservation. More recently, they've backed New Zealand's America's Cup syndicate and the region's fight against kauri dieback.
They're also keen supporters of the cultural heritage tour.
Strolling across the green, Michael points out Cape Brett and the Purerua Peninsula to the east and Towai Hill to the south. He gestures in the direction of Mātauri Bay, a bay long associated with Ngāti Kahu and the shoreline understood to be pioneer missionary Reverend Samuel Marsden's first jumping-off spot in New Zealand.
The islands nearby were named the Cavallis by British explorer James Cook on his first visit to New Zealand in 1769. But now, as then, they represent something entirely different to local iwi, says Michael.
"We see these islands as a family. The highest peak of Motukawanui, a fortified Māori village at one point, is Dad. Motukawaiti, looking like a woman lying on her back from where we stand, is Mum, with the smaller surrounding islands their kids."
Before we make our way to the 900-year-old kauri nearer to the property's entrance, we take in a sacred or wāhi tapu area nearby. For years, the forested rockface was where iwi buried the bones of their ancestors, says Michael, before pointing down the valley to Takou Bay.
That sandy bay, he says, is the final resting place of the Mataatua waka, understood to be one of the early migration canoes that travelled from Polynesia to New Zealand sometime in the 1200s.
It's the property's part in the country's history that lingers during my stay at Kauri Cliffs. At one time, it was a through-route and regular place of contact between Christian Missionary Society settlers and iwi. For more than three decades, it was the Williams' family farm.
Walking with Michael at Pink Beach, I wonder how busy the ocean waters of the Bay of Islands would've been in those days of first contact. As we sip kawakawa tea, a common elixir of the time, I reflect on the particular luxury of understanding the cultural heritage of the places we visit.
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