Seal spotting in the Wairarapa

A coast on the move... near Cape Palliser. Photo / Jill Worrall

They'd promised seals... but then of course it never pays to trust travel writers.

Still, I was still irked that I couldn't spot even a solitary seal as we drove along the coast towards Cape Palliser in the Wairarapa.

But, wait, may be that was a fur seal sunbathing on that offshore island?

We stopped the car beside a grassy knoll just above high-tide mark to make sure. And then realised that less than a metre away a seal was eyeballing us from the shelter of a flax plant.

Just one eyeball mind you... clearly it didn't regard us as a sufficient threat to both opening both eyes.

On closer inspection we discovered dozens of seals sunbathing on the grass.

Apparently the North Island's largest colony of fur seals are a soft lot. Why try to loll about on craggy rocks when you can stretch out on the equivalent of a front lawn?

The seals are just one of the attractions of this stretch of the Wairarapa coastline, which is wild and woolly and rather reminiscent of the South Island's West Coast.

Active faultlines and a smorgasbord of sedimentary layers provide the ingredients for cliffs and coast that are a mix of highly resistant rock rearing up from the sea and gravels that are equally dramatically falling into it.

The road to Cape Palliser hits the sea just south of Lake Ferry (near Martinborough) and close to our overnight stay at the historic homestead, Whangaimoana.

Jacqui and Alastair Sutherland's home was built in 1876. Unusually for a New Zealand farmstead, its design is distinctly Italianate. We had the entire southern wing to ourselves and demolished bacon and eggs while gazing across the front meadow which has been planted with thousands of daffodils.

While Jacqui picked bunches of flowers for Daffodil Day we rambled through her garden.

The pet kune kune pig met us in an orchard full of frothy white blossom and introduced us to two donkeys and a pony.

Beyond the sheltering trees of Whangaimoana the coast was exposed and stormy. Waves boiled over offshore rocks. Many ships have come to grief here and lives have been lost.

The Cape Palliser lighthouse was built in 1897 to warn of the perils. It sits high above the sea, 250 steps up to be precise. It's a gasp of a climb to the top but at least you're unlikely to trip over any seals on the way.

This might be a remote and seemingly inhospitable coastline to humans but there are a surprising number of settlements.

Baches cling to cliff edges and nestle into the hills. While some take the concept of roughing it to a whole new level, others shout "pick me, pick me" for a home and garden magazine.

But it's all authenticity in Ngaiwi, a fishing township where - in the absence of a harbour - the fishing vessels are hauled onto trailers and dragged to and from the sea by bulldozers.

There was a purple one, even a pink one and most were held together by flakes of rust tightly holding hands.

There was no one about when I stopped to take a photograph but I felt watched.

And was that a twanging of banjos in the distance?

- Jill Worrall

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Pictured above: A coast on the move... near Cape Palliser. Photo / Jill Worrall