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Once upon a time, West Auckland's Waitakere Ranges were a wild place where hardy folk hacked their way through the bush to make a home. It was still this way in the 1940s, when airline pilot Captain J. Nevill-Jackson bought 14ha of frighteningly steep land 240m above sea level on a narrow ridge and set out to make his Eden.
He took three days to cut a track from Opanuku Rd to the place where Waitakere Estate sits today. Being wartime, building materials were scarce, so he constructed a bachelor pad out of aeroplane packing cases. In 1953, he married and started a family. Faced with compulsory retirement at 55, he decided to turn his home into accommodation on a fairly ambitious scale, given the location.
Cut to the present. You would expect to see portraits of the family in the lobby and a multinational hotel brand name over the front entrance. But Waitakere Estate is not like that. Nearly 70 years after the captain put his plan into action, the property is still owned and operated by the Nevill-Jacksons: sons Reg and Hugh.
"We grew up with a sense of freedom and isolation, there was virtually no one living there then and we had to do our schooling by correspondence. It was a great upbringing in the bush, climbing trees and building tree huts," says Reg. He lived overseas for about 20 years, but felt the pull of the place when the time came to decide on its future. "I have a real passion for the environment and an attachment to the family's history. I don't think I could live anywhere else now."
Today, Waitakere Estate is a four-star boutique hotel set in 28ha of pristine native bush on Scenic Drive. But there is no way this sentence can do justice to the blinding beauty of its setting. The rather hair-raising drive gives you some idea of what to expect (and choppering in to land on the helipad would also blow your socks off), but its extraordinary position on top of a ridge means that the virgin native bush wraps right around the hotel in a vast arena of green.
Massive rimu, kauri, rewarewa and totara abut the landscaped gardens where native trees give way to camellias, rhododendrons and frothy-flowered clematis. Not surprisingly, quite a few people choose to get married in the chapel or the garden and then hole up in one of the luxurious rooms for their honeymoon. But no ceremony for us - we just wanted to walk in the bush, eat with a jaw-dropping view of the distant city and wake to the sounds of birds and not a 2-year-old.
One of the most refreshing things about Waitakere Estate is that you can tell straight off that the staff don't have a standardised manual of regulations. You're given a hand-drawn map of the two main bush walks on site, and they caution that the tracks can be slippery and steep.
And, yes, the Kauri Track is like a vertiginous skating rink in places with a little landslide that has you tiptoeing along a path next to a cliff marked out with small rocks. It's part of an old tramline from kauri-milling times. Here, we went deep into a bushy gully that was silent except for the buzz of insects, the sound of the stream and the trilling of tui.
More people walk the Ridge Track, I think, which only takes about 15 minutes. On the way back to our room, a woman guest was talking loudly on the phone while standing on her balcony. "Ooh," she yelled, "it's like a fairyland here at night!"
We were ready to chew our arms off by dinnertime. The views from the restaurant are stunning, and the food's pretty darned good, too. I can never resist calamari, and had that for my entree, followed by a delicious rack of lamb on rosemary polenta and ratatouille. My partner had curried kumara soup and then a rather adventurous trio of game: rabbit, ostrich and venison (do people hunt ostrich?). White chocolate torte and tiramisu, a bottle of bubbles and the city lights twinkled far away: a fairyland indeed.
The hotel's 12 luxurious rooms had a makeover last year and are now a little bit French provincial and a little bit Louis XIV (in the gilt mirror tradition), but with super-king beds that would have had Louis searching for his queen. Tres chic. Our curved balcony echoed the green sweep of manicured lawn trimmed with box hedging and the shapely swimming pool below.
But you really can't have too much of a good thing. A peaceful sleep, a gentle awakening and a massive cooked breakfast the next morning. Guiltlessly, I tucked into a plate of fruit followed by bacon, sausages, hash browns, mushrooms, tomato and eggs and never once allowed my tea to cool while I wiped Marmite off a little person. (The management clearly recognises this sector of the market and the fact sheet reads: "Children over 5 welcome.")
Despite the late checkout, it was time to burst the bubble and return to real life. Perhaps it would be more convincing if I had a little niggle about something here but I just wasn't in the mood: too relaxed, well fed and feeling good about this proudly independent haven in the bush.
* Further information:Auckland's Waitakere Estate, 573 Scenic Drive, Waiatarua, Auckland, phone (09) 814 9622, email info@waitakereestate.co.nz, www.waitakereestate.co.nz. Rooms start at $245 a night. A Getaway package, including a bottle of bubbly on arrival, a three-course dinner, a night's accommodation and breakfast is $435.
There is a lounge bar, restaurant, swimming pool, health spa, sauna and squash court on site plus two conference areas and activities including abseiling, 4WD safaris, golf, wine-tasting, canyoning and mountain bike riding can be arranged.
