Matata Wildlife Lagoons

Sunday 2^nd February, 2020

I saw the date and thought one way of looking at it was 02022020.  Another way is 20200202.  Either way a palindrome.

Today I did a quick (about an hour) wander around the Matata wildlife lagoons and beach, which is minutes away from where I currently live.  The route I took is my usual one, that includes both lagoons and the beach itself.  The sun was just coming up, way off to the East, as I set out.

I walked the causeway out toward the camping grounds, but veered left halfway out, going along a isthmus of land running between the West Lagoon on my left (with the main road and shops beyond),

and a small patch of wetland (and the camping ground beyond it) to my right.  The mosquitoes must be terrible for those camping here.

The views either side are mostly obstructed by the flax and trees that grow alongside the trail, but I saw a few pukekos and an interesting bundle of spiderweb.

Passing the western end of the lagoon, I was swooped down upon by two birds (this also happened last Sunday when I walked the same route).  I want to say they were pied stilts (after looking at photos on the internet afterward), but my knowledge of birds is limited.  Obviously they have a nest nearby and do this, I assume, to try and keep nosey people like myself at bay.  Eventually one of them landed long enough for me to switch lenses on my camera and get a reasonably decent shot.

Ahead of me were the houses that have been labelled “red zone” after the floods of 2005.  I thought the council had forced the owners to vacate them, but they all still seemed occupied.  The only casualty I could see was an area of flat land where I think once there had been a house.

I turned right (Northward) and walked along a sandy path through the scrub, gorse bushes along my left, and then over the sand dunes to the beach.  

When I came out here last week, there were people with surf-casting rods about every 20 metres or so all along the beach, as it was the annual Matata fishing competition then.  This morning there was the occasional person, but not too many.  What I thought was a kayaker pushed out through the waves, and a woman who had been following me for the past five minutes stopped to chat with some chap who had parked his vehicle at the edge of the sand.  Along above the high tide mark were tyre tracks heading off into the distance.  I don’t understand why people feel the need to drive on the beach, for me it ruins the experience/atmosphere/milieu, and I'm sure contributes to coastal erosion.

I angled down toward the water, the tide obviously out, but whether it had reached it’s nadir I couldn’t tell (and some internet research later proved that low tide was still 30 to 40 minutes away).  I could not see Whakaari (White Island) to the North, a site of recent tragedy after some volcanic activity, due to the cloud and haze along the horizon, but I could see the other islands toward the North East.  With the islands off the coast and the sun rising ahead, the morning view was magnificent.

After a while I encountered some fishermen, and a couple who had obviously just come in from swimming, bundled in beach towels.  They seemed familiar, and I think it was this couple I saw in the surf last weekend when I walked here.  I don’t think swimming here is very safe, but I guess that does not stop people from doing it.  After I had passed by, they walked over the dunes into the camping ground.  Ahead I could see someone fishing with their quad-bike parked right on the beach.  With a sigh of irritation, I turned away from the water and over past a small car park, down to the camping ground entrance.  At this point I turned left, walking parallel to the beach, but down on the landward side of the dunes.  This was the path alongside the East lagoon (the one I look over from my house).

A pile of sand had been dug onto the path, either by a rabbit who liked living beside the sea, or a dog who liked digging after sea-bunnies.  A minute or so later, the nature hide appeared on my right.  I entered and glanced out over the lagoon, but the growth of plants and trees had grown across the viewing gap and I could only make out a few birds on the water.

Just after the hide, the original trail (to the right in the photo below) had dropped below the current water table and was muddy and flooded, so a rough track had been cleared around the higher ground to the left, then dropping back down to reconnect.   

Just beyond, I ran into a Maori chap and his (off-leash) dog.  As we walked side-by-side for a short distance, the man regaled me of tales of a white swan family he had seen a day or so ago flying up and out of the lagoon, before he drifted off into some odd rant about past civilisations (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans) and how they never last.

When the trail swept up and back toward the beach, I turned, leaving the man and his dog to their devices, and walked back along the trail.  There was a better view of the birds on the water from this angle.

I retraced my steps to the camping ground entrance, then headed back inland along the causeway, to return home to get some weeding done in my veggie patch.