Travel Diary: Beach Times in New Zealand

Earlier in the year I made my bi/annual trip home to New Zealand, this time to shoot a wedding down on the Coromandal Peninsula - probably one of my favourite places on earth. I got these rolls back from the lab and it really does look like I spent my entire holiday on the sun soaked beaches, laying about like a happy fur seal. Which isn't too far off. We did a lot of driving and probably saw more of the Coromandal than I have since 1999 (the summer of, when I spent 3 weeks asleep on a beach drinking beer and sketching coastlines - good times.)

The Coromandal is a pretty cool part of the world. Originally popular with gold miners and kauri plunderers (that's a word right) its pretty much these days a hub of tourists and hippies, people who don't want to live in Auckland but don't want to be too far from the city (its about a 2/3 hour drive or you can get a ferry) - frankly its the perfect place to set up a little home and never. ever. leave.

We spent a week in Whangamata, before heading up coast a bit to Hahei for a few days - from here you can hike to actual Narnia aka Cathedral Cove, they shot some of Prince Caspian there - its one of the most magical places in the world. Last time I visited I was joined by a pod of around 200 dolphin friends for breakfast.

After this we drove around the coast to Whitianga so I could visit some old school friends, had some fish and chips in Coromandal Town, then stopped in Thames before heading home. I love the buildings in Coromandal Town and Thames, such great signage.

After this we spent some time in the city - but I only took photographs of the ocean, because you can do that in Auckland.

And a shipping yard we walked past...

One of my all time favourite places in the AKL is Muriwai - a beach I basically grew up on during my high school years (because it was the 1990s and we all loved the surfer boys) - we popped along to catch the end of the gannet season. Love a gannet!

That west coastline takes my breath away every time.

This post is getting ridiculous so I'll wrap it up with some of the beaches more local to my parent's house - we spent a day out at Mangawhai and Goat Island. Both top spots during the week when there are no other humans around.

At this point I'm asking myself why I moved so far away from all of this. But that's life isn't it.

Some of these were featured in a guest post I did for the wonderful For the Easily Distracted a few weeks ago, thanks to Rhianne for letting me take over her blog! I shot all of these with my Yashica TL Electro on .. misc 35mm film.