Scotts Beach, Heaphy Track

The sun was setting low in the sky and the family and I decided it would be a great time to grab a torch, and head out kiwi spotting. We’re staying a 10minute drive from the beginning of the Heaphy Track — one of The Great Walks in New Zealand. Not a bad spot at all.

We waltzed in and waltzed out before the sun set so if you know Kiwi’s (the bird, not the people) you would have already guessed we didn’t see any. And you guessed right.

But wait! There was still beauty and still a story involved… Let me share:

The trees were mostly Nikau Palms so it looked like you were in the middle of the tropics somewhere. Hawaii. It looked like we were in Hawaii. Not that I’ve ever been to Hawaii.

The walk was an absolute 10/10 in beauty. The one hour we did along the track was an easy walk with some uphill and a couple pebble skips over waterfalls. Too beautiful not to go the whole way which has now been added to my bucketlist.

My mum, brother and I were walking along Scotts Beach admiring the views of Nikau, sand, and waves. We had taken a short cut through the bush and over rocks to get to the beautiful beach a tad quicker but that meant we didn’t know where the entrance to the main track was. We wanted to take the main track back because there’s a lot of fuss about this “Great Walk” and we had to see why. It wasn’t long before I spotted an orange marker on a tree and a pole to mark the beginning of the track. I headed in to make sure it truely was the right spot. My brother was sceptical, you see, there were big leaves over the said track and my brother did not believe that was the ever popular entrance to the beach. I went straight in to scope it out and to prove him wrong and prove me right. I pushed away the big leaves and trampled over sticks and twigs littering the path. The path wasn’t the most obvious and in fact it looked a little wild. Not quite what I imagined the sold out walking track would look like. I ventured further into the bush in hopes I’m proven miraculously right. But. I am met with a tent. Someone’s tent. Here I am standing all alone in the bush, and I’m not a very big person. Quite small really. And I’m standing in the middle of rough terrain looking at someone’s home for the night. Now, it did have a news article taped to the tent so it could be some educational set up but that didn’t cross my mind at the time. What crossed my mind was I was all alone in the bush, logs, sticks, leaves, trees, and stones were climbed over and through to reach where I was which was a tent that looked like it had been there for more than one night. The thought that entered my head was some bush person was living there and they could have any weapon and have any reaction to a person entering their camp. I ran, skipped, hopped, and jumped out of there as fast as I could.

My brother ended up finding the well manicured path about 200m down the beach.

Thinking about it now, with an orange tag, pole, and news articles neatly taped to this tent — it was probably some educational camp. Harmless.