Aotea by Bicycle
Tryphena - Green Campsite - Awana Bay - Medlands Beach - Tryphena
Easter 2024
I’d heard a rumour that taking a bicycle to Aotea on the ferry was free. While this simply wasn’t true, circumnavigating the island’s belly on two wheels did make for some sort of adventure. As this was everyone’s first backpacking trip there was slightly more to organise and learn than normal, especially given our janky rigs and collective mechanical skills that barely extended beyond changing a tyre. Despite the lack of experience between the Tarn, Campbell, and I, we rolled smoothly around the island and home to our respective beds with no major issues. On our journey we met many excentric locals, startled countless banded rails, and climbed what felt like thousands of vertical metres.
Natural History
Aotea persists as all that is left of the Great Barrier Volcano, a large caldera that erupted sometime between 12 and 15 million years ago. It is essentially the lost tip of the Coromandel peninsular, intermittently attaching and detaching from Port Jackson every time an ice age rolls around. During the last glacial maxima, much of the Hauraki Gulf was a low-lying plain, with the towering mountains of Aotea draining east towards Auckland. This on-and-off relationship with the mainland has inhibited almost all evolutionary divergence aside from one Olearia, a prostrate kānuka, and a sub-species of hebe. While largely lacking unique biodiversity, it still has much to offer in terms of notable ecology.
In recent years, Aotea’s island state has offered protection from various ecological enemies including stoats and possums. While the isolation didn’t stop the destructive colonials from felling every accessible kauri, they thankfully never got around to draining the wetlands. It is presumably the combination of these extensive raupō reedlands, and the exclusion of nasty stoats, that have caused the Moho pererū (Banded rail) to thrive. These ‘At Risk’ birds are ultra-rare on the mainland, however, are commonly seen wandering the trails of Aotea. I predict that these pest-free wetland ecosystems will also represent critical strongholds for Mātuku (Australasian bittern) into the future.
Due to the historic extraction of the kauri, much of the forest on Aotea is regenerating, with condition and age comparable to the Waitākere Ranges. Similarly to the mainland, pockets of remnant forest can still be found hiding in remote valleys and atop rocky peaks if you know where to look. While cycling the Forest Road on Eastern side of the island, we discovered multiple ‘high altitude’ assemblages with species including toatoa (Phyllocladus toatoa) and monoao (Halocarpus kirkii) as well as a single small stand of mature kauri.
The three of us totalled just over 100 km over our four day journey, which I believe is considered extremely mild for a bike-packing trip. Highlights included the Kaitoke Hot Springs, a geothermal river that was one of the few reminders we were traversing the Eastern rim of an ancient volcano. We stayed at some comfortable campsites with brilliant amenities and very few neighbours. On the East we enjoyed the mud and cobble bays, and on the West we enjoyed the last of the year’s swimmable weather at the beautiful white sand beaches. Tarn and I somehow climbed the heights of Aotea Road to the side of Mt Hobson and wound our way down the most epic descent I have ever ridden. All in all the most exciting departure from tramping however, was the luxury of constant access to cold ice blocks, hot coffee, and yummy food. All without even the hint of a sore shoulder.
