Makara Beach

Sawyer woke up early and asked if I could make pancakes for breakfast. “Of course,” I said and gleefully sprang from my bed and ran to the kitchen. Well, not exactly. But I did make him some Vogel’s fruit and spice toast before we borrowed the neighbors’ car and went to Wellington Indoor Sports for his weekly field hockey game. His team, the Keas, crushed the Indians 11 to 1. Sawyer is a great goalie.

After the game we drove to the coast west of Wellington at Makara Headland. Wellington feels like home, but without a car, the surrounding countryside has remained a bit mysterious.



Today was our last opportunity to hike the Makara Walkway before it closes until October for the lambing season. On the way, we stopped at The Original German Bakery at Kelburn Shops to round out our picnic lunch with a rosemary foccacia. Past the Wellington suburb of Karori, city abruptly gives way to sheep country: brush and pasture. On Makara Road, we threaded steep hills and valleys to Makara Beach at Ohariu Bay.

Makara Beach is an old fishing village consisting of a couple dozen weather-beaten homes and a café. “Do you suppose that still gets good signal?” Hillery asked pointing to the house closest to the beach, atop of which sat a severely rusted satellite dish.

After a brief jaunt along the stony beach, the track headed south and up a steep, grassy hill. To the east, white sheep dotted green hills that seemed to go on forever. As we climbed, the blades of a wind generator came swinging over the hilltop.



Makara Beach is normally quite windy and today was no exception. It is an apt location for Wellington’s Project West Wind, a wind farm completed in 2009 and consisting of 62 turbines. The farm produces enough electricity to power every home in Wellington.

If you’ve never been close to a wind generator, they look like mounted 747’s with caricature-sized propellers. They are impossibly huge. I’ve seen buildings this tall, but they didn’t move. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The tips of the aerofoils must have moved at more than a hundred miles an hour. Some people find their sound eerie, but to me it’s the sound coal, oil, and uranium make when they stay in the ground.



The track followed a narrow strip of land between the pasture fence and a precipice a hundred yards above the rocky shore. The view was terrific but intimidating with the wind gusting our feet sideways. At the top of the hill were several crumbling World War II artillery emplacements pointing west toward the Tasman Sea.

At the artillery emplacements, the track turned inland through the wind farm and sheep pasture. We saw no lambs, but the ewes looked awfully full. Dozens of white wind turbines receded into the eastern horizon, all at the wind’s attention and spinning in time. A quick descent down a service road turned us back toward the sea.

The smooth grey stone beach was strewn with drift wood. We found a rocky recess out of the wind to have our picnic: carrot chips with horseradish cream, grapes, nectarines, tasty cheese, the foccacia from the bakery, and mint slices for dessert.



We took our time walking back to the car, the kids combing the beach for paua shells, an old rope, pumice stones, which Sawyer later floated in the bathtub and used to scrub his feet, a very stiff-bristled paint brush, and a very gnarled stick.





Our legs tired, our cheeks rosy, we headed back to Wellington. John and Laura, our neighbors who’d lent us their car, treated us to pizza and beer.

“What are we doing tomorrow?” asked Sawyer. Let’s hope all that fresh air makes us sleep like babies.