Whangārei: Countercultural Capital of the North

A hidden gem, with an amazing wild walkway, huge waterfalls, verdant native bush, old stone walls, and the new Hundertwasser Art Centre.

First published on a-maverick.com on 25 March 2022.

Updated 14 January 2023 with additional Hundertwasser Art Centre material and mention of the associated Wairau Māori Art Gallery.‍

WHANGĀREI is the biggest city to the north of Auckland, the de facto capital of the huge subtropical peninsula of Te Tai Tokerau (‘the north coast’) or Northland, also known as the ‘Winterless North’, which stretches more than 300 kilometers from Auckland to Cape Rēinga: the place where the spirits of departed Māori were said to leap into the sea, to take what my own Scottish ancestors called the low road back to the Polynesians’ ancestral homeland-cum-heaven of Hawaiki.

All along both coasts of the peninsula, from Auckland to the Cape, there are famous and fabulous coastal resorts.

Long beaches, with views in places of craggy, jungle-covered subtropical islands just off the coast, most famously in the Bay of Islands but in other places as well.‍

The Winterless North. The formal administrative division between Auckland and Te Tai Tokerau/Northland runs just south of Mangawhai Heads, but geographically, Northland begins at Auckland. Background map date ©2020 Google, twenty further place names added. North at top.

And coastal walks along cliffs and rugged peninsulas such as the Cape Brett Peninsula…