Taranaki Hidden Gems

As we hadn’t had a decent break in the weather I took the day off work and decided to try and find the location of a hidden waterfall that I had seen snippets of here and there. There wasn’t a lot of information on the waterfall or how to get there, however after a bit of research I discovered that it was on private property and you had to get permission to head into it.

I headed off early in the morning, following the coast for awhile and then headed inland,

not knowing exactly what I would find.

The drive in was interesting, the tar sealed road had fallen trees that you had to drive around and soon it turned to metal road where I encounter geese, cows and sheep..I was officially in the wop wops, but I needed to go further.

At the end of the road I was greeted with a lot of noisy barking dogs, I'm not sure if they were pleased to see me or just saw me as fresh meat.

I walked up to the house and asked if they minded if I went for a walk over the farm to find the water fall. He was very obliging and said I could and mentioned there were actually 2 water falls....go down that track until you get to the old bailey bridge and turn left, don't go right or you'll be in the middle of nowhere (I thought I already was in the middle of nowhere) keep going until you get to the tee in the river and follow the river to the right. "There's no tracks" he said with a smile on his face. I see you have a GPS, you might need that....probably take you 2 or 3 hrs. I grabbed my pack and camera gear and was I was on my way, down the track to the bailey bridge, turn left and keep going. The wide farm track soon turns into a disused track with fallen trees, blown culverts pipes, mud, swamp and cutty grass…I can't wait to get to the part where there's no track. Finally I get to the river, I look around to see where to go from here but there weren’t any obvious signs, heading right looked impenetrable and hard going, looks like it's down the bank and into the river. I made an arrow out of sticks so I knew where to climb back up......not sure how I missed it on the way out, but that's another story. From then on it was boulder hopping, walking along papa ledges and balancing along fallen logs, but this came to an abrupt end, there's no where to go, can't go forward, left looks too deep, so I guess I'm going right,up the bank and into the bush.

I haven't done any bush bashing yet, that could be fun….

IT WASN'T. I make my way through the bush, checking the GPS to ensure I wasn’t venturing too far away from the river, back tracking every now and then when going forward wasn’t an easy option.

Finally I get to the first stunning little waterfall and spend some time taking photos. The water fall wasn’t high,

however it was quite wide, I noticed there were a couple of small eddys with foam so I put some ND filters on the camera to grab some long exposures. Now off to the next one, looks like its bush bashing again, but apparently its only about 10 minutes from the first waterfall. I come back down to the river bank when I could here the water fall, I could see it but there was no obvious way up the

river bank to it. I scouted around looking for signs where others before me might have gone and noticed a few boulders where the moss had been flattened……looks like I'm crossing the river. Even though the river had a bit of a flow and was slippery papa, it was shallow and relatively easy to cross with the aid of walking poles. I follow up the river bank and finally get to the falls and get some photos. Unlike the first waterfall, these falls are reasonably high with a couple of streams of water and at the base is a considerably large pool. After taking a few photos I had lunch while taking in the stunning surroundings.

The trek out was pretty much in reverse apart from when I missed my arrow marker, I ended up going past the point where I entered and ended up getting bluffed out further down the river, however with a quick check on the GPS I realized that the disused track was directly above me. After a scramble/bush bash up the hill it finally opened out into the disused track and it was plain sailing from there back to the start.