Makara Beach
No beach, but a hell of a lot of wind and geography
Saturday 15th January 2005

One thing, now that I've moved to this new look and layout that suddenly struck me is I no longer have to stick every image I take on here. Back when I was traveling through Australia, I used the site as a backup for my original digital camera. I had no laptop or portable computer, the camera had a whole 2mb of internal memory, and so the only way to store images I had was on floppy disks. And that was assuming I could find a computer to get them off the camera in the first place. I could store up to 96 images and that was it. No memory cards to replace to give you extra storage, 96 was your lot, so as that memory filled, I'd have to get ruthless about what images I wanted to keep or find somewhere to back them up and wipe the memory.

Anyway, as such I would try and find ways to justify the space the photos took up, so only the best of them were kept, and their presence on the web was excused by... well, poorly built webpages around them. But now I have a laptop to store photos on. And my camera has extra memory, so it finally dawned on my that I only need to put the photos on here I actually want people to see. Take Pete's wedding page (my old flatmate); I took about five times the number of photos presented, only kept about half of those (deleting those that didn't come out well) and of those only a handful made it onto the site.

The corollary of this revelation was this: I don't have to babble on to fill space anymore. In order to allow more images to be put on a page, I used to have to artificially pad out the text with bumpf and break the narrative (such as it was) up into paragraphs after every sentence so that the images scattered around the page didn't have alignment problems. Six years and two digital cameras later, I still have those same bloody alignment issues, but at least I can write without worry and only put a handful of quite reasonable images on a page rather than two dozen dubious ones.

Obviously I'm aware of the irony that I'm waffling on about waffling on rather than talking about Makara Beach, but I wanted to get it off my chest and here's as good a place as any. I'll stop.

Makara Beach. Like Airlie Beach in Queensland, the name is a little misleading as there really isn't any beach as such to speak of. Certainly not of the crystal-sands-and-waving-palm-trees variety which is my personal mental image when the word "beach" is used. Instead the waves and wind batter a small semi-circular bay lined with grey rocks and weather beaten wooden buildings. There's partial evidence of an attempt at tourist facilities with a concrete public toilets (well maintained and clean), a portable snack hut and a very closed seaside cafe. Whether the lack of tourist-fleecing travel detritus that normally accompanies an attractive locale is due to it's slightly inaccessible location, or it's rather exposed climate, I'm not sure. Certainly the wind, already tearing across the white-flecked waves and rocks with gusto when we arrived, intensified to an incredible extent as we hiked along the adjacent cliffs.

Also I should be fair when I use the term "inaccessible" when describing the road links to Makara. They're perfectly adequate for most vehicles, dwindling to barely a lane and a half in places although always paved. The problem for us was purely related to the less than herculean output of our 50cc scooter. In places, the gradient was sufficient to have us down to a slightly-wobbly 15kph or less, though thankfully never actually grinding to a halt. Well, not on the road to Makara. At one stage, still within central Wellington, Jo had to quickly jump off the scooter to allow it to continue to climb a particularly impressive gradient, but assuming your vehicle has more pulling power than ours, you'll be fine.

The main attraction of Makara, as far as I can tell, is as a trekking and hiking location. Given the powerful winds coming off the ocean, I'd guess windsurfing is also a good bet, although the chances of being blown onto jagged rocks would probably dampen my enthusiasm for the sport. So, lacking both a windsurfer and a death-wish, Jo and I decided a bit of a ramble would fit the bill and followed a pleasant but vertiginous path up the hill south of the bay and along the cliffs. As you ascend the views are excellent, with contour after contour of coastline appearing as you rise higher along the bluffs. Also rising was the wind, reducing what would have been a swelteringly sunny day into a deceptively clement climate. Deceptive as both Jo and myself were somewhat sun-baked by the return leg of the hike.

The path we followed leads up to the remains of WWII fortifications on the top of the cliffs, a relic of the war in the pacific, although if ever used, I have no idea. There's not much left now except for a rubble-lined bunker overlooking two dilapidated gun emplacements, now only housing encroaching vegetation and graffiti. What is it that possesses people to scrawl on things, I have no idea, but what possesses them to hike for an hour to a building in the middle of nowhere to write "Gazza iz a prick" and draw crude approximation of breasts on it genuinely mystifies me. I wonder sometimes whether famous explorers have simply been more ambitious vandals. Perhaps Scott's real intention was to reach the pole and carve "Oats is a arse!" on it before anyone else.

Anyway, as impressive as the views were from the top of the cliffs, we rapidly came to the conclusion that we really should have brought some variety of pack lunch, although with the extra weight the scooter might not have made it there at all, so maybe it was for the best. Instead we took some photos, caught our breath and slogged our way back to the comparative calm of the beach and the welcome refreshments of the snack hut. I can highly recommend the gourmet hotdog if you ever visit.

© Barny Russell 2005