The coast at Makara, west of Wellington, is one of our local playgrounds for walking, swimming and snorkelling. It’s a twenty minute drive from our home, and as soon as you cross the hill from Karori, you jump abruptly from city and suburbia to a remote, weather-beaten landscape. From the coast, you look north to Mana and Kapiti Islands, and west to the ridges and islets of the Marlborough Sounds. The shoreline is pebbly or rocky, and it takes a certain grim tenacity to wade into the water and start swimming. Our usual haunt is in Wharehou or Fisherman’s Bay, with a narrow channel between rocky shoals that leads out to open water. In 2024 we were swimming as late as May, and have been walking further round to the west-facing coastline to swim before the sun sets. The water is not too cold, but once back onshore, we hurriedly get dressed and rush back to the car before hypothermia sets in!
Underwater, the main attractions are the schools of mullet swimming around the kelp forests, and the waves surging around rock outcrops. My photo of the stingray is from 2014 – since then, I’ve not seen any while I’ve been snorkelling. The sea-life gets a hammering by the weekend snorkellers, who will take paua, kina, fish – anything vaguely edible.
Winter storms wash up all manner of debris, ranging from tree trunks over 10 m long, to amazingly fragile egg-cases of the paper nautilus (Argonauta nodosa).
Waves breaking on the coastline west of Makara – this beach doesn’t have an official name, but we’ve called it Orca Beach after we saw a group of orca cruising past.
Some of the birdlife along the coast: white-faced heron (matuku moana); pied shag (karuhiruhi); pipit (pihoihoi)
It used to be that seals only wintered over at Sinclair Head on the south coast, but here are seals on the west coast Between Opau Bay and Ohariu Bay.
Washed up on the shoreline: The amazingly fragile egg-case of the paper nautilus (Argonauta nodosa), a bird skull and beak; porcupine fish; camouflaged spider crab.
Underwater. The stingray was disturbed in 2014 – I haven’t yet come across another.
I get a lot of satisfaction following schools of yellow-eyed mullet (aua), although often it seems like they are circling around me, perhaps sizing me up for lunch!
Top row: Octopus, and clusters of seaweed; Bottom row: Crystal jelly (Aequorea forskalea) in large numbers.
Re-focusing on colours, shapes, reflections
Two evenings in May 2024.
