The coast of Auckland: First ports of cool

Squeezing on to the packed commuter ferry, I had a flashback to Melanie Griffith, all shoulder pads and big hair, in the Eighties film Working Girl, heading home from Manhattan after another mind-numbing day in the office. Only this wasn't the Staten Island ferry. We were leaving downtown Auckland to cross the island-peppered Hauraki Gulf.

Just 20km and half an hour away across the water, the island of Waiheke was once a sleepy hideaway for artists and those seeking an "alternative" lifestyle. Back in the Sixties and Seventies Waiheke was not just off the beaten track, it was nicknamed Cadbury Island by mainland wags because the people who lived here were "fruit and nut cases". Scattered with a handful of rustic little "bachs" or seaside shacks, it was here that city-sore Aucklanders would escape for a summer of fishing, beachcombing and hiking in the hills.

Today, however, the city's urban sprawl has spread to a rash of villages and communities across the island's rolling hills and along its white powder beaches. Just a few years ago this rocky outcrop, at 93sq km slightly bigger than Guernsey, was home to 2,000 inhabitants; now there are 10,000, swelling to 30,000 in high season. Traditional commuterville, though, this ain't. As well as frazzled city executives Waiheke has continued to attract artists along with winemakers and olive growers, and vying for space with the sheep farms - this is New Zealand, after all - are vineyards, gourmet restaurants, galleries and boutique hotels.

In fact, it's a perfect stop-off for a spot of R&R after flying to the other side of the world. A gentle introduction to the easy-going Kiwi lifestyle. Or that's how Jonathan Scott, the owner of chic hotel The Boatshed, believes the island should be marketed. It might seem strange to travel halfway around the globe to two of its most southerly islands - then hop over to a mini-me version. But a couple of days to draw breath and inhale that salty sea breeze before embarking on what, for many, will be a mammoth north-to-south road trip is not such a bad idea.

The Jet Raider ferry, or Tomb Raider as it is dubbed by commuters, docks at Matiatia Wharf at the western - and most developed - end of the island. From here it's a five-minute drive through the little village of Oneroa to The Boatshed.

Jazz was drifting out of the windows as I pulled up. Jonathan's father designed the hotel, which used to be the family's old bach (pronounced "batch"). Set on a hillside above Little Oneroa bay, it has just five suites in three boatsheds and a lighthouse-style tower. The interior is nautically themed - a mix of Cape Cod and Scandinavian chic. The ceiling curves like an upturned hull; the walls are clapboard and there are sailing memorabilia and contemporary art scattered around. A roaring fire in the grate and candles in hurricane lamps completed the welcoming scene.

My room was long and narrow with tongue-and-groove walls, and a colour scheme of taupe, cream and blue. After dinner - a gourmet feast cooked by Jonathan - I retired to my room to find another fire roaring in the grate, candles flickering in huge glass jars and Joss Stone turned down low. As well as a selection of CDs and books and magazines to leaf through, there was complimentary sherry and a huge glass jar of giant jelly beans. Two Panama hats hung on the wall next to a big beach bag with a couple of towels and suntan lotion: thoughtful touches in the perfect chill-out seaside room. Outside the French windows a huge clump of seagrass rustled in the wind. Lying on one of the slatted loungers, the sea, cove and yachts just visible through the fronds, the illusion that you are right on the beach rather than perched up on the hill is complete.

"Most people don't come to Waiheke to do much," Jonathan told me. "Many visit at the beginning or end of their holidays to get over jet lag or relax before going home." Which is why he provides all the ingredients for a soporific stay - including in-room spa treatments and yoga. However, if you are more adventurous there's cycling, walking trails, kayaking and sailing. The tourist board also produces an art map taking in 28 open studios and galleries, including Connells Bay Sculpture Park. This 24-hectare coastal property at the eastern end of the island - which you may remember Billy Connolly visiting during his televised road trip - is the creation of John and Jo Gow: their vision, to unite nature and art by planting native trees and lacing the landscape with sculpture.

Armed with both the art and vineyard maps, I headed east from Oneroa to explore. The pretty streets lined with low-slung houses gradually began to peter out. On Onetangi Beach, the longest on the island with 2.5km of wild white sand, a happy family was posing for a magazine photo shoot. Continuing east, the landscape became more rugged, criss-crossed with dirt tracks. After skirting the island I headed to Te Whau Vineyard on the headland of Putiki Bay for lunch in its starkly contemporary barrel-shaped café. Auckland's most famous landmark, the Sky Tower, was visible across the water; the other customers were day-trippers from the city.

I stopped at a couple of little galleries. I swung by a few vineyards. But I couldn't shake the feeling of encroaching suburbia. The island, or at least the western half, is picket-fence-pretty but there's a nagging sense of wildness tamed. The city never seems far away. For a short stop-off before flying home that might be all you want, but for those in search of a real island escape there is another option.

About 88km north-east of Auckland and two and a half hours by ferry - but only a half-hour hop by light aircraft - is Great Barrier Island, at the furthermost reaches of the Hauraki Gulf. What's more, the transfer from the international to domestic terminal takes less time than the drive to the docks.

Whirring over the gulf in a tiny eight-seater plane, headphones on to block out some of the engine's noise, I scanned the horizon for the first glimpse of the Barrier. Suddenly the pilot started craning his neck, peering over his left shoulder at the propeller. Banking sharply, we began veering 180 degrees. My heart leapt into my mouth as I imagined us plummeting into the waves far below - until I followed his gaze. He wasn't looking at the propeller but at a whale surfacing directly beneath us. He shot us a smile and a thumbs up as we turned full circle and continued on our way.

And then there it was, Great Barrier Island looming out of the sea, a mountainous isle covered in rampant green vegetation. At 285sq km the Barrier is a little smaller than the Isle of Wight - but looks from the air like one of those primeval Spielberg fantasy locations: 70 per cent of the land is thickly forested DOC (administered by the Department of Conservation).

Captain Cook discovered the island in 1769 and named it Great Barrier, believing it sheltered the Hauraki Gulf from the worst storms of the Pacific. There were already Maori inhabitants but European settlement followed soon after. The first three English families were the Medlands, Blackwells and Sandersons and their descendants are still there today. The settlers felled the vast kauri forests for shipbuilding, while whaling also gripped the island briefly, declining along with the whales - which have now thankfully returned to these waters. In 1898 Great Barrier was the site of the world's first airmail: the Original Great Barrier Pigeongram Service was set up after it took three days to notify the mainland of the wreck of the SS Wairarapa. Pigeons covered the same distance in just two hours. The arrival of the telephone in 1908 rendered it obsolete, but pigeon post has recently been revived on the Barrier for old time's sake.

Swooping down over the mountains, we circled out to sea before curving in over the turquoise water to come in to land on the sandy runway - but not before spotting a shoal of hammerhead sharks basking in the shallow water. I had a feeling that "tame" was not a criticism I was going to be able to lob at the Barrier.

The airport is little more than a hut just off the beach at Claris. The pilot unloads your bags - and is the one behind the makeshift check-in desk when you leave. There are only 700 permanent inhabitants, no industry and no public transport as such. In the tiny car park Trevor Rendle was waiting for me in his 4x4. Trevor and his wife Carol own Earthsong, a luxury eco-lodge with just three rooms in the hills above the biggest settlement, Tryphena. That's biggest as in a handful of houses, the Stonewalls store - and an Irish pub, the Currach. Yes, even here.

Trevor used to be a chef for Air New Zealand and is now a member of the Slow Food movement. After retiring they travelled around New Zealand looking for the perfect place to settle. Earthsong is accessible only by 4x4, but when they first saw the property there was no road access at all so they tramped up the hill to take a look. Slumped in the long grass, looking out over the water Trevor thought, "What a great place for a G&T." So they bought it.

The lodge has enviable environmental credentials. There is no mains electricity on the Barrier so everyone creates their own, be it solar, wind, hydro-electric or generator-powered. In fact, self-sufficiency is a pre-requisite. But Earthsong has gone a few steps further. The walls are half a metre thick and made from straw bales. "The adobe walls were hand-plastered and they breathe so there's no condensation build-up on the windows." Carol researched it all through the Earthbuilding Association of New Zealand, and was advised by architects and engineers. The roof is made from recycled material - not metal, as that would corrode in the salt air. The flooring is eucalyptus, a renewable source that smells wonderfully aromatic. All the windows and doors were rescued from an old hotel. The ceiling insulation is sheep's wool.

Sipping that perfect G&T later that evening and gazing out over their olive groves to the sea while Trevor busied himself in the kitchen, I could understand how they had become so captivated.

The next day I set off to see more of the island with Steve Billingham of Crazy Horse Trike Tours. Billy Connolly again. Lending me a leather jacket we roared off down the road on his three-wheeler motorbike. Steve has a wealth of stories about the island's history, rare and abundant wildlife (there are even road signs warning you not to run over the rare brown teals) and local characters.

Wildlife-wise, there are not just hammerhead sharks in these parts he told me, but school sharks and mako sharks - the paranoid schizophrenics of the shark world. "Once when I was out fishing a mako came at my outboard motor - just like in Jaws. It kept coming back. The boat was only 14ft long, I think the shark was about 12ft - which means it was probably 10 but it felt like 16." He got out of there as fast as he could. One of his sons caught a school shark from the rocks when he was 17. It took three of them to land it. Steve cut it into steaks; they barbecued some of it, smoked the rest. And just in case I had any lingering thoughts of going for a swim later that day, the final watery horror story was the best. The postmistress's son was out surfing off Medland Beach when his friends suddenly saw a giant orca - that's a killer whale - speeding straight for him. They watched, horrified, but at the last minute it veered away. The whale was either play-charging or it had figured out that he wasn't a seal after all. So was that the end of his surfing days? What do you think?

And on land? Well, there are wild pigs in the hills but they mainly keep to themselves. We set off along a narrow track through towering tree ferns to Windy Canyon; the viewpoint gives some sense of the vast, untamed interior. Hiking through tangled tracts of the Great Barrier Forest that covers around two-thirds of the island, soaking up the silence and bathing in the natural hot springs are the reasons most people come to the Barrier. That and the drop-dead gorgeous beaches. Medland Beach, loved by both sharks and surfers, is a perfect dune-backed crescent, which knocks the socks off Onetangi. The surf is so powerful here that the bachs were all built behind the dunes - and are now worth millions. They are no longer owned by the islanders, however; the locals are being edged out. Which is the Barrier's problem. In the Nineties there were 1,600 residents, now there are less than half that. Real estate is so expensive that the only people able to afford it are those buying holiday homes. Steve is worried that eventually the island will become a holiday "resort" abandoned for six months of the year. Too far to be viable for commuters from Auckland, that's one concern he doesn't have. Things are changing, it seems, for both Waiheke and Great Barrier. But at least for the moment this wildly quirky, rampantly beautiful island still has a real beating heart.

Before heading back to Earthsong we swung by the Currach for a quick pint. With its chunky wooden tables, black-and-white photos and candles in Jameson's bottles, it's traditional in a mercifully unthemed way. Much of the memorabilia came from a pub in Co Kerry back in the Fifties. They serve Murphy's and Kilkenny on tap and Guinness. Thursday night is "muso night", Steve told me. He and his band, Shag Rock (you couldn't make it up), won the first song-writing competition there three years ago. He has all his own recording equipment and one of his most treasured memories was hearing his song playing on the local radio station, "even if only 40 people heard it". As we sup, a crayfisherman wanders in in his stocking feet, leaving his wellies at the door. It all feels very Shipping News, a far-flung outpost populated by a medley of oddly endearing characters. Tricia who runs Mount St Pauls, another luxury lodge, cooks at the Currach. "The tourists think we're all inbreds," she laughs, "so we don't disillusion them."

If any island deserves the affectionate fruit and nut nickname, it's Great Barrier. Then again Cadbury's is probably a little mainstream.

TRAVELLER'S GUIDE

GETTING THERE

The writer travelled to Auckland with Cathay Pacific (020-8834 8888; www.cathaypacific.com) via Hong Kong. To reduce the impact on the environment, you can buy an "offset" from Climate Care (www.climatecare.org; 01865 207 000). The environmental cost of a return flight from London to Auckland, in economy class, is £46.47. Fullers Ferries (0 64 9 367 9111; www.fullers.co.nz) has several daily trips to Waiheke (adult return NZ$28.50/ £10) and Great Barrier Island (adult return NZ$105/ £36). Mountain Air (00 64 9 256 7025; www.mountainair.co.nz) has one-way fares from NZ$70 (£24).

STAYING THERE

The Boatshed (00 64 9 372 3242; www.boatshed.co.nz) has doubles from NZ$560 (£190) including breakfast. Earthsong (00 64 9 429 0030; www.earthsong.co.nz) has doubles from NZ$896 (£305) including cocktails, a four-course dinner and breakfast.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Tourism New Zealand (0906 601 3601 calls cost 60p per minute; www.newzealand.com). Visit www.waihekenz.com and www.greatbarriernz.com for more details.

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