Heartland - Kaipara

Television (Full Length Episode) – 1996

Presenter Gary McCormick travels around the bays, rivers and inlets of the sheltered Kaipara Harbour. Once home to towering forests of kauri onshore, the largest enclosed waterway in the Southern Hemisphere still boasts bountiful sea life. McCormick heads out cruising with the locals, setting nets in the harbour and going fishing on the treacherous Kaipara bar. He gets a taste for beachcombing while out with new friends, and drops in for tea with the Smith family at the historic Totara House in Matakohe, before heading to Ruawai for the coronation of the new Kūmara Festival King and Queen.

The eighth wonder of the world is the way I see it, yeah. It's a sheltered harbour, and further out it's pretty wild, but up in the rivers and bays here, everyone can drop a line over and catch a fish...
– A Kaipara resident explains why he loves the area, at the start of this episode