The track through the reserve delivers you onto a beach that feels like a secret kept by the northern Chatham coast. Sand the color of old ivory curves between low headlands, and shallow water extends in bands of jade and turquoise over a sandy bottom unmarred by rock or weed. Behind you, the reserve's native vegetation—stunted matipo, rangiora, and the endemic Chatham Island forget-me-not—creates a windbreak that makes this beach noticeably calmer than the exposed coasts to east and west.
“The adjacent native reserve makes this one of the few Chatham beaches where you can experience both pristine sand and thriving endemic birdlife within meters of each other.”
Credit: UnsplashCrashing wave at sunset on the shoreline
You hear bellbirds in the reserve canopy, their liquid notes carrying over the sand. Oystercatchers and dotterels work the wrack line, and if you arrive at low tide, tide pools form in subtle depressions where hermit crabs scuttle between strands of Neptune's necklace. The water is cold but swimmable on still days, and children wade out to sandbars that appear and vanish with the tide's rhythm.
This is not a beach for drama or spectacle. Its appeal lies in quietness, in the way the reserve shelters it from the prevailing wind, in the sense that you've stepped aside from even the modest tourist traffic that visits the Chatham Islands. You might share it with a local family collecting pipi or a birder scanning the reserve edge, but more likely you'll have the entire crescent to yourself, the sand recording only your footprints and the delicate tracks of shorebirds.
