Rambling the back roads from Everest to Hunua.

Lockdown, like life, is what you make it. In 2021, it offered the opportunity to discover some of the Auckland region’s special places in Ford’s best-equipped and most capable seven seater SUV ever.
In Sport form, the Ford Everest is a striking beast, all Arctic White and gloss black alloys, piano-black grille and satin black trim.
But what to do? Where to take this ten-speed, seven seat all-road cruiser?
Where else than out on the road to search out Auckland’s quirky and delightful small and special places. The risk? That we’d end up disappointed, thinking of that line from the movie Easy Rider: “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” The prize? A one-day tour that found us small gems of the real New Zealand, close by Auckland’s urban sprawl.
Ten years after it became a supercity, Auckland still has these best-kept secrets, where craftspeople ply their trade and local food brands are the pride of the mainstreet General Store.
We were looking for the unobtainable: off-road and gravel driving just minutes from urban Auckland. With Waiuku Forest closed, the western beaches becoming an off-roading cliché, and the border blockades still in place, where would we go? East of course.
The Everest was the perfect weapon as we explored east and south of Papakura into the Hunua hills, discovering dead-end offshoots and rural ‘B-roads’.
This is where the Everest shows us its mettle – the flowing regional routes that are created by following the contour of the land.
Great idea: check out the region’s mountainbike mecca, Moumoukai Valley. The area links to eight iwi and was farmed commercially last century. Many of the best bike trails grind through regenerating native bush where old farm fences are slowly rotting into the surrounding scrub.
The valley has been ‘hardened’ to lock vehicles out of many tasty-looking side excursions, but the main gravel road offered insight into the capability of the Everest’s transmission. A 265-width tyre has the wrong sectional footprint for gravel – wide rather than long, and would normally be awful on gravel – skatey and unpredictable – but the Everest never faltered, even on uphill sections where the Hunua gravel was like marbles. Drive was fed evenly to all four corners never giving us reason to lift the loud pedal.
Out of the bush and back on the main southern route, we discover a back-road artist’s lair, where stainless and mild steel are bent into clever new forms and a stainless steel cabbage tree (ti kouka) marks the property’s gateway.
Onward, the southern hard border dictates a u-turn and directs us all the way back to a hidden gem: Hunua Village and specifically its General Store.
We hardly needed to refuel the Everest but we did need to refuel the ‘organics’ inside. Good coffee from Roma in Drury, a great range of pies (who ate all the pies? Not me) and a chance to indulge my personal obsession: local honey. Wherever I travel (when allowed to) I’m drawn to the products of New Zealand’s world class honey industry. In this case it’s Koha Bees’ raw bush honey, locally collected and ‘raw’. Oh, and delicious.
Hunua’s a special village. How many such places in the supercity would celebrate a local 90-year old’s birthday on the roadside community noticeboard?
Where else on a stormy day would three local kids roll past us on cool home-built mono-wheel skateboards – gone so quickly we couldn’t grab them for a photo?
Heading north out of town we swerve down to Hunua Falls where there’s spill parking right alongside the river and a chance to park and think about these special places and people.
The Hunua ranges provide Auckland’s best, sweetest water; they offers excellent short and long bush walks and the toughest mountain-biking in the region; they are home to an amazing diversity of wildlife including the northernmost remaining population of the beautiful kokako and most of all a place where Aucklanders can go to restore their souls.
Hunua village is old-school and special, and while you are welcome to stop for a coffee and a pie, no you cannot move there! A quick check of real estate websites reveals there are zero properties for sale unless you happen to have $800,000 sloshing around in your bank account. For a smallish wedge of bare land.
Minutes from the hustle bustle of the main street, sitting beside the murmuring Wairoa River in the Hunua Falls car park it’s hard to believe we are barely 15 minutes from downtown Papakura.
It’s all over for the day though, storm clouds are rolling in (this is Auckland remember?) and we are out of the car park and off to town, stopping only to visit the cool wooden giraffe at Cossey’s Access Road and have a chat to the impressive bulls in the paddock at the intersection.
Underlining how wild this part of Auckland is, we encounter a mob or page and flighty goats in  the Hunua Gorge including one that tries to commit hara-kiri under the Everest’s left front wheel. Welcome to Auckland indeed!