Winter is here - the ground crunches underfoot, my hand's sting from the cold, and I can see my breath. There's also a solid swell building close to where I'm standing, but it's too dark too surf, even though it's only five p.m.

Light shines through a gap in the curtains and condensation trickles down the windows. I take a tentative look outside. It's biting cold but I force myself out of the van, into the morning air. The thundering, cracking swell has kept me half-awake all night. This morning it seems to be maxing with constant six-foot sets sweeping down the point.

No wind and no surfers - idyllic wintertime on a rugged landscape. Cold water, wetsuits, booties, a weekday groundswell on an isolated coast - I love this kind of surfing, it keeps the numbers down.







Only the weathered cattle are up and about, roaming the boulders near the shore-dump, chewing rubbery kelp. The inhabitants of the few scattered vehicles and deerstalkers hut are still hidden, sheltering from the cold. Out to sea, glassy sets roll through, each wave unleashing a hundred metres down the point.

Waiting for the sun I walk under the cabbage trees and begin climbing the steep mountainside for a better view. Other surfers will be coming later for sure, but the inaccessibility this place ensures those already here will only venture out under the sun's cosmetic glow.

By mid-morning, ten or so surfers are dispersed thinly along the point, enjoying the big dark-blue and white waves. Sets are marching through relentlessly - no lulls to settle back. Big-wide waves clean out the unwary and those too far inside. Taking the drop, the glare of the sun shines straight in our eyes.

The Wairarapa that's what Maori's named this place. It means, 'glistening water'.

On settled, sunny days, the ocean here is aqua-blue, transformed into a tranquil outpost of the South Pacific. More commonly, the Wairarapa has a wind-savaged coastline. Persisting northwest gales can blow looming groundswells flat, and a legacy of carnage exists, with dozens of shipwrecks and lives lost along its rocky coast. But it's also an exposed coastline dotted with reefs and points, and a deep offshore trench that harnesses a swell's potential power.

Storm-tossed beaches are fed with greywacke shingle from narrow, shattered-rock canyons. The dark, bush-covered slopes of the Rimutaka Ranges in the west and Aorangi Ranges in the east rise straight up from the coast. In winter months these mountains block all but a few hours of sunlight a day. But these inconveniences are easily forgotten when there's hardly anyone around and the swell is pumping.

Farmers and fishermen are the only inhabitants; the elements keep everyone else at bay. The roads are rocky, with some limited to 4wd. And while the South Coast is well accessed, it's a different story on the East Coast, where seven winding, dead end roads lead down to the coast and cover only 15km of 140km of coastline.

There's a core of dedicated surfers who have the inclination to charge through the winter months; they have done for years in a low-key way. But for many the waves are too raw, the water too cold, while some grow tired of spending time and money on the long drive to get there. Locals are few. Most surfers come from Wellington, crossing the Rimutaka and Aorangi Ranges, and driving down endless kilometres of winding gravel roads.

Sometimes you fight the crowds. Other times it's a barren land with deserted reef and point breaks -lefts, rights, and an absence of beach-breaks apart from in the north. Clean water and cold swells marching in from the Southern Ocean.

When a decent swell comes up from the south, you head to the coast. You hope for a big high with variable winds, and you hope this happens during the week. When it's like this and you're out there in the sunshine, trading glassy waves with a small crew, you want it to last forever. Instead you surf for as long as you can, paddling till your arms don't work, because hostile weather is always close with gale-force winds ever ready to send everyone packing.

"It's not often you get a super-clean swell there, most of the swells are pretty raw," says long time Wairarapa surfer Dion Ahern. "You're hanging out for those magic days when it all comes together but realistically most of the surf has something wrong with it - it's often wind affected. But I like the fact that cell-phones don't work and technology hasn't caught up with life over there. You can live off the land - deer, crayfish, paua (abalone) - it's back to the roots. I like coming in and warming myself up around a campfire with a cuppa."

Driving around the shores of Palliser Bay or Matakitakiakupe (named after the navigator Kupe who is said to have discovered New Zealand around 950 AD), I see waves wrapping in the distance. It looks promising but I've never set foot this way before, even though I know there's a well-known reef-break and bombora here somewhere. Having surfed this coast for almost twenty years I can't pinpoint why this break has always eluded my attention, but it's likely to be the same reason few other people come here - a dead end road and options elsewhere.

It was along this same bit of coast in 1844 that Charles Bidwell and two fellow settlers drove a flock of Merino sheep around the coast of Wellington Harbour and into Palliser Bay, to form New Zealand's first sheep stations in the Wairarapa valley. When they got to Mukamuka Rocks on the western side of Palliser Bay, each of the 350 sheep had to picked up and handed down to a man waiting in the surf, who piggy-backed it for about half a kilometre to the beach beyond. Every sheep survived the hammering.

The wave in the distance turns out to be the bombie. Up the point a car is parked up on the shingle. Beside it two surfers sit around a fire still clad in wetsuits, and behind them a reef is sending through sporadic overhead sets. It's early afternoon and the sun had already disappeared behind the impending mountains. It feels like a gloomy winter's day even though there's a blue sky, and the other side of Palliser Bay is basking in sunshine! But it's glassy, and as is often the case midweek, midwinter, there is no one out.

I paddle out soon joined by one of the guys warmed from his fire. Between waves a fur seal gently breaks the surface twisting lazily around in circles. Fur seal haul-out colonies are dotted all along this coast, as well as a major breeding colony at Cape Palliser. But there's no need to grow too anxious, despite what lurks beneath, even if you do listen to fishermen's yarns in the pubs.

"The tendency for wind and sea conditions to drive vessels to a graveyard in Palliser Bay was shown with the wreck of the Zuleika in April 1897. As the ship neared Palliser Bay from the south a strong gale blew up. Despite the efforts of Captain J.R. Bremner to change course, she hit rocks. Waves came over the side and swept everything moveable overboard. Efforts to launch the lifeboats failed when they became badly damaged, so the crew clung to the rigging until the masts started to be swept away and the ship lurched to one side, sending them into the sea. Twelve of the crew of twenty-one died." Excerpt from 'Cook's Wild Straight'.

Dion Ahern was on the phone - did I want to go to the coast? The morning paper said, 'gale-force winds, reaching 70kph about exposed places and 100kph around the hill-tops'. Do you check conditions? I thought while replying, 'yep, I'll come'.

There was a big low down south, which had been trying to pump swell in for days. But what we were trying to achieve was anyone's guess although the wind has to back off eventually. We drove over there, and it was 100kph around the hilltops. The seven windmills at Hau Nui wind farm were turned off, and it looked like being, just 'an interesting days drive'.

We arrived, recruited a couple of friends and headed down to a wave we thought might be sheltered. After deliberation about walking the last kilometre to see up close what we already knew, we decided if we've come this far... So we went, looked, and got blown around. Waves were trying their best to break, but only a madman would have gone out.

"There was a ninety knot cross-shore that absolutely flattened us when we tried to get anywhere near the surf", says Dion about that day. "We had to lie down because the wind was just blowing us off our feet. If a gust came and you were caught standing up, you'd get blown ten metres backwards and you'd lose you're board. The wind does strange things over there. It can be glassy on the East Coast and gale-force around in Palliser Bay and vice-versa."

Meanwhile to the south, Deane Cronin and a couple of his surfing friends had the same idea. The difference was that Deane had decided to go surfing. "It was one of those days where you turn up and see three or four waves break really nicely and you think, wow, why isn't anybody out there? And the next thing the cars getting blown sideways and there's dust and sand everywhere and you can't even see the ocean", said Deane.

It's recently been written that there are now more people surfing in New Zealand than playing rugby. If you lived here and could see just how seriously rugby is taken then you'd find that as hard to believe as I do. Still, it's quite obvious that summer and weekend surfers are hitting the water in this country like never before. Thankfully they don't take to surfing the rural regions in a dedicated sort of way.

After a soul-cleansing five-month spell getting back to my roots, I bid farewell to the Wairarapa. The following week the swell of the winter comes charging through. It's four metres and hangs around for days, accompanied by a high and light winds. I'm a week too early but that's alright, I know I'll be back.

by Paul Kennedy © 2007