The Salty River
When we first arrived at the farm, there was much discussion of ideas for a farm name. But when it came down to it, the most obvious choice was a nod to the little Whanaki River (it's more a salty, muddy mangrove creek) that our farm sat next to.
You could say our river is a tidal finger pointing inland off the Kaipara Harbour. The Kaipara has 5 main arms that weave out into the land. When we look at a map of the district we can easily find our farm. It's a little corner between 2 tidal fingers. (tiny red circle on right of map).
The river not only inspires a farm name, it also provides some character.
The white headed grey heron live here, next to the river. We see them silhouetted against the sky up high on the branches of 'old man pines'. They perch facing the river, and we think they're watching for crabs or small fish. They glide down from the pines, across our paddocks, making prehistoric-sounding croaking calls. They swoop down to join our goat herd. They and the goats happily go about their daily tasks together ... we guess the herons enjoy the insects and worms that get disturbed by the goats.
The river changes from hour to hour, giving us tidal intel. It just takes a quick glance down the river to know if the tide is in or out. The tidal status doesn't impact our daily tasks but it's kind of grounding to know what it is. It reminds me of childhood car trips to Grandma's house at the beach. We would drive up and over her hill - and as we came down we had a birds-eye view over the tidal inlet. It was a race to be the first to shout out if it was: in - or out.
Straddling our river is an old one-lane bridge. Over the years there are been some interesting goings-on down at the bridge. Our market gardens are in our front paddock and any noises at the bridge tend to be quite clear. As I mentioned, the bridge is old (I think built around 1917) and it looks a bit dodgy because the upper structure is wooden. But there are concrete footings underneath. At the bridge entrance, there is a sign of vehicle weight restrictions but I guess drivers don't always know the weight of their vehicles.
One day I was picking tomatoes and heard a truck approach the bridge. It screeched to a stop just before the bridge and then a loud, animated conversation began between the driver and passenger. I heard: "I'm not bloody driving this truck on that", the sound of the men jump down off the truck and then their footsteps on the bridge. There was a fair amount of murmuring. They went back into the truck. After a few minutes I heard a bigger truck coming from the opposite direction. It was a big heavy sand truck, one that goes over the bridge almost daily. Once the unsure truck drivers saw the bigger sand truck cross the bridge, they went across.
One year there was a team who came to maintain the bridge. They did some repairs, cleaned and painted it. They were busy working for a couple of days. Suddenly the bridge looked cared for. I called out 'thanks for looking after the bridge' to one of the guys as I drove over it while they were working. On their last day, there was a lot of banging and crashing as they loaded their gear into their truck. The driver started up the engine and I heard a guy yell "nearly finished, one minute" and then the driver called out "looks fricking awesome, lets go". The next day when I drove over I saw the guy had painted new white lines leading up to the bridge. They were free-styled, a bit wonky. That made me laugh.
We'd been here a couple of years, when there was a knock at our door. It was the public relations person for a movie that was going to be made in our area. They wanted to tell us that our bridge was going to have a part in the movie, there would be disruptions to our road while they were shooting and could they use our driveway for a day to film from? YES! We gave the boys the day off school the day they filmed the bridge scene from our driveway. The film was 'Mahana', and our bridge was the star of a car chase scene right at the beginning. As the cars race towards our one-lane bridge, one gets ahead and cuts the other car off. Our oldest son was about 13 at the time, and was invited to join the director and crew where they were filming in the tent on our driveway. Our younger son and I stood out of shot in our loading ramp. It was so much fun to watch the old cars racing up our road and the actors dressed up in their 1960s clothes. It made me imagine life in another era on our road. And when we watched the movie at the pictures for the first time we were so excited to see our road, glimpses of our farm and the bridge.
We found some photos up at the local Albertlander's museum of when the bridge was built. There were less mangroves then, the river looks wider and there were even some sandy banks in areas. Now the river is muddy and there is quite a drop down into the channel. But we have seen schools of mullet swim up the river and under the bridge, and the mangroves do have a beauty of their own especially on sunny days when the water sparkles up and around their trucks.
A neighbour told me a story about local mullet fishers of the past. They meet up at the bridge with the loads of mullet to be transported off. Sometimes they had to wait for hours for the load to be picked up, so a dunny had been built on the river side. But the dunny ended up being converted into a smoke-house, and the guys would smoke a feed of mullet while they were waiting.
The river gives us these stories - and our farm character - and we want to give back to it. We want to help look after it, and the important harbour it flows in and out of. The people here before us did a great job in fencing off drains, dams and the riverside. Now's our turn to do our best for the river and make this farm even better for future people to come. We're earning our living market gardening off less than a hectare. We have between 10-20 cattle grazing the paddocks, a few goats on weed patrol and a few sheep on race-clean-up but there are extra paddocks we would like to retire. The lower areas of these paddocks - close to the river, are reverting back to wetlands. You can just tell they're crying out to be planted out into wetland loving plants and trees.
We've begun planning with The Forest Bridge Trust, who are helping us create a sediment reduction plan for these paddocks and the riverside. By retiring paddocks to farm animals and planting them out, it will help prevent subsidence of land and sediment in the river. It will help create more forest, wetland, and habitat for birds, frogs, eels. But more than that, our little river runs down to an even bigger and important place that needs protection - the Kaipara Harbour. We're excited to do our small part, it's going to cost a lot of money for us but it sounds like we'll get some funding to help us out. And we'll do it in stages over the next few years.
Over the years our little farm and it's corner on the river have become our home. As time goes on we learn more about it's past, make our own stories and realise we've become part of it's history too. When you work where you live it's hard to see the beauty - often all you can see is the work still to do. But when we stand on a hill and look down to the river, we can see that the river connects us to something much bigger - the Kaipara. Who would have thought we'd feel such kinship to a salty muddy creek?