The Bay
of Islands

A hundred and forty-four islands scattered across a subtropical bay three hours north of Auckland, warm enough to swim in from November to April, with bottlenose dolphins working the channels and a sailing culture that has been going since the whalers. That would be enough on its own. What makes the Bay of Islands genuinely important is that this is where New Zealand as a country began — and where the argument about what that beginning meant is still being had.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed on the lawn at Waitangi on 6 February 1840. Two documents, one in English and one in te reo Māori, saying materially different things. The gap between them is the central fact of New Zealand public life, and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds explain it more directly and more honestly than anywhere else in the country.

Most Australian visitors come for the boats and leave having had the history land on them unexpectedly. Plan for both.

The Waitangi Treaty Grounds

Allow half a day, minimum. Entry has run around NZ$60–70 for international adults and includes a guided tour and a cultural performance, with the ticket valid for two consecutive days — use both days if you can.

What you see:

• Te Whare Rūnanga — the carved meeting house, unusual in that it represents all iwi rather than one, with carving styles from across the country deliberately combined.
• The Treaty House — James Busby’s residence, the oldest surviving house in New Zealand, restored to its 1840s condition.
• Ngātoki Matawhaorua — a 35-metre ceremonial waka taua, among the largest in the world, needing around eighty paddlers.
• Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi — the best single explanation of the Treaty anywhere, including the translation differences that are the root of everything since.
• The flagstaff on the point, marking the signing spot, with one of the finest views in the Bay behind it.
• Te Rau Aroha — a museum of Māori military service, from the New Zealand Wars through to the 28th Māori Battalion.

The translation problem, briefly

The English text ceded sovereignty to the Crown. The te reo text used the word kāwanatanga — governorship, a transliteration of “governor” — while guaranteeing chiefs continued tino rangatiratanga, full chieftainship, over their lands and treasures. Almost all signatories signed the Māori text.

Whether the chiefs believed they were ceding sovereignty or granting a limited authority to govern settlers is the question underlying the New Zealand Wars, a century of land loss, the Waitangi Tribunal established in 1975, and the Treaty settlement process still running today. You do not need to arrive with a position on it. You will leave understanding why New Zealanders have one.

Out on the water

The Bay is best understood from a boat, and there are more ways to get on one here than anywhere else in the North Island.

• Hole in the Rock cruise — the standard trip, out to Piercy Island / Motukokako at the mouth of the Bay, where a natural tunnel runs right through the rock. Larger vessels pass through when swell allows. Roughly NZ$110–140 and about four hours.
• Sailing day trips — the better version, on a yacht or catamaran with lunch, swimming and an island stop. Quieter, slower, and the way locals would do it.
• Sea kayaking — half-day and full-day trips around the inner islands and up the Waitangi River to Haruru Falls.
• Fishing charters — snapper and kingfish; the Bay has been a game-fishing centre since Zane Grey wrote about it in the 1920s.
• Diving — the wrecks of the Rainbow Warrior at the Cavalli Islands and the Canterbury in Deep Water Cove are among the best dives in New Zealand.
• Parasailing and jet boating from Paihia for anyone travelling with teenagers.

Russell — the hell hole of the Pacific

A fifteen-minute passenger ferry from Paihia, and a completely different place.

Russell was Kororareka, and in the 1830s it was the largest European settlement in New Zealand and by reputation the most lawless port in the South Pacific — whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, grog shops and no functioning law. Charles Darwin visited in 1835 and was distinctly unimpressed with the Europeans.

It is now one of the prettiest and most genteel villages in the country, which is a considerable transformation.

• Christ Church — the oldest surviving church in New Zealand, built 1836, with musket holes from the 1845 fighting still visible in the weatherboards. Darwin contributed to the building fund.
• Pompallier Mission — the country’s oldest surviving industrial building, a French Catholic printery and tannery where books were printed in te reo Māori. The tannery still operates as a demonstration.
• Flagstaff Hill / Maiki — where Hōne Heke cut down the British flagstaff four times between 1844 and 1845, triggering the Northern War. A short steep walk with a superb view.
• The Duke of Marlborough — holder of New Zealand’s first liquor licence, granted 1840. Still serving.
• Long Beach (Oneroa) — a ten-minute walk over the hill, sheltered and swimmable.

Cape Reinga and the Far North

A long day — roughly three hours each way from Paihia — and for many visitors the most memorable one.

At Te Rerenga Wairua, the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean visibly collide, two currents meeting in a churning line of white water offshore. In Māori belief this is the departure point of spirits: the wairua of the dead travel north along the coast, descend the roots of an ancient pōhutukawa on the headland, and return to Hawaiki. It is one of the most spiritually significant places in the country.

The rest of the day usually includes:

• Ninety Mile Beach — actually about 88 km, and legally a highway. Rental cars are almost universally prohibited from driving on it and vehicles are lost to the tide every year. Take a coach tour; the operators know the tide windows.
• Te Paki sand dunes — enormous, and sandboarding down them is the highlight of the day for anyone under about forty.
• Tapotupotu or Rarawa Beach — white silica sand, and empty.
• Ancient kauri workshops at Awanui, working swamp kauri carbon-dated at up to 50,000 years old.

Waipoua Forest and Tāne Mahuta

South-west of the Bay, on the road toward Auckland via the Kauri Coast, stands Tāne Mahuta — Lord of the Forest — the largest living kauri. It is around 51 metres tall with a trunk girth of nearly 14 metres, and estimates of its age range from 1,250 to 2,500 years.

The walk to it takes five minutes on a boardwalk. Nearby, Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest) has the widest trunk of any kauri at over 16 metres and is reached in about twenty minutes.

Every visitor must use the kauri dieback cleaning stations on entry and exit, without exception. The disease has no cure, spreads in soil on footwear, and has already killed trees in this forest. Stay on the boardwalk and off the roots.

Marine life and what you will actually see

The Bay is a genuinely rich marine environment, and knowing what is realistic saves disappointment.

• Bottlenose dolphins — resident, seen on a high proportion of cruises, though the local population has declined significantly and encounters are now viewing-only under strict approach distances.
• Common dolphins — larger pods, often several hundred, more frequent in summer.
• Orca — New Zealand’s population is small and highly mobile; sightings are luck rather than expectation, most often in summer when they come inshore hunting rays.
• Bryde’s whales — present in Northland waters year-round, seen occasionally.
• Little blue penguins — the world’s smallest penguin, nesting on several islands and frequently seen from boats at dawn and dusk.
• Gannets, shearwaters and petrels — the seabird diversity here is outstanding, and a working gannet dive is one of the better things you will see on the water anywhere.
• Snapper and kingfish — the reason the game-fishing culture exists. The Maunganui Bay rāhui and other protected areas have measurably improved fish size.

Islands worth landing on

• Urupūkapūka Island — the largest, pest-free, with a network of walking tracks, three swimming bays and archaeological pā sites. Ferries and cruises stop here; you can camp with a DOC booking.
• Moturua Island — a two-and-a-half-hour loop track, four beaches, and no facilities at all.
• Motuarohia (Roberton) Island — twin lagoons, a snorkel trail, and the lookout that appears on most Bay of Islands postcards.
• Motukokako (Piercy Island) — the Hole in the Rock itself. No landing; boats pass through when swell allows.

Three itineraries

Two nights, based at Paihia

• Day 1 — drive up from Auckland, afternoon at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, evening in Paihia.
• Day 2 — morning cruise to the Hole in the Rock with an island stop, afternoon ferry to Russell for Christ Church, Pompallier and the Flagstaff Hill walk.
• Day 3 — use the second day of your Waitangi ticket for the museums, then drive out.

Three nights

Add a full-day Cape Reinga coach tour with Te Paki sandboarding and Ninety Mile Beach. It is a long day and worth it. Alternatively, swap it for a full-day sail with lunch and a swim, which is the better option if the weather is good and you have small children.

Four nights, returning via the Kauri Coast

Drive out south-west through Waipoua Forest for Tāne Mahuta and Te Matua Ngahere, then down the Kauri Coast through Dargaville and Matakohe, where the Kauri Museum is one of the best regional museums in New Zealand. It adds about ninety minutes over the direct highway and is a far better drive. Stop at Ruapekapeka Pā on the way if you did not on the way up.

Practical notes

• Book boat trips a day ahead in summer, and be prepared for weather cancellations — operators reschedule rather than refund where possible.
• Take seasickness precautions if you are prone. The run out to Piercy Island leaves the sheltered inner bay and can be lively.
• Sun protection is not optional. This is the warmest, highest-UV part of New Zealand and reflection off the water compounds it.
• The Russell car ferry from Ōpūa is a separate service from the Paihia passenger ferry and takes vehicles; it runs roughly every twenty minutes.
• Fuel and supermarkets are in Paihia and Kerikeri. Everything north of Kerikeri toward Cape Reinga is sparse.
• Cash for the Cape Brett Track fee if you are walking it — it crosses private Māori land and the fee goes to the landowners.
• Sandflies are present on the beaches at dusk. Repellent helps.

Beaches and walks

• Paihia and Waitangi — sheltered town beaches, safe for children, walkable to everything.
• Long Beach, Russell — the best swimming beach in the immediate area.
• Matauri Bay — 40 minutes north, with the Rainbow Warrior memorial on the headland above it.
• Tauranga Bay and Whangaroa Harbour — the climb up St Paul’s Rock at Whangaroa is 45 minutes and superb.
• Haruru Falls — a horseshoe waterfall reached by a boardwalk through mangroves from Waitangi, about 90 minutes each way.
• Cape Brett Track — 16.3 km each way to a lighthouse keeper’s hut on the point above the Hole in the Rock. A serious eight-hour walk with a booked hut at the end and a track fee payable to the landowners.

Before and after 1840

The Bay of Islands has more layered history in a small area than anywhere else in New Zealand, and knowing the sequence makes every site you visit legible.

Ngāpuhi and first contact

The Bay is the heartland of Ngāpuhi, the largest iwi in New Zealand. Cook anchored here in 1769 and named it for the obvious reason. From the 1790s whalers and sealers began using the harbour, and by the 1820s Kororareka was a functioning port with a resident European population living largely at the pleasure of local rangātira.

The trade was two-way and consequential. Māori supplied provisions, timber and flax; Europeans supplied metal tools and, critically, muskets. The resulting Musket Wars reshaped the North Island through the 1820s and 30s, with Ngāpuhi under Hōngi Hika ranging as far south as the Waikato and Bay of Plenty. Tens of thousands died. It is the reason many iwi elsewhere in the country regard this period very differently from the way it is often summarised.

Missionaries and the printing press

Samuel Marsden preached New Zealand’s first Christian service at Oihi Bay in the Bay of Islands on Christmas Day 1814. The mission stations that followed at Kerikeri, Paihia and Waimate North produced something unexpectedly powerful: a written form of te reo Māori. Literacy spread through Māori communities at extraordinary speed — by the 1830s Māori literacy rates in te reo exceeded European literacy rates in English in some districts.

This matters directly for 1840. The chiefs who signed at Waitangi were signing a document in a written language their people could read, produced on presses like the one at Pompallier.

He Whakaputanga, 1835

Five years before the Treaty, thirty-four northern chiefs signed He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni — the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand — which was acknowledged by the British Crown. Any account of 1840 that skips 1835 is incomplete, and the Waitangi museum handles this well.

The Northern War, 1845–46

Within five years of the Treaty, Hōne Heke — the first chief to sign it — cut down the British flagstaff on Maiki Hill above Kororareka four times. The flagstaff was a symbol of the sovereignty he did not believe he had ceded. The resulting war saw Kororareka sacked and burned in March 1845, and produced at Ruapekapeka one of the most sophisticated fortification systems of the nineteenth century, engineered specifically to absorb artillery. The pā site is open to visitors, free, an hour south, and it is genuinely remarkable.

Kerikeri and the Stone Store basin

Twenty minutes inland from Paihia, and skipped by a lot of visitors who should not skip it.

• The Stone Store — completed in 1836 and the oldest stone building in New Zealand. Still operating as a shop on the ground floor.
• Kemp House / Mission House — built 1821–22, the oldest building in the country, and still furnished.
• Kororipo Pā — Hōngi Hika’s pā on the rise above the basin, from which the Musket War expeditions launched. A short walk with interpretation.
• Rainbow Falls — a 27-metre drop reached by a riverside walk from the basin, about an hour each way, or five minutes from a separate car park.
• The food — Kerikeri is Northland’s horticultural centre and has the best eating in the region by a clear margin, plus vineyards, citrus, and a Sunday farmers’ market.

What it costs

Waitangi and one boat trip are the two things worth paying for if the budget is tight. Everything at Russell except Pompallier can be done free on foot, and Ruapekapeka and Tāne Mahuta cost nothing at all. See our New Zealand travel costs guide for the wider picture.

When to go

The Bay of Islands is the warmest part of New Zealand and behaves differently to the rest of the country.

Getting there, bases and how long

• Paihia — the practical base. All the boat trips leave from here, it has the most accommodation and eating, and the Russell ferry runs constantly.
• Russell — prettier, quieter, more expensive, and you are on ferry time.
• Kerikeri — twenty minutes inland, the largest town, with the best food and the Stone Store and Mission House, the two oldest European buildings in New Zealand.
• Ōpūa — the yachting harbour, quiet, with a short railway to Kawakawa and Hundertwasser’s celebrated public toilets.

How long: two nights is the minimum — one day for Waitangi and Russell, one for a boat trip. Three nights adds Cape Reinga. Four lets you do Waipoua and the Kauri Coast on the way out, which is the better route back to Auckland anyway.

Where to stay, and eating

Four bases, and the choice shapes the trip more than in most New Zealand regions because the ferry timetable becomes your clock if you get it wrong.

• Paihia — the practical default. Every boat trip departs from the wharf, the Waitangi grounds are a twenty-minute walk or a two-minute drive, and the Russell passenger ferry runs constantly until late. The most accommodation at the widest range of prices, and the most eating. It is also the busiest and least charming of the four.
• Russell — considerably prettier and quieter, with the best waterfront dining in the Bay. The trade-off is that you are on ferry time for everything, and the last sailing back matters. Expensive in summer.
• Kerikeri — twenty minutes inland, the largest town, and the best food and produce in Northland. Good if you want a base with a life of its own rather than a tourism strip, though you drive to every boat.
• Ōpūa — the yachting harbour, very quiet, with the car ferry to Russell and the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway running to Kawakawa and Hundertwasser’s well-known public toilets.

Eating

Kerikeri is the region’s food centre — citrus, avocado, olives, wine and a Sunday farmers’ market. Russell’s waterfront restaurants are the most atmospheric and priced accordingly. Paihia covers everything from fish and chips on the beach to a handful of good mid-range restaurants. Seafood is the obvious order everywhere; snapper and Northland oysters in particular.

Book ahead between Boxing Day and mid-January, when the region is at capacity and walk-in tables largely do not exist.

Getting there without a car

The Bay is one of the easier New Zealand regions to reach car-free. InterCity coaches run daily from Auckland to Paihia in about four hours. Regional flights serve Kerikeri from Auckland in around 45 minutes, with rental cars and shuttles at the airport. Once you are in Paihia, the passenger ferry, the cruise operators and the Cape Reinga coach tours all pick up from the wharf or from accommodation, so a car is genuinely optional unless you intend to drive out via Waipoua.

Accessibility and families

• Waitangi Treaty Grounds are largely accessible, with sealed paths and shuttle assistance available on request.
• The Russell ferry is step-on and accessible; Russell village itself is flat along the waterfront.
• Larger cruise vessels from Paihia have accessible boarding at most tide states — confirm when booking.
• Tāne Mahuta is a five-minute flat boardwalk and is accessible.
• Cape Reinga involves a sealed but steep 800-metre path down to the lighthouse, and the climb back is real.
• For children: sandboarding at Te Paki, the Hole in the Rock cruise, Paihia’s sheltered beach and the Russell ferry all land well. The Waitangi cultural performance holds most children easily; the museum will not.

For how the Bay fits a wider North Island loop, see our North Island travel guide.