Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē / Ninety Mile Beach
Deed Of Settlement, Ngati Kuri and the Crown. Retrieved 10 February 2014 is on the western coast of the Far North District, far north of the

North Island The North Island ( , 'the fish of Māui', historically New Ulster) is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but less populous South Island by Cook Strait. With an area of , it is the List ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. The beach is actually long. Its southern end is close to the headland of Tauroa Point (Reef Point), to the west of Ahipara Bay, near Kaitaia. From there it sweeps briefly northeast before running northwest along the

Aupōuri Peninsula The Aupōuri Peninsula is a tombolo at the northern tip of the North Island of New Zealand. It projects between the Tasman Sea to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. It constitutes the northern part of the Far North District, incorpora ...

for the majority of its length. It ends at Tiriparepa / Scott Point, south of Cape Maria van Diemen and about south of Cape Reinga / Te Rerenga Wairua. The beach is officially a public highway and is used as an alternative to State Highway 1 north of Kaitaia, though mainly for tourist trips, or when the main road is closed due to landslides or floods. The beach and the dunes at Te Paki in the north are a tourist destination. The Te Paki dunes, which look much like a desert landscape, are used for sandboarding.

History

In the days of sailing ships a number of vessels were wrecked on the beach. In 1932 the beach was used as the

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

for some of the earliest

airmail Airmail (or air mail) is a mail transport service branded and sold on the basis of at least one leg of its journey being by air. Airmail items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and usually cost more to send. Airmail may be th ...

services between Australia and New Zealand. Ninety Mile Beach was included as part of Te Araroa when it officially opened in 2011. In a 2013 feature for the British television motoring programme '' Top Gear'',

Jeremy Clarkson Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson (born 11 April 1960) is an English television presenter, journalist, farmer, and author who specialises in Driving, motoring. He is best known for hosting the television programmes ''Top Gear (2002 TV series), T ...

drove the length of the beach in a

Toyota Corolla The is a series of compact cars (formerly Subcompact car, subcompact) manufactured and marketed globally by the Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corporation. Introduced in 1966, the Corolla was the best-selling car worldwide by 1974 and has bee ...

as part of a race against an AC45 racing yacht crewed by British Olympic sailor Sir Ben Ainslie and the winning crew of the 2010 America's Cup, with

James May James Daniel May (born 16 January 1963) is an English television presenter and journalist. He is best known as a co-presenter, alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, of the motoring programme ''Top Gear (2002 TV series), Top Gear'' fr ...

also on board.

Name

Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē / Ninety Mile Beach is one of many places in New Zealand to have a dual name, consisting of both its former English name and its

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...

name. This dual name was adopted in 2014 as a result of a

Treaty of Waitangi The Treaty of Waitangi (), sometimes referred to as ''Te Tiriti'', is a document of central importance to the history of New Zealand, Constitution of New Zealand, its constitution, and its national mythos. It has played a major role in the tr ...

settlement between the New Zealand government and

Ngāti Kurī Ngāti Kurī is a Māori people, Māori iwi from Northland Region, Northland, New Zealand. The iwi is one of the five Muriwhenua iwi of the far north of the North Island. Ngāti Kurī trace their whakapapa (ancestry) back to Pōhurihanga, the ca ...

, an

iwi Iwi () are the largest social units in New Zealand Māori society. In Māori, roughly means or , and is often translated as "tribe". The word is both singular and plural in the Māori language, and is typically pluralised as such in English. ...

based in the area around the beach. The Māori name for the beach translates as "the long beach of Tōhē", referencing an early ancestor of Ngāti Kurī. The English portion of the dual name has unclear origins and is often the source of confusion, given that the beach is only long not ninety. A common story for the name holds that early Europeans took three days to traverse the beach, with their horses typically able to cover thirty miles per day. According to the legend, the Europeans took this to mean that the beach was 90 miles long, failing to account for their slower speed due to the sand.

References

{{Commons, Ninety Mile Beach, New Zealand, Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē / Ninety Mile Beach Far North District Beaches of the Northland Region Roads in New Zealand

History

Name

See also

References