The Cove of Giants

By many people’s standards this beach would have no value. It’s not beautiful: it’s wild, inaccessible, dangerous. A chip of dull gold sand, an impenetrable tangle of driftwood and wild blackberry, and the sea endlessly battering. This is the Cove of Giants.

No houses could ever be built here. No roads could ever reach it. No helicopter could land, and no boat would get through the dark rocks that the waves shatter themselves on. The only access to the Cove of Giants is on foot via a precarious goat track from Flounder Bay to the north; or several hours from Tangoio to the south along an even more uncertain track. The only footprints on the sand are our own, and those of the birds.

The high cliffs block out all but the earliest winter sun. Some times these cliffs shed boulders the size of small houses on to the beach below. We know this because the sand is littered with them. I hope I’m never here during a big earthquake.

The Cove of Giants is such an insignificant place it doesn’t have an official name; you’ll never see it marked on any map. The Cove of Giants is just our name for it. If you ever went there, you’d know why we named it that. The boulders – the cliffs that soar to 100 metres high – the shipwreck of a massive pine tree lying on the sand, half in and half out of the water.

There are other giants here too.

At low tide we explore the rock pools [is there any thing more lovely and child-like than exploring rock pools? It’s a past-time of pure joy.]. I’m close to the shore and Pete is a long way out. I hear him yelling my name; he’s beckoning me over excitedly. I scoot over to his rock. He plunges his arm in to the water and pulls out the biggest starfish I’ve ever seen. Bigger than any starfish I could imagine.

Pete puts the star down on the rock so we can observe it. He’s bluish-grey on top and bright orange below, and has seven arms that move independently. He’s at least 50cm across.

We discover later our seven-armed friend is Astrostole scabra – isn’t that a gloriously resonant name? – the largest and "most voracious" star in New Zealand.

We sit and watch him, fascinated, for several minutes until he begins to show signs of distress at being out of water. Pete gently picks him up and drops him back in to the sea and goes off to explore some more. But I lie down on the rock and watch Astrostole scabra, drifting away on the incoming tide.

... I and my son
Went past the hundred-headed cabbage tree

At the end of the beach, barefooted, in danger of
Stones falling from the overhang, and came

On a bay too small to have a name
Where flax grew wild on the shoulder of the bluff

And a waterfall was weeping. A sheep leapt and stood
Bleating at us beyond a tangle of driftwood

And broken planks. Behind us floated in the broad noon
Sky that female ghost, the daylight moon ...

From Waipatiki Beach, by James K Baxter