Baileys Beach nowhere near Muriwa!

Weather hot and sunny, not a good day to be putting in the KKKK's but we decided we have to start moving south if we are ever to get to South Island. The PLAN! is to hit route 1 and just go until we clear Auckland, then on to Muriwa beach on the West coast but as before the best laid plans........! A Quick stop at Katia for some shopping, where we found a butcher who wanted to teach us Maori, well just the vowels, there's us thinking they didn't have any. Into a convenience store 4 Square that is marginally worse than Scummerfield in Shipston! Driving on we realise that the one thing we didn't get was petrol and we are getting low. 70K later after travelling thro the mountains and forests we arrive at a tiny village with only one petrol pump. Good job we didn't want deisel. Here we find another friendly Kiwi who wants to teach us map reading. His suggestion is that we forget route 1 and take route 12 which he reckoned was a much nicer route. After a bit of finger jabbing at the map we decide to go for it, cos we can! Well we are free spirits! Once again our info is good it's a hard drive through narrow,hilly and winding roads, but spectacular mountain scenery, eventually reaching the coast at Opononi, famous for a friendly dolphin that lived in the bay in the 1950's and let children ride on his back. Had lunch there and took lots of photos and it was a fantastic bay. On again, more winding roads into the Waipoua Forrest, famous for it's giant Kauri Trees. Stopped to look at the worlds biggest which has a girth of 13.8 metres. It is big, but someone left the camera in the van! Carried on down 12, in stinking hot weather, tarmac melting and so decide to pull into Baileys Beach nowhere near where we set off for in the morning.
Fate is an amazing thing and as we pulled into the campsite who should be parked opposite but 2 friends we made in Warnambool Victoria, Oz Steve and Jules. The evening turned out to be a little messy and a late night was had!