awke's Bay is essentially a fertile but not very extensive plain - the Heretaunga Plain - backed by rolling uplands rising up to the mountainous spine of the North Island. In few places is there more than 60 kilometres between the summits and the sea. The climate is temperate and equable and this, together with the low rainfall, makes Hawke's Bay the leading horticultural area of New Zealand.

The rolling foothills had mostly been cleared of trees by a series of fires when the Pakeha arrived and aspiring pastoralists were quick to see the potential of this 'empty' land. As the local farmer-naturalist Herbert Guthrie-Smith said, they then set to and it was 'stamped, jammed, hauled and murdered into grass.'

The widespread destruction of the forest meant that most birds in pre-European times probably lived along the rivers and seashore; apart from the now extinct native quail, or koreke, and the pipit there were few true grassland dwellers. This left an ecological gap that was rapidly filled by the introduced birds, and exotic mammals soon made themselves at home in what cover remained in the surrounding hills.

Mule deer imported from the United States were liberated in Hawke's Bay around 1909, but did not survive. However, red deer and sika are both found today, the red deer descended from animals brought from Otago and liberated on Matapiro Station in about 1910. From here they spread into the Kaimanawa Range, the Kaweka Range and the Urewera country, with some animals migrating as far away as Taupo.

Sheepfarming in Hawke's Bay started early. In 1848 Henry Tiffin and James Northwood drove 3000 merinos up the coast to stock 20,000 hectares of land which had been leased from the Maori at Pourerere and Omakere. Driving so much stock through rugged country in those unsettled times was a considerable feat, which unfortunately has received little recognition.

On your way to Hawke's Bay, try to make a side trip to the Ruahine Forest Park which forms the watershed between the Manawatu and southern Hawke's Bay. The park can be reached by taking the Tamaki East and West Roads from near Dannevirke, or the Ngamoko Road from Norsewood. The park displays a variety of vegetation, supporting a range of birds both exotic and native. Red and sika deer are found here, together with pigs, hares and possums. Above 1400 metres there is alpine tussock which changes to sub-alpine scrub, then beech as one descends. This gives way to mixed podocarp-beech and podocarp at the lower levels, but in the north, parts of this forest have been destroyed by fire and replaced by scrub.

One of the things to watch for in Hawke's Bay is the area's fine exotic trees. There are some particularly good examples on some of the sheep stations, at Te Aute College 28 kilometres south of Hastings on State Highway 2, and also in the streets of Hastings and Napier. There is a well-established avenue of Norfolk pines along Napier's waterfront and this is brilliantly lit up with decorations at Christmas time. Frimley Park in Hastings has some particularly good specimens which include a splendid necklace poplar. In autumn a drive along Oak Avenue off Omahu Road in Hastings is spectacular because of the blaze of colour provided by the 1600-metre stretch of giant oak trees.

There are also some good stands of native trees but these take some seeking out. At Ball’s Clearing, about five kilometres west of Puketitiri, which is some 50 kilometres north-west of Napier, there is one of the finest stands of podocarp forest remaining in New Zealand, and the native trees at A’Deanes Bush, west of Waipukurau in the foothills of the Ruahines, are particularly good with an especially fine totara. They can be reached by way of a sealed road running off State Highway 50.