The Matakana Coast
The land
Bluestone Estate nestles into Bishop Hill, which sits on the Tāwharanui Peninsula, a remarkably beautiful landscape of rolling farmland, native bush and wild coastline, with a Māori history reaching back centuries. Facing the property is the low-slung form of Maunga Tamahunga, a sacred mountain of profound spiritual, cultural and historical significance to Ngāti Manuhiri (the local tribe), who describe it as their ancestral head.
There is a particular sense of calm at Bishop Hill, something people have remarked on long before knowing the history of the land. Some believe that special energy comes from the protective presence of Tamahunga, reaching across the landscape to the hill.
For most of the last century this was farmland. The land along Bishop Lane was Bishophill Farm, held by the Buckleton family, whose name the beach below still carries: J. G. Buckleton bought here in 1954 and laid out the first holiday houses at Buckleton Beach in 1957. The neighbouring bays, Baddeleys and Campbells, are named for farming families in the same way. Earlier, from the 1870s, the wider peninsula was farmed, milled for kauri, cut for mānuka firewood, and quarried for shingle. In 1973 the outer peninsula became a regional park, and today it is an open sanctuary where kiwi call at night.
The land has a far older story. Ngāti Manuhiri are mana whenua (the people who hold the land) of Tāwharanui, Whangateau and Ōmaha, and their historical claims were settled with the Crown in the Ngāti Manuhiri Claims Settlement Act 2012. That history is theirs to tell, and it is told with them on Te Hikoi o Ponui, the heritage trail at Tāwharanui Regional Park, twenty minutes from the estate.
Getting here
Guests arrive quickly and arrive somewhere else entirely: produce-driven restaurants, boutique shops, vineyards and Saturday markets, oyster farms and surf beaches, island ferries and sculpture trails.
Bluestone Estate champions the coast as much as it hosts you on it. Ask us for the places we love.
Bluestone