Car ferry operators Sealink and Waiheke Shipping exchange people, goods and refuse between Kennedy Point and Half Moon Bay in Auckland’s eastern suburbs. Sealink’s Seacat, the largest of the car ferries, pulls up to Kennedy Point Wharf laden with visitors, tradespeople and residents. Seasonal tides from the mainland also deliver waves of the walking wounded and media shy: CEOs, celebrities, ex-celebrities, burnt-out substance abusers, drop-outs and half-way-housers. Boatloads of islanders commute to Auckland for work, but plenty eke out a living without crossing the gulf: infrastructure people, horticulturists, artisans, retailers and tradespeople, mixing it up with a diehard core of alternative lifestylers, artists and semi-retired activists. Yet the island’s diversity runs deeper than places of origin. Although there are few of the Polynesian and Asian faces of greater Auckland, exotic imports-especially from Western Europe and the Americas-abound. In a populace as diverse as Waiheke’s, dry wit acts as social cement. It’s that conspiratorial nod or wink, the lingua franca of escapees from the Big Smoke. Laconic humour shimmers just under the surface when you strike up a conversation with a Waiheke Islander. One of the placard-bearers is singled out by a tanned face to my right: “You protesting, bro?” I amble past the reception committee-local tourism vendors holding up placards: “Oneroa Lodge welcomes Sloane”, “Palm Beach Resort for Prudential”, “The Rudd family”. She pirouettes with cumbersome grace and ties up to the pier. Quickcat, one of the regular commuter vessels on this run, throttles back and eases between Matiatia’s rocky heads into a harbour flanked by grass-carpeted hills where a few houses play join-the-dots on the ridgeline.

Spray from the ferry as it rips through the Motuihe Channel adds a salty tang to the air, and the water frothing around the twin hull looks cool and inviting. Meteorologists might deconstruct this miracle with talk of temperature inversions, but they can’t undo a niggling suspicion that nothing about this Hauraki Gulf island is quite as it seems. As you get closer, the mirage dwindles, subsides, and finally dissolves into the sea. Mornings like this, when Waiheke Island hovers above the horizon-a floating world cocooned in its own dream. The effect is known as a fata morgana, and you see it on clear, hot, still mornings as you make the crossing from downtown Auckland. Her short film-in-progress, Knowing, traces Nakagawa’s journey from marine engineer in Tokyo to Waiheke-based artist. Carved with the words TOWARDS THIS LAND ONCE SPIRITED-alluding to the paddle’s history-the work serves here as a prop for filmmaker Bridget Quick. Written by Andrew Caldwell Photographed by Peter James QuinnĪ special connection between land and sea is not lost on artist Kazu Nakagawa as he gives an old Waiheke oar a new lease of life in an artwork.

The island of the day before