"Searching for ancestral memory in Otaki" a Otaki Travel Page by craic

I found the old homestead where my great grandmother and father used to live. A guy who makes willow baskets uses it for storage. It is just off the main drag and used to be a dairy farm. When Otaki was rural. It won't be there much longer I think, but the verandah posts and floorboards which are matai will be saved and used to build boats or furniture.

Trains don't stop at Otaki any more. I had to go there by bus. I used the Intercity/Newmans bus alliance, but the Naked Bus goes there too.

There are at least four cemeteries in Otaki, and only graves in the public cemetery are on the register, but I eventually found my family graves in the cemetery between the convent and the marae on Convent Road.

Otaki is an odd town because there is a main drag which is a highway, now lined with outlet shops. You turn off to get to the beach which is 4 k away. The township proper with the library and 2 pubs is about half way between the highway and the beach.