Tucked away on the wild west coast of Northland, just a short drive from the town of Dargaville, lies Baylys Beach, a place that to me will always feel like home. Long before it became a “hidden gem” to the local people from the area, it was simply our beach. Windswept, raw, and untamed a stretch of coastline that felt like it belonged to us who grow up in the Dargaville area all those years ago.
Growing up in Dargaville during the 1970s and early '80s, Baylys Beach was where weekends came to life. Back then, Dargaville was a busy little rural town, surrounded by dairy farms and logging trucks. But come Saturday or Sunday, families would pile into old Holdens or station wagons, pack up the chilly bin, and make the trip out to Baylys Beach. There were no signs, no toilets, no shops just the sand, sea, and that endless sky, And that was more than enough.
I can still feel the gritty warmth of the black sand between my toes, rich with iron carried down from the Wairoa River. It shimmered underfoot and stained everything it touched but we never minded. For us kids, it was part of the magic.
Fishing lines would be cast out from the shore while the older kids took to body surfing in the wild Tasman waves. Now and then, you’d spot a horse cantering along the water’s edge, rider silhouetted against the setting sun. I never thought of it as scenic back then it was just what weekends looked like for me
But my fondest memories are of the tuatua, Every summer, Mum, Dad, and us kids would head out to the Baylys Beach shoreline, buckets in hand, toes digging into the wet sand. As the tide receded, we’d feel the telltale bumps underfoot little treasures buried just beneath the surface. We'd laugh, splash, dig, and fill our buckets with tuatua until the sun started to dip low.
Back home, Mum would fry them up or make them into golden fritters. That smell briny, buttery, a little sandy is etched into my memory, We weren’t the only ones Families all along the coast did the same. For Māori whānau in the area, tuatua were more than just food they were a link to ancestors, a part of their story, Even for us Pākehā, there was an unspoken reverence, We only took what we needed, always left some behind, Nobody had to tell us about sustainability we just understood.
By the late ’80s, though, things started to change, More people were coming, some from Auckland and further afield. Tuatua beds grew thinner. That sense of quiet ownership, of communal care, began to fray. Eventually, limits were introduced, and education campaigns followed. Necessary, perhaps but it marked the end of an era.
Still, for those of us who remember, those years were golden, Baylys Beach wasn’t just a place to gather shellfish it was where cousins wrestled in the surf, where aunties shared gossip over sandwiches, and where time seemed to stretch out like the horizon itself. It was where we learned to respect the ocean, to feed ourselves with our own hands.
Today, Baylys is much the same in appearance, wild, open, and largely untouched, the tuatua aren’t as plentiful now, and you’ll see signs reminding you of the limits or Not to dig for them now. But walk along that shoreline, and you’ll still hear echoes. In the wind. In the waves. In your own memory, if you let it rise.
To me, Baylys Beach will always be a part of my soul. It’s not just a beach it’s a chapter of childhood, a place where the past and present still meet in every tide.