* (SERENE MUSIC) The taciturn James Cook definitely had a tendency to call it as he saw it. Surrounding on this 260km tract of glorious coastline, and spying from HMS Endeavour the bountiful gardens of the local iwi, he was moved to name it the Bay of Plenty. (MUSIC SWELLS) It's as apt a name as any, and from here, the summit of Mauao, you can see it all ` an abundance of fertile land, a plethora of holiday destinations and evidence of a burgeoning population, particularly in the port city of Tauranga, now New Zealand's fifth largest metropolis. (SWELLING MUSIC CONTINUES) Joining me on a voyage of discovery in the Bay of Plenty, Matt Carter dives the ill-fated Rena. Hamish Campbell unearths the brutal truth beneath the bowling green. Innocuous as it seems now, it belies a long and bloody history. JACKY: Oh, the coast looks amazing from here. And Jacky Geurts cops a bird's-eye view of the shoreline. Whoo! (LAUGHS) (DRAMATIC PERCUSSIVE MUSIC) We're in the Bay of Plenty, and this is Coast New Zealand. (RISING, INSPIRING THEME MUSIC) Captions by Julie Taylor. Edited by Glenna Casalme. www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018 (MUSIC SWELLS) Our Bay of Plenty pilgrimage follows the Eastern seaboard from the Port of Tauranga, around Mt Maunganui, along Papamoa Beach to Whakatane, and it takes flight at Ohiwa Harbour. (PEACEFUL MUSIC) If there's one thing New Zealanders know how to do, it's travel. Born of necessity, in order to get anywhere, really, there are long distances involved, and there's one species in particular that should seriously look at signing up to a good frequent-flyer programme. The godwit, in search of abundant food all-year round, toggles between the Arctic tundra in the northern summer and New Zealand, in a series of flights that has now been proven to include a non-stop pan-Pacific leg from Alaska. That's an estimated eight days and nights in flight. I would be thinking seriously about an upgrade. (DELICATE MUSIC) Godwits arrive in New Zealand from early September and immediately begin preparing for their departure in March. They can be found gorging themselves at idyllic spots like this, in the eastern Bay of Plenty, to the point where the wee fatties double in size pre-take off. By the time they get their boarding passes, organs will have shrunk, and the bird's blood circulatory system will actually have altered to more efficiently fuel their flying muscles. It's incredible. Why do they do it to themselves? It's all about being in the right place at the right time. The Arctic tundra in summer provides plenty of food for breeding birds and their young. By late summer, as supplies dwindle, the whole family flies south. Hence the Maori proverb, 'Who has seen the kuaka's nest,' in reference to the mysterious little critters that turn up every year, fully grown after an epic marathon of flight. So the next time you're considering a complaint about the leg room on a long-haul flight, spare a thought for the godwit. (SERENE, SOOTHING MUSIC) Another Bay of Plenty local with a well-worn passport is artist Graham Hoete. Michael Stevens meets him on his home turf. Graham is a multitalented artist with a truly global reach. But his work is grounded here, in Tauranga, and in his ancestry. (MOODY ELECTRONIC MUSIC) And despite his commissioned works featuring on buildings all over the world, Graham's latest project, a book of 100 New Zealand portraits, has brought the artist currently known as Mr G home. So, other than a paddock full of cow tiko, where are we? Uh, bro, we're actually, uh, here in the beautiful Matakana Island, Tauranga Moana. My mother was from here, and, uh, I consider it part of my home as well. Ko wai ia? Who's this old taua here? Uh, this is Tarere Wai O Rangi McMillan. She's a respected kuia, you know, within not just Matakana Island but also Tauranga Moana. And is this portrait part of your 100 portraits project? Yeah, yeah, this is one of them. It's really all about New Zealand unsung heroes or just, uh, not celebrities or anything but just people that are, I guess, celebrities in their own right, and just telling their stories in remote, obscure, breathtaking New Zealand locations and that. (PENSIVE MUSIC) So, getting into the mechanics of it, how do you actually do it? I pretty much just start off with the reference photo, and I just do some real light sketch lines and then just start rendering, you know, adding highlights, you know, mid-tones and shadows. And from there, it really just starts to take shape, really. If you can draw, you can pretty much paint a portrait with anything, you know, whether it be dirt or spray paint or... (CHUCKLES) Thing I love about spray paint ` it comes out fast. You know, you can do large-scale pieces quite quickly. It was Mr G's large-scale portrait of a well-loved diminutive musician that really put him on the map. I was a huge Prince fan. I heard he has passed, and I was gutted. So I was based in Sydney at the time, and, uh, so I thought, 'Well, how can I use my art to kind of pay tribute to him?' And so I actually painted my first portrait of Prince in Liverpool in Sydney. And it just went nuts on Facebook, eh, and just went viral all over the world and got to a point where I had a lot of Prince's fans from Chanhassen, which is his hometown, and they're all just kinda saying, 'Man, Mr G, you gotta come over here and do one. 'Please come over here and do one.' So I thought, 'Yeah. Why not?' Graham's hometown portrait of Prince was formally unveiled by the mayor, and the event received extensive news coverage throughout the US. The spin-off from that, in terms of commissions and all that sort of stuff, just went crazy after that, eh. (GENTLE PIANO MUSIC) It brought Mr G almost instant fame, but today, home is where the art is. Who's this fella? Who are we meeting here? Here, this is Tom Paul. He actually built this house here. It's a wee bit tattered now, but he was a hunter-gatherer, you know ` a man of the land, farmland and all that, so it's quite a cool story as well. Leaving behind the island of his birth, we head to another island that also holds special significance. (ENGINE TURNS) (GENTLE PIANO MUSIC) 'The island of Motiti, with approximately 30 permanent residents, 'is where Mr G grew up with his twin brother...' What does 'home' mean to you? Put simply, it's connection, you know? Connection to the land. Connection to my pa and everything that, I guess, I draw my cultural identity from, you know? '...and where is father, Graham Hoete Sr, is kaumatua.' It's also the location for his next portrait. So, Graham, you're sort of in the early planning stages of another mural here on Motiti? Talk me through it. Yeah, well, I'm doing a tribute portrait for, uh, my cousins Puti` oh, their whole whanau, really. So I just doing some light, uh, you know, preliminary sketches just to kinda get the layout. And it just kinda helps prep me in my mind, anyway, as to how I'm gonna position things. I'm at the point in my career now where I'm actually able to choose what commissions I take on, whether they align true to my values and what I'm about in general. I do make good money off my art now, and I'm thankful for that. I've worked really hard to get to that point. But for me, my art is more than just about making money. I love to use my art to touch people, you know, touch their hearts. I've got a lot more freedom now to really produce art that's, uh, I guess, a natural overflow out of my own heart, you know ` what I'm passionate about. From Motiti Island to Minnesota and back again. Graham's art is anchored here, very firmly, in Tauranga Moana, but it's making waves across the world. Coming up ` from unimaginable destruction... It was very emotional. There were tears. There was a lot of anger. ...to teeming sea life. The wreck of the Rena revived. . All right, so, this is Tim. 34-year-old male. RTC. Multi-vehicle... VOICES OVERLAP I think about the car crash a lot. I know he caused it and I reacted the best way possible. But it's hard to let it go. SOMBRE MUSIC When I asked what had happened to him, the doctors said he really wore the impact ` any more and things would've been much worse. They said he was lucky ` lucky I wasn't going any faster. Thank you. SOMBRE MUSIC CONTINUES It's OK. MUSIC CONTINUES It's OK. * (INTRIGUING MUSIC) Once a common calamity of seafaring, shipwrecks today are, fortunately, few and far between. The sinking of the MV Rena became New Zealand's worst maritime disaster ` the largest ship ever lost in New Zealand waters ` and it was just off the coast of Tauranga. On Wednesday, the 5th of October 2011, at 2.20 in the morning, while sailing in clear weather from Napier to Tauranga, the container ship Rena ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef. Over the course of the following few days, some 350 tons of thick, toxic oil spewed out of the ship, coating and smothering the rocks, the sand and the wildlife. It was New Zealand's worst-ever maritime ecological disaster, and one of the hardest hit areas was this stretch of glorious, white, sandy beach at Papamoa. Marine scientist Chris Battershill became the face of the Rena disaster, front-footing the fallout. When it happened, what was the scene down here? It was just a black coating of oil ` thick oil ` on the beaches. Very acrid smell. How far did it spread? It spread from the Mount, all the way down to the end of Papamoa Beach in the first spill. And then subsequent spills over various storm events ended up going down as far as Maketu. And some of it went inside Tauranga harbour. The community were just horrified. They're absolutely horrified. It was very emotional. There were tears. There was a lot of anger. So given the understandable anger from the people and the scale of it, how do you even begin to make a plan to deal with it? Uh, very much on the first day, those who are charged with dealing this ` Maritime New Zealand and the regional councils ` they quickly got together, forged` created an operations base and started to look at how they might tackle the ensuing spills and subsequent events. Behind the scenes, also, the public were self-organising. They were angry, of course, when they saw oil and could smell it. Yes. And they wanted to get down on to the beaches very, very quickly and work to clean up the oil themselves. Uh-huh. So at first, there was a bit of frustration on behalf of the public. They were not allowed access to the beach. And it transpired for good reason, because if you just wandered down on to the beach and started picking up oil, you became immediately covered in the stuff, and people were starting to track it up into the sand dunes, which was displacing one problem into another. You see that lady in the` that one there? Go see her. In total, some 8000 volunteers collected 1000 tons of oily waste from the Bay of Plenty coastline. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) At the time, it was the largest volunteer army ever deployed in an environmental clean up anywhere in the world. It's because of that effort, by hand, physically lifting the material off the beach and getting that bolt of oil out of the system that we subsequently saw quite a strong recovery. Right. So the simplest possible solution, really ` to physically, by hand, picking it up. That's correct, yeah, and I think the event has set certainly a benchmark for responses into the future internationally, because we learnt from a similar scale oil-spill event in Australia, the Pacific Adventurer, but in that occasion, they used heavy gear, tractors and so on, to try and lift the oil out. Uh-huh. What they did, however, was to impregnate it deeper down into the sediments. Oh, so the wheels kinda ploughed it into the sand? That's right. Yep, yep. So the light touch with human hands, just many of them, worked. Wow. How can we be sure it worked? Samples drilled from the sand using a vibracore. So it does look clean, to my untutored eye. And essentially, this is exactly what we saw when it was done about six months after the Rena incident. So, what, a foot or more of sand that's come out,... Yep. ...it's exactly the same as the surface sand. That's right. There's no sudden appearance of black oil. No, no. The reason that it's looking like this is due, in no doubt, to the 8000 volunteers who came in on bended knee with plastic bags, just grabbed the stuff with their hands and removed it out of the system. And the sand is clean. (SOOTHING MUSIC) While people-power saw the beach return to its former glory in record time, at sea, the situation was vastly different. Matt Carter is joining marine ecologist Phil Ross, who has been monitoring the Rena and its salvage operations since it sank, diving the wreck more than 150 times. So how successful has the salvage been? Yeah, the salvage has been pretty amazing. When I first started diving there in 2012, it was pretty much like going to a big scrap-metal yard. You know, there was piles of copper wire 5m high,... massive metal ingots,... plateaus of just flattened containers. So what was the most environmentally destructive thing that went down? There was a container of copper wire that came out of earthquaked Christchurch buildings. And so that had` You know, this wiring had been taken out, all the insulation had been stripped off, it had been diced up into tiny pieces. The container ruptured and deposited copper on the sea floor. I've actually got some here we can take a look at. Wow, so it is just really fine, isn't it? It's unbelievable. I think it was about 20 tons. Wow. And that would have been incredibly hard to clean up. How did they even manage that? So they ended up using a dredge, which is pretty much like a vacuum cleaner. Right now, 7 tons to 10 tons of it is sitting underneath the ship; it can't be accessed. Every time there's a big storm, we'll go out and see if, you know` If that stern section shifts across, all of a sudden, it will become accessible. OK, right. So what's the impact of copper on a reef environment like this? What we're seeing, some invertebrates ` sponges, hydroids, bryozoans ` that we would expect to see there` well, expect to see recovering there ` we're not finding there. But they are recovering outside of that on the reef itself? Yeah, definitely. You move, sort of, 10m, 20m, 30m away from that area, and we're seeing all the things we'd expect to grow there are growing there, which is really good news. Invisible toxins from the copper remain. The metal-enriched water is known as a copper halo, and is regularly sampled by Phil and his colleagues. (ETHEREAL MUSIC) (WATER BURBLES) (ETHEREAL MUSIC CONTINUES) The bow thruster over here has been thrown up on the reef, and just the sheer weight of this shows the forces that are at play down here. (MOURNFUL MUSIC) Looking round, you just see how much debris there is. It's scattered all over the reef ` everything from bits of steel to old tyres. (WATER BURBLES) (POIGNANT MUSIC) The Rena's owners spent an estimated $600 million cleaning up the wreck site ` the world's second-biggest salvage job after the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank off Tuscany in 2012. Monitoring in the reef will continue for quite a lot longer, but slowly and surely, the impact of the Rena is ebbing away. Next ` how two teenage surfers took on the fashion world and won. The smaller the bikini, the better; and the smaller the bikini, the quicker they sold. (LIVELY SURF MUSIC) In the 1970s, the Mount, as it's colloquially known, was a laid-back, seaside community. It was also home to an international fashion empire. Jacky Geurts gets the skinny on a design duo who changed the way Kiwis wear their togs. It's the uniform of locals and holidaymakers alike. If you're wearing more than a swimsuit and a pair of flip-flops around these parts, chances are you're overdressed. Drawing on that laid-back vibe, Tony and Judy Alvos were a pair of teenage surfers who saw an opportunity and ran with it. So, tell me, how did two teenage surfers build an international swimwear brand? Well, I'm wondering... Did I sell you a pair of board shorts when I was about 14? No, you` you repaired them. I repaired them! Oh, you cheapskate. I thought` That's how we met. Coulda sold you a pair, at least. I used to hawk them off on the beach when I was about 14. It was a way of earning some money. I was creative, and so I just made board shorts and bikinis. And it all took off from there. Yes, it did. Tony and Judy married and headed overseas, settling in Australia. Inspired by their travels, Judy began making reversible bikinis out of vibrant Indonesian fabrics, and Expozay was born. The fabric was like gold; it was hard to get, so the smaller the bikini, the better; and the smaller the bikini, the quicker they sold. (CHUCKLES) And then it got a bit too serious, and we decided, 'Oh, I think we'd better come back here,' where there's 32 sewing factories at the time. What was the style of Expozay? Super brief. Really brief, you know, and really visual and bright. And cheeky. Do you have a little sample of your swimsuit here? Yeah, this is screen-print and airbrushed. It was hand-screened at night, like, 1000 units on the cutting table, so it was dry in the morning, and the guy used to come in with his stencil and airbrush each colour. Wow. By hand. It used to take him about 20 minutes per unit. Did you have a target number that you could produce in a night? No, just go like hell. (LAUGHS) The next step was retail, and the couple's first shop at the Mount opened in 1978 to unprecedented demand. You'd have 60 to 70 people in your store, and we'd have to close the shop and let one out and let one in. (CHUCKLES) And so, yeah, we never had time to really think too much about other than training staff at high speed to produce the volume we needed to` just in time to deliver. Great problem. By the mid-1980s, Expozay was established across Australia, the UK, Japan, the Middle East as well as America, their successful swimwear adorning rich and famous women around the world. Princess Di, she wore one of our high-neck suits and low cut-out back. Jane Fonda's exercise. Yeah, Jane Fonda exercise. Rachel Hunter. Rachel Hunter. Expozay was the first apparel company to win a New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Export award, and at the height of its success, employed 120 people. Fashion historian Doris de Pont believes their runaway success was a product of zeitgeist. Right time, right place, right product. They sat in the '70s, so the pill had just come out, and people were in control of their fertility, and so there were young people with money to spend,... Yeah. and they really offered a lifestyle product, a really great lifestyle product. Although they had started in the '70s, their peak period, really, was in the 1980s, when it became all about the buff body, and they cut the swimsuits to show that off. They were, at one stage, one of the five top selling labels in Australia, and this is in the '80s, before we have any idea of a sort of New Zealand fashion, our swimwear was making fashion waves internationally. And pitching to young audience too. So sexy, young suits for sexy, young girls. Fashions can come and go, but there's one thing that's always in style, and that is a day at the beach, covered or uncovered, as long as there's sand in your sammies and salt on your skin. (BRIGHT, SWEEPING MUSIC) To Maori, women are considered te whare tangata, or 'the house of humanity', being as they are givers of life. And here in Whakatane, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, local iwi would appear to be more indebted than most to the feminine forebears. The Ngati Awa trace their origins back to a number of ancestors, including those who lived on Aotearoa before the Maori occupation, and later, those who travelled here from Hawaiki. This beautifully carved canopy protects a replica of the waka that carried them, which survived the perilous journey by a whisker, and only thanks to the quick thinking of the captain's daughter. Leonie Simpson is the CEO of Te Runanga o Ngati Awa. Lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Leonie, tell me about the woman on the rock out there. So the statue on the rock depicts Wairaka, who is our ancestor. She arrived on the Mataatua waka. They arrived here from Hawaiki and brought the kumara, which is the sweet potato, to Aotearoa. They came through the river mouth here and travelled further up the river and anchored our waka Mataatua there. And the men left the waka to go exploring, and they left behind mostly women. And at that time, women didn't paddle the waka; that was the role of the men. As the men left, the tide started going out, and the waka started actually drifting back out to sea. And Wairaka said, 'Kia whakatane ake au i ahau,' which is 'Let me act as a man,' and she took up the hoe with other women, and they paddled our waka, Mataatua, back to shore. What would have happened if Wairaka hadn't done what she did? So the waka and the women would have been washed out to sea and lost. Were there consequences for acting like a man? Mm. Her father, Toroa, was the rangatira, or the captain of the Mataatua waka, so she was a prestigious woman. There weren't consequences for her, and even today, we celebrate her. And if people have a particular characteristic that might be like her, then we actually celebrate that. What does Wairaka's story mean to you, personally? I think she gives us, as Maori women and her descendants, the courage and the confidence to lead,... to maybe go against the grain and to be... a revolutionary in your own way. (WOMAN SINGS HAUNTING MUSIC) Coming up ` Jacky gets her wings. MAN: OK, so you have control of the stick. JACKY: Yeah, I have control of the stick. OK. Oh God. No, she's all yours. (ROTORS WHIRR) * (ADVENTUROUS MUSIC) When surveying New Zealand's magnificent coast, where do you get the most bang for your buck? Not from ground level but in the air. Jacky Geurts goes sky-high for the best view on offer in the Bay of Plenty. 'Once you've tasted flight, you shall forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, 'for there you have been and there you will always long to return.' So said Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance man and early adopter of aviation technology. And while the principles of flight remain unchanged and unchangeable ` lift, weight, thrust and drag ` our insatiable desire to achieve a bird's-eye view means new ways of getting airborne are constantly on the horizon. Tauranga is the home of the latest incarnation of the magnificent flying machine. Pilot Elton Haakma is about to give me my first lesson in how to fly one. Hi, Jacky. Hi. Nice to meet you. Tell me, what is this? This is a gyrocopter. Which is? It's like a cross between a plane and a helicopter. It flies like a plane, so you got a throttle and propeller for forward thrust, pedals to control the rudder for direction. Looks like a helicopter with the spinning blades, but they're not driven by the engine. So what happens is the wind coming up through them drives the blades around. Can anyone fly it? Uh, sure. We have people aged ranging from the 20s right through the 80s, and it doesn't take long before they pick it up. Can I fly it? I'm pretty sure, yeah, you'll be fine. I'm in that age bracket. (LAUGHS) Yeah, you are. (LAUGHS) This unique aircraft was invented by the Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva in the early 1920s. Early versions were used as support and surveillance vehicles in World War II, and today, over 1000 gyrocopters are used by both military and law enforcement agencies around the world. Got a bit of power. Approach airstrip with pedals. Stick's right back. Yup. Looking down the end of the runway. Nose wheel's gonna come up. (CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY) (MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY ON RT) Here comes the nose wheel. (LAUGHS) Now we're in a wheel balance. Right, I'm going full power. (ENGINE REVS) Whoo-hoo-hoo! And away we go. Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo-hoo! Whoa! (WONDROUS MUSIC) You doing all right back there? Yeah, I'm good. (MUSIC SWELLS) (LAUGHS) Oh, the coast looks amazing from here. It's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. The water's just beautiful turquoise. Nice, isn't it? Yeah. (WONDROUS MUSIC CONTINUES) Whoo-hoo! Whoo! (LAUGHS) Oh my goodness. All right? That's incredible. This is an amazing way to see the shoreline. But I've been a backseat driver long enough. Time for me to roll solo. OK, so you have control of the stick. Yeah, I have control of the stick. Oh God. No, she's all yours. I'll just sit back and enjoy the view. You do all the hard work. (LAUGHS) As long as you're nice and smooth,... Yeah. ...you're doing well. This is good. Whoo-hee! I'm flying. (UPBEAT MUSIC) You're doing a good job. I'm pulling a few facials, though, I think. (LAUGHS) All right. Come to the right a little bit, then we'll track in towards the runway now. OK, I have control now. You have control of the stick. Cool. (MUSIC CONTINUES) Nice one. Well done. Nose goes up. Thank you. You did very well, Jacky. Thank you. I loved it. It was amazing. See you back next week. (CLASSICAL MUSIC RISES) In 2017, Tauranga officially overtook Dunedin and claimed the title of New Zealand's fifth largest city. That the town should prosper is not news to local Maori. It was always thus, but while it was a haven, it was also a target. Hamish Campbell digs into the brutal past of Otamataha Pa. This unassuming piece of real estate here in the booming port city of Tauranga has beautiful harbour views, a rose garden, a bowling green and a car park. But, innocuous as it seems now, it belies a long and bloody history. In 2017, a survey of the site using ground-penetrating radar revealed a trench 3.3m wide and 2.2m deep, evidence of the Otamataha Pa. Ngai Tamarawaho kaumatua Peri Kohu explains the significance. Mm. Nau mai. Welcome. Thank you. So why is this such a special place to you? At the headland of this pa is where the Takitimu waka landed... Right. ...in Tauranga, so we have a special connection here that's, uh, what, 700 years since? Yeah. Otamataha Pa was one of the largest in the region. Beaches to the north and south provided vital canoe access, and defensive earthworks afforded protection from invasion. That is, until the Europeans arrived. What happened here in 1828? A visit from our cousins up in Hauraki, Ngati Maru. They came down; they had recently acquired the musket, and they pretty well almost wiped this place out and the people who lived here in the village, and it still rankles in our history now. Right. It sounds like a significant battle ` one side had the musket and the other didn't. That's exactly right. No real contest. No. There was a lot of damage done, hundreds of people were killed. Right. What happened to the pa after the battle? Well, most of the people that were left standing were moved away. Tapu. Tapu ground. It's tapu, yeah. The land was confiscated from us under the Government Confiscation Act of 1863. They built a constabulary here. Like a military presence. A military presence here. And so post that period of time, had been transferred to local governments, and so now it's a bowling green. Yes. It's not appropriate. Ngai Tamarawaho have given their blessing to an excavation of the site. Archaeologist Ken Phillips is in charge of the dig. The purpose of the investigation is the Tauranga City Council are looking at a number of options or locations for a museum development, this being one of them. And so we're obviously just doing some preliminary work to see how much archaeology is here that may or may not be affected by a museum. As the site gives way to the ocean at its southern end, the dig has provided valuable insight to life within the pa. This is a little keyhole look at the interior of the pa. Right. So this is within the defended area. So we've got really intensive living areas ` cooking, living, storage, crop storage ` all sorts of activity areas. What have you found so far in terms of artefacts? We've found a few pre-European, Maori artefacts in the form of obsidian flakes. Oh, yeah. So typical flake material. Olive green and transparent light. It was very much a general tool. It was used for everything from, potentially, butchering animal, working with bone, cutting hair. Shaving? (LAUGHS) Perhaps not. That's like the equivalent of a modern day penlight. And what about European remains? Well, there's a little bit. Yeah, obviously the armed constabulary had a camp here, and there was lots of military and missionary activity. Typical historical artefacts, like a classic base of a black beer, which we find thousand and thousands of these in the military camp. They drink a lot of beer when they were here. And your basic 'penny ink', also a very common artefact of the period. Yeah. Soldiers writing home, perhaps. (CLASSICAL STRING MUSIC) The artefacts so laboriously excavated are hard evidence of layers of living at Otamataha Pa. And whatever the future holds for this historic site, its enduring presence will always have an eye to the past. Coming up ` I get to top tips from a local Olympian. That's not a real boat. Looks like a toy! (LAUGHS) * (SERENE MUSIC) (MUSIC RISES) As an island nation, it's no surprise that New Zealanders are avid recreational boaties and rumoured to own, per capita, the highest number of boats in the world. Now, that statistic is hard to verify, but there is no doubting the dominance of Kiwis when it comes to competitive sailing. New Zealand yachties have garnered dozens of world titles. And with a haul of more than 20 medals over the history of the games, sailing is one of the country's most successful Olympic sports. (ENERGETIC, UPLIFTING MUSIC) This provincial sailing club, nestled in the glistening Tauranga Harbour, has produced winners of bronze, silver and gold, and is the home of Peter Burling, himself a gold medal winner, who wrestled the 2017 America's Cup off Team Oracle. And so what is the club's secret? I'm hoping one of those local Olympians, Molly Meech, has some inside information. (BOTH EXCHANGE GREETINGS) Is this kind of craft here, is this what a beginner sets out on? Uh, no. So this is kind of what you progress to when you get a little bit older in sailing. That boat over there, that is what people learn to sail in. That's not a real boat. Wow, so this is actually something that you go out in the water on! Yup. Looks like a toy! (LAUGHS) Wow! This is called the P-class, and it's a New Zealand-designed boat. So this is unique to this part of the world? Uh, yes, very unique to New Zealand. And it is said that if you can sail one of these boats, you can sail anything. That is extraordinary. Yeah. It's very small, so when the winds pick up, it starts diving down into the waves a little bit. So it's a really, really tricky boat to sail. Could I have a go in a thing like that? Oh, definitely. Maybe not dressed like this, though. No, we might need to get you changed into something... Cos I'm feeling something might happen in there. Yeah. OK. Right, I'll give it a go. Cool. Right, Molly. You ready? Yeah, as I'll ever` Actually, it looks better in the water. It does, though. It looks bigger, doesn't it? It does. It looks more realistic now. So what do I do? OK... and I've long left my teens behind. So how hard can it be? Make it go. (LAUGHS) Well, no, that's your job! So you've got the tiller. Where's the green button? Here are the mainsheet. Uh-huh. So that's pretty much your green button. Right. You pull that in. Yeah. OK? Ready? Uh-huh. I'm gonna push you off. Tiller straight, remember? Yeah. You can put your head on this side of the boom. Yeah. Other side of the boom. There we go! You're away! Whoo! So I am! SHOUTS: So now push it away, and you go for a tack. No, other way. Other way. Yeah. Push away. And now you're gonna have to change sides of the boat. Whoo-hoo! Very nice! This is good, actually. Yeah, you're going really fast. There we go. Let the sail out slightly. Yeah, nice. OK, you've gotta jibe now. Whoo-hoo! Oh, too much! Oh! (LAUGHS) Oh no! Oh! Yup, you're getting wet. (SPECTATORS EXCLAIM, CHEER) (LIGHT PERCUSSIVE MUSIC) (INHALES DEEPLY, GUFFAWS) (PERCUSSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) As Robert the Bruce allegedly told his troops in 1314, before they gave the English a hiding at Bannockburn, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.' (LAUGHS) That was good! So what age were you when you started doing this competitively ` without falling in every 10 seconds? Well, so,... I was probably about 13 or 14, I guess, when I really started doing it competitively. Yeah. But definitely in the learning stages of 11 and 12. There was a lot of swimming involved. So what was happening to me there, was that quite typical? Yes. A lot of kids get very used to that manoeuvre ` capsizing. I can only take so many dunkings, though. I think a change of vessel and a change of skipper is required if I'm to experience 'smooth sailing'. What would you say is it about this place, this club that is producing so many successful yachtsmen and women? I think the P-class is such a great boat because it adds a whole lot more aspects of sailing to it. The class itself is such a big class in New Zealand, that the competitiveness as well comes into it. When I was growing up, we loved getting out there and beating each other around the harbour. So I think just getting out on the water and just having the enjoyment behind it is a massive part as to why people succeed. In the midst of the kind of competition, is it still fun? Yes. Yeah. I think that's why I'm still doing it. Very competitive but very enjoyable as well. (BIRD SQUEAKS) (LAID-BACK GUITAR MUSIC) Never seen an Olympian in action, and there's no denying she's got skills. But she's not the only one. And I still don't know what it is that gives the kids from this boat club their undeniable edge. I'm seeking out the club treasurer and life member Gary Smith for a definitive answer. Gary, what is it about this place, this harbour, that's producing so many world class sailors? The harbour's a fantastically safe place, for a start. Fully enclosed; we don't get the surf coming in. But having said that, we've got some really steaming westerlies that can come over the Kaimais. So our sailors learn to keep their heads up and out of the boat, learn to keep an eye on the weather. And today, with the current out here, we can actually end up with some very steep waves. So our kids have to learn quickly about how to deal with the current. They learn a lot about how different tide lines provide different paths to the harbour and give them different advantages. So, yeah, they can take those skills and take them to international waters. And you can see, we've got some reasonably good Olympian sailors come out of this club. Do those Olympic winners... do they breed more? Yes, it gives us new sailors coming through, some obvious mentors; and that whole system of how the coaching works, a lot of it's been started off with Richard Burling, with Peter's dad. He came in and identified ` how do we actually breed success? How we do that is actually get a really good group of kids and raise the bar and raise the bar. There's some more exciting sailors coming out of Tauranga yet. So it's a winning recipe. Yeah, a winning recipe. The alumni of Tauranga Yacht Club reads like a who's who of elite sailing ` a roll call of world champions unparalleled anywhere else. To my untrained eye, it seems that here in Tauranga, there really is something in the water. (DRAMATIC, SWEEPING MUSIC) (SWEEPING MUSIC CONTINUES) From the prosperous to the omnipresent volcanic cone of Mauao, along the white sand beach that stretches in one continuous silica streak all the way to Whakatane, a total of 259km of coastline, it's plenty by name, plenty by nature. (DRAMATIC RISING MUSIC) (RISING, INSPIRING THEME MUSIC) Captions by Julie Taylor. Edited by Glenna Casalme.