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Every spring, more than 1,700 jacarandas turn Grafton purple and the town throws Australia's oldest floral festival. Dates, the best streets to see the trees, and how to fit Grafton into a slow NSW road trip.

One is a 150-year-old city park with lakes, lights and a zoo. The other is a rainforest garden under the maunga with rhododendrons the size of houses. Both are free, and together they make a perfect slow day in New Plymouth.

Rhododendrons under the maunga, a nationally significant native garden in suburbia and a country garden inside an old pā. Ten Taranaki gardens worth the drive, plus how to do the 2026 Garden Festival.

Hāwera is where Surf Highway 45 ends and most visitors turn back. Stay a while for Tawhiti Museum, a 1914 water tower, a hilltop pā with a dramatic past and a house full of Elvis.

Most visitors never get as far south as Pātea. They miss a town with a number-one song, a waka on a plinth, a free museum, a whale you can walk through and a shipwreck on the beach.

A giant shearer, a sheep stampede down the main street and a wharenui built by Te Kooti. Te Kūiti is the quieter base for Waitomo Caves and the gateway to the Forgotten World Highway.