Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand: A slice of heaven on the cliff tops

"See that down there?" Farmer Matt Nilsson is pointing at something just beneath the surface of the sea, below a rugged row of sharp rocks where waves are crashing, throwing white water high into the sky. Between breakers, the sea looks as transparent as glass, and I can see a series of deep trenches beneath the ocean. "It's like supermarket shelves down there," he says with a grin. "You name it, you got it: abalone, lobster, crab. Run your hands along there and you've got yourself the barbecue of the year."

Nilsson is taking me on a Can-Am (a Canadian-made all-terrain vehicle that goes where four-wheel-drives can't) tour across the property I'm staying at. He's as enthusiastic as a kid: partly because he loves this dry, rugged chunk of New Zealand's North Island; and partly because doing this takes him away from working on his own farm next door. "I'd rather be showing you all this than looking after 3000 sheep with smelly blokes in gum boots," he says.

"All this" is The Farm at Cape Kidnappers: a 22-room property, complete with day spa, built atop a headland of sheer-sided cliffs and deep wooded gorges that is home to New Zealand's largest mainland colony of gannets, the world's 16th best golf course (many say its most spectacular), and the largest wildlife restoration program in New Zealand for the country's endangered endemic animals. Below the rolling hills and river flats that serve as pasture land for sheep and cattle, New Zealand fur seals fish the blue Pacific and a pod of migratory orca just swam past us, barely 300 metres from the shore. Had I come a little later in the year, I'd just as likely see pods of southern right whales.

Nilsson manoeuvres the Can-Am over hilltops terraced like war bunkers and as hollow as honeycomb, and under gnarled trees with branches bent over double by centuries of blustering winter westerlies. We drive through a hidden green valley – a dry river bed sunken deep into this volcanic landscape – and up a steep rise; below us, a coastline of white sand beaches and steep rock cliffs stretches out. Nilsson drives along the beach, dodging waves that wash high up the shore, there are ancient Maori pa (hill fortress) sites in the dunes beside us. In fact, the cape is linked back to the origins of the Maori in New Zealand.

"There used to be a settlement for whalers right there," Nilsson says. "But these days you won't see a soul around for weeks on end. It gets lonely out here, even for the sheep."

Captain Cook anchored the Endeavour just a few hundred metres out from here. He gave this headland its name after local Hawke's Bay Maori tried to kidnap a young Tahitian boy from his ship in 1769. A century later, a Scottish family bought the land as pasture for livestock; 150 years on, some of it is still a working sheep and cattle farm. Staying here allows us to imagine what life must be like as a New Zealand sheep farmer, albeit a sheep farmer with Picassos on their walls, their own day spa and five-course degustation dinners served up each evening. There are as many as 20,000 breeding pairs of gannets nesting by the cliff edges of Cape Kidnappers, the youngsters grow bigger than their parents to garner strength for the eight-day, non-stop flight to Australia they'll take before they're back here to breed. It's a gannet airport round these cliffs, we watch from a few metres away as whole squadrons of gannets take off and land as awkwardly as any bird ever did.

In three hours, we don't see another person across this 2400-hectare property; if there's a lonelier piece of coastline in the Antipodes, I've yet to see it. Though most guests at The Farm at Cape Kidnappers are content taking in these surroundings from the rustic lodge and from suites built up high on the cliffs, a half-kilometre back from the Pacific. It's a hell of a vantage point, in the evenings, as a half moon rises in the sky and the only sound is the bark of working sheep dogs clocking off for the day, I can see the twinkling lights of Napier across a pretty blue-water bay that wraps around like a wineglass.