A nervous glance out the van window this morning, as we were hoping the rain would hold off long enough to get out and do a walk, and at the moment it looked promising!
We packed up fast and headed off to Karangahake Gorge, doing a quick detour to Paeroa, the home of NZ’s famous soft drink ‘L&P’. Now you would be forgiven for having never heard of this brand, who’s strap line is ‘World famous in New Zealand’. We made the pilgrimage to it’s home town so Ben could have a photo with another ‘big thing’…the larger than life L&P bottle.
We then arrived at the Gorge car park; walking gear on, and back pack filled with lunch and drinks we started off on the Karangahake Gorge Historic Walkway, alongside the Ohinemuri River.
Karangahake is the site of the original gold rush in 1875, and steeped in gold mining history, on the walkway we passed many old buildings from this bygone era.
The path followed the old train tracks to Waikino Station, where onwards from here there is still a line running from Waikino on towards the coast at Waihi. We stopped at the restored station platform and ate lunch.
After which we retraced our steps back along our previous route, stopping for a quick look around the Victoria Battery.
Constructed in 1896 and crushing 800 tonnes of Martha Mines gold bearing ore each day, using 200 stamps, it was the largest quartz crushing plant for gold extraction in Australasia.
On returning to the car park we started on the Karangahake Tunnel walk, a 1km walk through a partially lit railway tunnel. It was dark, wet and very eerie….we had never been so relieved to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
We then started what is possibly one of our favourite walks in NZ, a journey up through a truly stunning gorge. Passing through old mining tunnels, seeing stamper batteries, ore roasting kilns, and aerial tramways.
With sheer drops down to one side, and rugged cliff faces the other there was only one way forward, and that was through the dark and wet tunnels. Luckily we came armed with a torch, however we still came out at the end wet and muddy.
It was like we were in our own ‘Indiana Jones’ film, some of us taking the acting part a little too seriously!
After a long day walking we got back to the camp site at 6, and went for a nice long soak in the Hot Springs.
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