TAIERI GORGE

TUESDAY 17th MAY

  I woke up this morning to the sight of blue skies, and although it clouded over a bit, things didn't look too bad, so I phoned Dunedin Station and confirmed that I would be using my open ticket.  I drove down to the all day car park next to the station and entered the station at 12.00am to present my ticket.  This is a trip from Dunedin to Pukerangi through the Taieri Gorge.

  There was time for a flat white coffee before boarding the train, which set of promptly at 12.30pm.
Construction of the line began in June 1879 and it took 10 years to build the first section to Hinton.  It is amazing to think that the line was built by men with shovels and pickaxes with the aid of horses and carts.

The train goes through Carisbrook and then Abbotsford where apparently there was a bad landslide in 1979 that destroyed 69 houses, with fortunately no loss of life.  It then passes through Wingatui and then passes a well known stud farm that bred a Melbourne Cup winner some years ago.  Apparently an early settler shot and wounded a tui bird (hence the name Wing-a-tui) in 1948 and his wife took care of it in their home.

Pretty soon the landscape started changing as we entered the gorge.  Shortly after Salisbury and Taioma comes the Wingatui Viaduct.  This is one f the largest steel structures in the Southern hemisphere, but is well beaten by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the largest steel structure in the Northern hemisphere.

It was built in Dunedin and then assembled in situ, holding up the joining of the line either side by a couple of years.

There are no roads in the gorge, only private roads owned by the Timber Companies that are for their own use.  The scenery became increasingly spectacular as we started climbing up to around 1000ft above sea level.

The Taieri River starts running alongside the track on the lefthand side before switching over to the other side between Little Mt Allan and Hinton.

The train made a stop at Arthur's Knob and we were able to dismount from the train for a photo op.  The guard was most insistent that we descend the steps from the carriage backwards like walking down a ladder and kept at least 6m from the edge.  The 5 star hotel that the guard kept talking up on the way proved to be a rest hut for the construction crews, and is now the smallest listed building in New Zealand!

 After re-boarding the train we headed on through Flat Stream, The Notches and The Reefs, we arrived at Pukerangi after a two hour journey.  There the engine had to change ends for the return journey.

A bus delivered a bunch of passangers on a one way trip back to Dunedin, mainly Chinese who didn't seem to understand any English.

After about a quarter hour break we set off on the return journey, stopping at Hinton to take a look at a sculpture of a sheep dog.