The Ghost Town of Waiuta- West Coast

Catch-up, and no I haven't forgotten about Ngawi, It's coming along....soon. 

We've been in Hokitika at the NZMCA Park, the last two nights (and the third tonight), we had a catch-up and dinner with son-in-law Cameron who was here on business from Winton the first night. I've done the laundry (in that crappy laundromat I said I'd never use again), done the grocery shopping and David's filled the diesel & petrol(outboard) tanks. 

Then we managed to arrange with some very obliging Coasters to have the 5th-wheeler self-containment certificate checked and renewed for another 4 years and the electrical warrant checked and passed as well- both are due at the end of the year, along with the two WOFs on the rig. A terrible time to have everthing expire. Now it'll be just the warrants which should be easy enough to have done when we get to a bigger town. 

We were heading to another one of our favourite lakes this morning but the rain has finally caught up to us with vengeance, with torrential downpours and thunder and lighting. So we've sat tight, filled the water tanks, I've written this blog and we'll head off tomorrow morning, touch wood.

Waiuta Ghost Town-

Twenty kilometres south of Reefon and 16kms up a side road are the remnants of the 'ghost town' Waiuta, a once bustling settlement that sat atop the South Island's richest gold mine.

The road is sealed for the first 9kms until we reach the tiny forgotten settlement of Blackwater, after which the mine was named. 

Blackwater School 1913 - 1949

There are just a few miner's cottages and farm buildings here, some still with occupants.

I think this guy has enough firewood to last him a few winters, don't you? 

The road then turns to gravel, it's narrow and winds its way through bush as we climb up onto a plateau. It would be suitable for most vehicles-other than very large rigs- as long as you take your time around some of the corners and put your lights on.

We stop at the 'Red Hut' information shelter at the entrance to the township.

When I think of  'ghost town', I think of deserted buildings and houses lining a few streets but Waiuta is not that type of ghost town. Most of the settlement was removed when the town was abandoned and the bush has reclaimed the area over time. In fact there are just 5 cottages left standing out of 100 or so buildings. These remaining cottages are still here because their occupants never left the town until a long time afterwards or in fact when they passed away.

Across the road from the information shelter are picture boards showing what the town looked like behind the photo, in its heyday. This is looking up Top Road, the Empire Hotel is in the bottom left of the photo (click on the photos to enlarge).

Looking in the other direction the photo shows where many of the family homes were located and the hospital up on the ridge. In the background you can see the Waiuta Lodge, built to mark the reunion of former townspeople in 1986, it stands near the remains of the hospital chimneys. The hospital burned down in mysterious circumstances the previous year while being restored as a lodge.

There are many walks around and through the old town with tracks and roadways connecting each other. It's a good idea to pick up a map of the town from the i-Site in Reefton, you can then see where buildings were or find out what the remains are from, as you walk. We drove on along Top Road, stopping to have a look at the the brick oven that was once inside the Baker's Shop.

The soul surviving Top Road building is the old Police Station, one of the town's first buildings.

It was bought in 1952 by Dick Willan (a year after the mine closed), who lived there fossicking for gold in the creeks and mine ruins until his death in 1978. Dick was also the 'ghost town' host, entertaining visitors a quarter century after Waiuta and its mines had been abandoned.

The 'lock-up' can be seen in the photo board, to the right of the Police Station. If time didn't sober the drunks up, the cold sure would have. Look at the thick snow on the ground!

We park beside the most recognisable building left in the town and near, what was, the busiest intersection in settlement.

And check out more information and photos in the remains of the old Post Office which overlooks the intersection and mine.

Waiuta grew from the West Coast's last great gold discovery; four prospectors found the 'Birthday Reef' on King Edward VII's birthday, November 9th 1905 (111 years ago today, I've just realised!). 

By 1908 the Blackwater Mine was fully operational and Waiuta was steadily growing around it. The population peaked at around 600 in the mid-1930s.

In 1936, the reef being worked was a long way north and the mining company switched its operations to the Prohibition shaft on a hill above the town (this can be visited but was closed when we were there). The shaft would eventually become New Zealand's deepest mineshaft at 879m, more than a third of it was below sea level. The 17th level of the shaft was known as the 'Jewellery Shop' such was the quality and quantity of gold available at this level. Gold was extracted from here when quotas needed to be topped up.

In mid 1951, with enough rich quartz left to keep the mine going for years, it closed abruptly. The Blackwater shaft, still needed for pumping and ventilation, collapsed letting water and poisonous gas into the Prohibition workings. It was uneconomical to repair and the mine closed, which of course meant the end of the town too. The close-knit community dispersed as people took jobs elsewhere along the Coast and beyond. Most of the buildings were taken away, the best mining equipment was bought by Australian companies, the rest scraped or left to the scavengers.

The mine produced 3/4 of a million ounces of gold from one & a half million tons of quartz. Of all NZ's mines, only Martha Mine at Waihi produced more during the same era.

The brick-lined steel boiler chimney over the top of the Blackwater Mine site is only a third of its original 33 metre height. The wooden building was built in the 1940s after the original mine buildings were burnt down and housed showers and changing rooms for the miners.

Behind the chimney are the concrete winding plant foundations and the fenced off  Blackwater mineshaft which was 563m deep before it collapsed.

Across from the mine buildings are the old bowling green and the ruins of the pavilion which doubled as a mine office, hence the remains of a strongroom.

We took a short walk from the Post Office to the old swimming pool, built in the 1930s, its 30m long, the standard size for municipal baths in those days.

We drove along Bottom Road where Rimu Cottage, one of the original dwellings left in the town, is located. 

There are signs on the remaining cottages, 'This place is occupied, please keep out'. Before they were abandoned, the last residents often had problems with sightseers thinking they were empty. Apparently the occupants weren't too friendly either. Who'd blame them! 

I still felt a little apprehensive wandering down the side of the cottage...

...to check out the old chook house. Maybe I was hoping nothing was going to jump out of the overgrown grass at me. I loved the splashes of colour around the settlement, the remnants of once well tendered cottage gardens.

Next door to Rimu Cottage is the sole surviving commercial building in the town, the barbershop.

The residents of Waiuta were obviously sports mad, I suppose there wasn't too much else to do out here. Other than the bowling green, there was a rugby field (top left), cricket pitch, croquet lawn and two tennis courts; one for the public(top right) and one for the company staff which was well away, and screened, from the sports fields. There was even a whippet (cross-bred greyhounds) racing track. 

Other notable remnants are the furnace from the sawmill (bottom right).

Up Shinbone Alley and along a side track we located another of the surviving cottages. I was keen to see this particular one as it was the home of Joseph Divis (1885 -1967), Waiuta's keen photographer, and the reason so much is known and recorded about this town during its boom days.

Joseph emigrated to NZ in 1909 from Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), he was already an experienced  miner but took photos to supplement his income, photographing social and sports events, weddings and other important occasions. He worked in different mining towns over the years but returned several times to Waiuta where he eventually settled in late 1930.

Many images taken by Joseph can be identified because he appears in most of them. He was an expert user of the shutter time release button and darted out from behind the camera to be in his photos, he also always wore a distinctive hat, so is readily recognisable in photos. I've included this part of this information board to show a) Joseph in his hat, 4th from the right in the photo on the right and b) the size of the Blackwater quartz reef in the left photo- that metre wide white strip running through the grey rock.

Joseph was injured in the Blackwater Mine in 1939 and never worked again. He was interned as an enemy alien during World War 2, where his health deteriorated. When he returned to Waiuta in 1943, he was only able to move around on crutches. Joseph lived in his cottage for the next 24 years including the last 15 mostly by himself as the town was dismantled around him and the people moved away. For a time he acted as the settlements postmaster, he signed a 1957 letter with the words 'Joseph  Divis, Telephonist of this Mystic Ghost Town'. He died in 1967.

I waited for David before having a look in the very messy ramshackle outside shed in the back garden (thinking rats again!)

David found what we believe might have been Joseph's homemade 'walker'; a lawnmower frame with a bike wheel fitted to it. Two smaller pram wheels were on another small frame nearby which looked to have fitted on the back. There was also a pair of canvas work boots with their toes cut out, possibly because Joseph had arthritis or some sort of pain in his toes and feet.

We head back to Bottom Road where I take this shot of the the 'Red Huts' photo panel. The Red Huts (remember the first information shelter look alike) was where workers without families lived, up to four men lived in each hut and their meals were had at the nearby boarding house. If I didn't know any better I'd say the huts look like modern day environmentally friendly townhouses built to suit their bush surroundings.

The last surviving cottage is along Incubator Alley, so named because a high proportion of Waiuta's young families lived here, including 5 with 54 children between them at one stage! Some obviously had too much time on their hands and/or enjoyed sport of a different kind. The alley ran, appropriately enough, from the hospital to the school and now includes the modern day Waiuta Lodge and Gills Cottage. This is the only cottage that is being maintained and restored by the Friends of Waiuta at the moment.

We follow Side Road back to the first information shelter where we stop for a last look back over the regenerating bush and say goodbye to the ghost town of Waiuta. 

I know why they removed the town's buildings but I wish they'd left a few more of them behind. Initially it would have looked scruffy and abandoned, an eyesore perhaps. But by now it would have made for an awesome place to photograph, to explore and to track the history behind many of the buildings. And it also would have been a major tourist attraction. Hmmm....perhaps that wouldn't have been such a good idea afterall.

On the way back down to the highway I spotted a family of weka foraging in the cut grass on the side of the road, we stopped and I walked back towards them. 

There were 5 adults and 4 chicks- 2 lots of 2 chicks. These cuties don't look that long hatched, the adults weren't worried about me but the chicks were a little anxious, ducking into the long grass as I moved closer. 

'Putting your best (and biggest) foot forward!' 

A Treat at the End of the Road- Central Otago

Catch-up; Late March 2016

Well, I didn't quite get this batch of back blogs done before it was time to pack up the van, say our good-byes once again to Mum & Dad in Napier, and hit the road. We're heading south this time, at a snail's pace. Heading south, back to the South Island for some more adventures but doing a little beach hopping along the east coast on the way. 

So here's the last of the Central Otago blogs from our day trip around the Ida Valley, and funnily enough, this was the one I really wanted to tell you about because we found an extraordinary sight at the end of the day (and at the end of a road).

After a delightful afternoon at Hayes Engineering exploring the wonders of yesteryear we carried on north a few kilometres before stopping at the historic Gilchrist Store in Oturehua for an icecream.

The shop was closed when we drove through here last August so this time I was able to take some inside photos of the general store (after asking of course).

Many of the shelves had grocery items from the past stacked along them.

You could certainly spend a wee while reminiscing and still miss some of the displays which were tucked into all the nooks and crannies. It was actually hard to decide what was for sale and what was on display.

That's now three historic general stores we've visited in the South Island; the other two being Hodgsons of Murchison and my favourite, the Langford Store at Bainham in Golden Bay.

Our next stop was at the site of the old Golden Progress Mine where the quartz reefs of the Oturehua field were worked on and off from 1868 to 1936. The size of tailings left behind suggest that the mine was one of the bigger ones in Central Otago.

I left David in the car reading his virtual paper while I made my way up a narrow gully full of shady poplars. I scared the living daylights out of a number of sheep resting in the shade but not before the first of them nearly tripped me up as it made a dash for freedom up the hill. I would have thought they'd heard me crunching through the leaf litter, I could certainly smell that they were nearby.

A restored miners hut sits near the bottom of the gully where once there were a number of huts and a hotel, the Withers Pub. 

Across the 'lane' from the hut is the remains of the Mine Manager's house.

A track leads the way up to the head of the gully, past the tailing mounds and on to the poppet head and mine shaft.

The 14 metre high poppet head sits over the mine shaft which is 45 metres deep. This is a very rare relic, it's the only poppet head left standing in Central Otago. The poppet head supports wheels which ran steel ropes that hoisted the gold bearing ore to the surface. The metal cage sitting beneath it was used to move miners, equipment and ore up and down the shaft. The boiler powered a winch that pulled the steel cables through the wheels.

This is looking back down the gully from the tramway track where once the ore was carted in trolleys down to the battery to be crushed.

The battery, which was removed to another mine, was once supported by the concrete blocks here and powered by this second boiler. I always find these sites fascinating, reading the information boards and imagining the frenetic activity that would have been going on in this now peaceful valley.

Our next stop was along the straights at the north end of the Ida Valley, to take a photo of the Hawkdun Range. The range made famous by NZ painter Grahame Sydney. I can understand its appeal, it's a fairly uniform row of mountains that stretches like a backbone across the landscape separating Central Otago from the Waitaki District. It looks really impressive when it has a coat of solid snow om it too.

The Hawkduns are on one side of the road and the old Blackstone Hill (aka Hills Creek) School, is set back off the road and tucked into some pines, on the other side. The school which was built in the 1890s and closed in 1949, looks to be fighting for survival. This is one of the few remaining buildings in Hills Creek left over from the gold mining era when there were also 13 hotels operating in the township during its heyday. 

We take the loop road off SH85, there a couple more stops I want to 're-do', we're heading for the hills...

...back to St Bathans and the Blue Lake. I want to see if the scenery and lighting are any different to my last photo shoot of the lake back in early August last year. There's a slight ripple and the sky is just as moody as on our last visit. I'm happy with the first visit shots but I take a couple of quick shots for old times sake...

...and we carry on down the road leaving St Bathans behind. The sun has lit up these 'Badlands' cliffs that border a wide gravelly river bed. They remind me of the Clay Cliffs at Omarama but are not on such a grand scale and also look like the Cathedral Cliffs at Gore Bay in North Canterbury.

We take one last detour (can you hear David protesting?). It's just a short dead-end road to the tiny settlement of Cambrian, the 'Village of Trees'. We've visited it before, it's a quirky & creative little settlement (Grahame Sydney lived there- there's that name again) but I wanted to see if there was anything new now that it's a different season. 

I spotted these old cars in a shed at the end of the road so I take a photo while David is turning the ute around. I hear someone calling out and down the road comes a wily old 'hippy' guy followed by two well toned younger guys who I find out are Woofers. They've been doing some planting and clearing down the road. The old hippy (and he is, he tells me) says he's got something that might be of interest to me seen as I'm taking photos.  

He leads me across a grassy woodland area, around a corner and over a small bridge which crosses a tiny stream and there stretching off into the distant is the most amazing sight...

...a mass of mauve; thousands of false autumn crocuses, aka meadow saffron.

My hippy man proudly tells me I'm the first person to take photos of his flowers this season, they've only come out en-masse in the last couple of days. He also tells me not to tell too many people, he doesn't want his peaceful little village overrun with tourists! So don't go telling him I sent you there. 

Hippie guy has been a very busy man now that he has put down his roots, there's a few hectares he owns at the end of the road and he's converting them all to woodland gardens, and visitors are free to wander. He's planted crocuses everywhere, right up the road edges, in another forested area where on our last visit there were masses of bluebells. 

He tells me he decided the bluebells had to go and he's replaced them all with the crocuses. They do make an amazing display but it seems such a shame that they only last for a short while- a fleeting moment in time. If you are in the area mid to late March do check out this stunning display. And once again we're thrilled to find a hidden gem while out exploring.

As we walk back to the road, I stop to take a photo of the old stone cottage where the Woofers are staying. It's just as well I only had eyes for the cottage because David alerted me to the fact that I might be taking a photo of the stark-naked Woofers who are standing under their outside shower right beside the cottage! And no I didn't mange to get them in the shot....sorry ladies. 

The Complete Ida Valley Loop