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Another early start so that we could be ready to be picked up by the Sunkist Backpackers minibus at 8.00. This was one of the most painful parts as the return tickets costing us NZ$34 each. Drove out, first to the DOC visitors centre where we were told that the route to the Moss Creek campsite was very muddy and overgrown as it was now seldom walked. Decided to spend two nights at the Pinnacles Hut so bought appropriate hut passes.
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Continued in the minibus for another 9km along a gravel track to reach the trailhead from where we could start our tramp.
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With the sun shining we set off along a 4WD track until we crossed the Kauaeranga River on a wire bridge to walk along a deeply shaded gravel path up the Kauaeranga Valley. Manuka, tree ferns, silver ferns, nikau and many other trees that we cannot yet identify, along with innumerable ground ferns lined our path, with tui and grey warblers sing as we went. At Billygoat Landing we stopped to view the falls and read the sign.
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Billygoat Landing
Above the Billygoat Falls in the early 1900s lay one of the last big kauri stands in the Kauaeranga Valley. The waterfalls had protected much of the forest from axe and saw. An outstanding feat of engineering in its day, the Billygoat incline was built in 1921, allowing loggers to bypass this obstacle.
Early attempts during the 1880s to log the Billygoat using dams were unsuccessful. Most logs driven over the 200 metre falls were shattered to pieces on the rocks below. A wooden rail tramline built later took logs from a holding dam above the falls to a chute high above the present Trestle View campground where they were shot down into the valley. Many of these logs were also damaged by the fall. After a disastrous beautifier in 1888 started by a sacked bushman named Racehorse Jack, the area was abandoned for 30 years.
The improved 1921 Billygoat Tramline included a steep incline where trucks carrying logs were lowered by a steam hauler down a ridge and across the Billygoat Stream to Billygoat Landing. The incline was one of the most spectacular of its type, with a vertical drop of 290 metre and a steepest grade of 1:2.7 over a total length of 1160 metres. Logs were unloaded where you are standing and rolled down into the Kauaeranga River, where they were pulled by another steam hauler to the head of the main Kauaeranga Tramline. Around 12,000 cubic metres of kauri were brought out of the Billygoat this way between 1921 and 1926
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Goat Enclosure Plot
This goat enclosure plot, established in 1996, demonstrates the impact that goats can have on forest understorey.
Goats can destroy forests by eating and trampling understory plants and seedling canopy trees. This changes the forest structure and damages the habitat of other plants and animals.
Kanono, mahoe, five finger pate and hangehange are commonly seen understory plants in a healthy forest. They provide shelter and food for native birds and insects. Unfortunately they are also popular food with goats. If there are too many goats in the forest these plants will not regenerate.
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Turned up Webb Creek to follow the sun and the river which we crossed and re-crossed as we made our way up an old pack horse route climbing steps cut into the bed rock or constructed from stone. The stairs ground their way upwards with hardly any respite. But at last it did level out to a stony path, though there were still many more steps, some quite high.
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The Rock Staircase
Steps hewn into solid rock during the 1920s provided packhorses with better grip on weekly supply trips to bush Camps above the Kauaeranga Gorge.
The Kauri Trail follows packhorse tracks built in the early 1900s by bushmen and gumdiggers . The Webb Creek Track was once part of the main route between Thames and the east coast. Packhorses transported stores to the many logging camps in the headwaters of the Kauaeranga River during the 1920s.
During the last period of kauri logging from 1918-28, the Kauri Timber Company contracted out the upper Kauaeranga Valley in a number of blocks. Contractors and their bushmen lived for periods of up to six months in the bush. A train of up to eight packhorses made weekly trips to bush camps with flour, fresh meat, tinned food, potatoes, tea and sugar as well as tools, clothing and mail. As the rock steps were worn by horses hooves, battens were spiked in them to improve the foothold.
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The Skidded Road
In the earl 1920s logs driven downstream from above the Hydrocamp shattered to pieces at the bottom of a high waterfall leading into the Kauaeranga gorge. The stream was 'condemned' for further driving. To solve this problem, bushmen blasted a short canal to direct water from the dam into Webb Creek. Bullocks then hauled logs out of Condemned Creek, along the skidded road, where they were rolled into Webb Creek ready for the next log drive.
Nature reasserted itself in April 1993 when landslides from a flash flood demolished the remains of Webb Creek dam and blocked the diversional canal, Today, Condemned Creek follows its original course.
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At last we reached the valley head and the site of the Hydro Camp. From here the way was more gentle, first skirting around the left hand side of a hill and then following a compacted path along a ridge line between hills, towards The Pinnacles. By 11.45 we reached the Pinnacles Hut, a large modern hut with beds for 80 people. We had heard that a large school party was due in, we looked forward to that!
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The Kauaeranga's spectacular landscape of pinnacles, bluffs and gorges was formed by a complex sequence of volcanic action and erosion over the past 20 million years.
A chain of volcanoes once extended along what is now the Coromandel Peninsula. Erupting over millions of years, they slowly built up lava flows or exploded violently, depositing ash and pumice in layers up to 500 metres thick. When volcanic activity ceased in the area around one million years ago, erosion slowly worked on the landscape, exposing the remains of the volcanic peaks.
Tauranikau and The Pinnacles are both plugs of rock which solidified inside volcanoes around eight million years ago. The volcanoes themselves have eroded away, leaving the plugs exposed. The flat topped Table Mountain was formed during one of the later volcanic periods when molten rock flowed from a fissure and solidified, forming a lava lake,
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After lunch, as the weather was fine, we decided to climb The Pinnacles which was billed as a 50 minute walk. Although we completed it in 50 minutes each way it was far higher than a walk in grade. First we descended along a path over a shoulder, linking the hill where the hut was, to The Pinnacles. The path was very muddy, at sometime in the past logs had been placed across the path to form a base but these had sunk into the mud, which wasn't too bad as we at least had a firm footing. However, in other places there were no logs at all and we had to navigate around tree stumps and roots. In other places with a slope it wasn't muddy but the path was worn down and into the soft bedrock creating a narrow slit about 25cm wide and up to 50cm deep.
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Once at the base of The Pinnacles the path became a combination of rock scrambling and tree climbing as we eased our way up the rock, made damp by running water, using tree roots and branches for hand holds. At two places they were kind enough to provide ladders to help us up.
But the effort was worth it, giving us views over to Coromandel Town and the sea to the west and the deep valleys of the Coromandel Peninsular
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Returned back down the same route, although the scramble in reverse was no easier, the walk through the boggy section didn't seem to take as long.
A short way from the hut was an old Kauri Dam that had been restored and so we wandered down to have a look at it.
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Dancing Camp Kauri Dam, built by Jim Angel in 1924, was the second largest in the Kauaeranga Valley. More than 100 dams were built across most streams in the valley between 1871 and 1925. They were the only way of getting timber out of steeper country. Water stored behind them and released in a flood drove felled logs down stream.
Ten dams including Dancing Camp were built to extract 27 million feet of kauri from the upper Kauaeranga River in the early 1920s. The Kauaeranga Main Dam above the gorge took all the water and logs from the other nine dams. When all ten were tripped in sequence during flood conditions, thousands of logs could be sent down river in massive drives. The biggest ever drive took 28,000 logs down to the Booms.
No two dams were alike: a dam builder used his own skills and ingenuity rather than detailed plans. Simple but effective trip mechanisms enabled a dam to be used many times. Gate planks and cross-strips attached to the main stringer with cables were able to be reset for another drive.
About 20% of kauri felled in the ten years from 1918-28 was lost, most of it shattered in log drives.
Today most dams are in poor condition or have collapsed. Restoration work has been carried out by the Department of Conservation on the Dancing Camp Dam, using kauri recovered from floods in 1993. Christmas Creek Dam, northeast of Table Mountain, was also partially restored in 1998.
The effects of the kauri logging industry on New Zealand's flora and fauna were devastating.
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The rumour about a large group of school children was true, there was about 40 of them with a good number of adults. They split the group between the two dormitories with boys in one and girls in the other. We ended up with the girls.
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Awoke early to female chattering, gave up at 7.00 and got up.
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Having already climbed The Pinnacles there were not many other options for walks from the Pinnacles Hut except the track out towards the Moss Creek Campsite, though we had heard that it could be muddy. Awaited around until everyone else had left and then set off at our leisure.
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For a short distance we retraced our steps back along the path to the trailhead before turning off right. The hut at Moss Creek had burnt down in a forest fire in 1993 and since then no attempt had been made to maintain the path with the result that it was extremely waterlogged over much of the way or deeply rutted and sometimes both. After walking for an hour and struggling halfway down into Kauaeranga Gorge, a journey that was quoted as 30 minutes, we decided to turn back.
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On the way back the journey didn't seem quite as bad, perhaps we were getting used to it, or perhaps we just remembered the various ways around the obstacles.
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Arrived back at the hut for lunch and spent the afternoon relaxing in preparation for another influx of school kid, this time 40 from one school and 24 from another.
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In order not to get caught behind large groups of children we made sure we were off in good time, so a 8am we were on our way. The weather was dry, with no wind, but a thin cloud kept the heat of the sun off us, making the walking pleasant.
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Walked back along the path to Hydro Camp. From there we had a steady climb before the path levelled and the horizon opened out. We thought we were at the high point but we were wrong, the path climbed again unrelentingly until we found ourselves 30m higher than our starting point, and this on a track that was supposed to be taking us back into the valley.
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Billygoat Tramline
The 180 metre-high Billygoat Falls prevented attempts to log the heavily forested Billygoat Basin in the 1880s. Logs driven over the falls from a dam above were smashed into splinters. A tramline was built to take logs past the falls to a log chute, but this also damaged the timber. A disastrous forest fire in 1888 set by a sacked bushman, Racehorse Jack, burned three dams and caused the area to be abandoned for over 39 years. By 1921, advanced technology enabled the Billygoat to be logged using steam haulers and a tramline with a spectacular incline.
Two steam haulers operated, one in the centre of the basin next to subcontractor Jim O'Neill's bush camp. This pulled logs from where they were cut in the bush to the head of the tramline. A modified Fordson tractor pushed trucks loaded with logs along the tramline between the two haulers. Three timber trestle bridges were built across streams and hollows to even out the grade. The second hauler lowered logs down the Billygoat Incline to the Kauaeranga River. Here they were loaded onto the main Kauaeranga tramline for their 14 kilometre journey to the Waihou River at Totara.
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Forded the Atautumoe Stream and after a short rise out the other side reached the site of 'The Long Trestle', a wooden bridge that kauri logs were hauled over in the 1920s. From here it was down hill all the way, at times almost like going down a staircase only the steps weren't so regular or even. The Billygoat Falls were visible to our right but the steep angle that we were looking down on them didn't make for a good photo.
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The Long Trestle
The long Trestle was the longest of three timber bridges built on the top section of the Billygoat Tramline in 1921. Made from pit sawn kauri, the bridge was 160 metres long and up to 11 metres high. The trestles survived to the end of the logging in 1926 but their remains were demolished during an army exercise in the early 1960s.
The term 'trestle' refers to the heavy braced support structure of the bridge consisting of beams supported by pairs of legs. The Billygoat trestles had planked decking to allow horses to pull logs on rail trucks along the tramline. From 1924-26 an eight wheeled Fordson rail tractor, built by A&G Price in Thames, pushed two sets of rail trucks from the railhead to the hauler at the top of the Billygoat Incline. It also delivered firewood to the hauler. On its return journey back to the bush, the tractor trailed a rope from the hauler. The hauler was then able to help the tractor when pulling a full load of logs on the flat grade. This tractor is on display near the Kauaeranga Visitors Centre.
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Billygoat Incline Hauler
Steam haulers were used in the later period of the kauri logging from the early 1900s. A steam hauler was a stationary steam engine driving a winch which could pull logs by steel cable for a distance of over a kilometre. The Billygoat Incline hauler was used instead to lower two sets of rail trucks at a time down to the log skids at Billygoat Landing.
Because of the very steep grade (maximum 1:2.7) special equipment was used. The lowering hauler used a Judd steam winch which had extra braking power to control the descent. A brakeman also rode on the rear rail truck. To get around curves in the line, steel cable was fed automatically by a bracket under the rail trucks into a series of rollers at ground level. Once unloaded, the empty trucks were pulled back up the incline by the hauler, ready for another load of logs.
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During our New Zealand stay we had though that we had seen a tui a couple of times , but couldn't be sure. There was not doubt however about the sighting we had as we neared the end of our descent. In a bush about 20m away sat two large birds, even from that distance we could see the distinctive white patches under their chins, a glimpse through the binoculars confirmed what we already new, our first positive sighting of a tui.
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By midday we were back at the trail head in plenty of time for our transport at 4.30 so spent the afternoon arranging the rocks by the river into positions that would form a comfortable seat. To assist us with our comfort the sun started to break through with just enough intermittent cloud to cool things off when it got too warm.
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Our transport arrived on time to return us to our hostel for a shower and bed without the chirruping of school children.
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