Rail Trailers looking forward to buying food or refreshment at Auripo Station site will be disappointed. There’s nothing there save a few railways remnants that remind just how important the Otago Central Railway was to those living in what was once an extremely isolated part of New Zealand.

Auripo (Many Streams or Swirling Current) is one of a number of wayside stations built along the line. Here farmers and their families would await the arrival of the train for newspapers, mail, groceries, fertilizers and other necessities of what could undoubtedly be a lonely life, especially during winter months. In turn the train would take away wool and sheep to Dunedin.

Auripo – Ida Valley

• 3.1km separates Auripo from Ida Valley Station site.
• The trail traverses Blackstone Hill dropping gradually into the Ida Valley.
• Swamp Road Gangers’ Shed… one of 12 gangers’ sheds along the Rail Trail housing information panels. These sheds are identified with an ‘i’ on the map in the Official Rail Trail Passport.

Auripo – Lauder

• 10.5km separates Auripo from Lauder.
• Auripo is the nearest station site on the Ida Valley side to the Poolburn Gorge. On entering the gorge from here, the Rail Trail crosses the 37-metre high Poolburn Viaduct, the third highest railway viaduct in New Zealand. Its massive piers as well as entrance facings to the gorge's two tunnels (remember to take a torch) are of local schist rock, hand-shaped by stonemasons using basic tools – mallets and chisels. The chisel marks are still apparent. Through the gorge, much of the trail is atop enormous embankments built by teams of men with little more than picks, shovels, wheelbarrows and horse-drawn tip-drays. Poolburn Gorge is home to the rare and endangered Käreärea, the New Zealand falcon.
• Auripo is an ideal start point for a one-day cycle or walk through the Poolburn Gorge. This can be a there (all downhill) and back experience, or alternatively Rail Trailers can be met by their transport on the Manuherikia Valley side at the Lauder Station site. Auripo can be easily accessed off the Omakau-Ida Valley Road.
  

Dramatic hardly does justice to describe the Poolburn Gorge Photo: Matthew Sole	A falcon’s eye view of the Poolburn Viaduct, NZ’s third highest railway viaduct Photo: Matthew Sole
Manuherikia Bridge No.1 at the western (Lauder) end of the Poolburn Gorge is the longest and only curved bridge on the Otago Central Rail Trail. Photo: Matthew Sole

Click to return back