|
|
|
Sixteen harsh winters. Sixteen scorching summers. For sixteen years scores of labourers, stonemasons, blacksmiths and engineers worked with the single-minded purpose of pushing through the 150km of railway track from Middlemarch to Clyde.
|
| When the railway finally reached Clyde in 1907 it linked Dunedin to the country’s major goldfields. At that time Dunedin was New Zealand’s largest city and commercial powerhouse. The discovery of gold in Central Otago in 1861 created boom times, but by 1921 when the Otago Central Railway reached its ultimate railhead at Cromwell, the rush was over. With easy pickings gone, gold mining became much more low key. And although the last dredge operating on the Clutha (Mata – Au) uttered its last mournful metallic groan in March 1963 some dredging was carried out in the Upper Shotover in the early 1990s. Proof the quest for gold in Central Otago is far from over, the Oceana Gold Macraes Gold Mine, a recommended side trip from the Rail Trail, is a 24/7 operation producing some 170,000 ounces annually. |
 |
| Photo: Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hakena, University of Otago |
|
The hundreds of kilometres of races built by gold miners to bring water for powerful water cannons to scour overburden from gold-bearing rock became the foundations for farm irrigation schemes. Gold fields were soon transformed into livestock paddocks. It’s equally hard to imagine that today where cattle, sheep and deer now peacefully graze, the giant flightless Moa once roamed.
|
| During much of its 85-year history, a business mainstay for the Otago Central Railway was transporting wool bales to the Dunedin docks along with livestock to Dunedin meat works. In the 1920s rabbit skins and carcasses were also big freighting business. Remember though, Central Otago was once one of the most isolated regions of New Zealand. During winters farms and communities could be snow-bound for weeks or even months. The Otago Central Railway was a vital supply line bringing up from Dunedin mail, salt flour and other essentials, crucial equipment and newspapers and other necessities of life. Central Otago is still pretty much isolated, contributing to a peacefulness and sense of tranquillity that is so much part of the Otago Central Rail Trail experience. |
 |
| Photo: Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hakena, University of Otago |
|
|
|
|
