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The 14km to Patearoa from Waipiata is a road trip through some of the Maniototo’s most amazing history. On the Rock and Pillar slopes 7km kilometres into the journey – turn left at the ‘Cemetery’ signpost -- is the private religious retreat, En Hakkore (place of refreshment). Its large buildings mostly date back to 1925 when the Government took over a private tuberculosis sanatorium expanding it to 122 beds. When that role ended in the 1960’s, the Justice Department used the complex for youth offenders. Today, En Hakkore welcomes all visitors.

Following the road 2km further will take you past the scars of the Hamiltons gold diggings to the Hamiltons Cemetery lying behind a stone wall. At its peak in 1864 there were 4,000 miners living at Hamiltons, with 25 hotels and 40 stores to choose from. All on land that was part of a sheep station owned by Captain Hamilton.

If you decide not to take the loop road up past the old sanatorium and Hamiltons Cemetery it is a fairly flat run to Patearoa. Tucked into the lower slopes of the Rock and Pillar Range, the township was originally known as Sowburn. After a short-lived gold rush in the 1860s, small scale sluicing and hydraulic elevator mining did however continue right through to the end of WWII. Ironically, it once relied on ‘big brother’ Hamiltons for shops, services and a cemetery, yet it is Patearoa that has survived.

Patearoa township has a hotel with accommodation, historic mud brick buildings, tennis court, bowling green, 9-hole golf course and the Sowburn Walk, taking in a former Chinese miners’ camp.

Original Sowburn (Patearoa) cottages are now much loved holiday cribs (baches) Photo: John Gibson	Community initiative was responsible for restoration of the dry stack stone wall at Hamiltons Cemetery
Sanatorium staff accommodation that still stands today after being considered unsafe when it was constructed in the 1920s

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