Just half an hour from Alexandra on the main inland route between Dunedin and Central Otago, Roxburgh, set in a sunny basin surrounded by schist-strewn ranges, is a rewarding area to linger awhile. Here is where much of the country’s pip and stone fruit destined for export and local consumption is grown. And what New Zealand ‘Baby Boomer’ doesn’t doesn’t remember scoffing down Roxdale brand canned peaches during their school years. The Roxdale plant stands alongside orchards lining the road between the town centre and Roxburgh Dam, the first constructed on the mighty Clutha (Mata – Au).
Commissioned in 1956, the Roxburgh Dam was at the time an engineering masterpiece. It is a concrete, gravity dam, containing around half a million cubic metres of concrete, weighing 1.5 million tonnes.
In the 150-metre long power station directly below the dam are eight turbine generator units. Water is fed to the turbines through steel pipes called penstocks, each 5.5 metres in diameter, 50 metres long, and dropping nearly 46 metres in height.
By the time the last of the Roxburgh Dam's eight generators was commissioned, the station was capable of producing enough electricity to power around 200,000 homes. The dam can be driven across as part of the Roxburgh-Teviot-Millers Flat-Roxburgh loop road. This relaxing drive takes in the stone ruins of the southern Hemisphere’s largest woolshed; Pinders Pond, originally a dredge pond from mining days and now a popular swimming hole; Lonely Graves; the 1899 year old Miller Flat road bridge over the Clutha and then back on the main road north of Etterick, the Seed Farm with its historic homestead and stables dating back to 1869.
Damming of the Clutha formed 30km long Lake Roxburgh. A cruise on Lake Roxburgh is a chance to see and explore some of the Roxburgh’s mining history. Chinese miners built many of the now lakeside stone huts and water races that can be seen and visited.
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| Roxbugh in its ‘fruit bowl’ valley |
This was once the southern Hemisphere’s largest woolshed |
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1869 homestead at the Seed Farm |
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