Time: One hour
Distance: 2.2 km
Start: 64 Governor's Bay Road
Finish: Same place (it's a loop)
Date: Friday 30th June 2023
You can read all about Steadfast Reserve in the (very thoroughly resesearched) 168 page HMNZS Steadfast Reserve Landscape History & Conservation Report. But, in a nutshell, the current site at 64 and 86 Governor's Bay Road was developed during and after World II (1943-1961) by the South Island Royal New Zealand Navy as an armament depot. The area contains various derelict buildings including ten magazines (ammunition stores) which are brick bunkers, half built into the hillsides. According to an October 2021 Stuff article: "within the reserve is a mysterious detonation chamber that's something like a concrete maze dug into the hillside". The Conservation Report also mentioned that magazine store #8 exploded in 1980. Gosh.
I only gleaned all that information after we did our walk around the reserve. We parked obliviously at the small carpark above Cass Bay/Motukauatirahi on Governor's Bay Road and crossed the road to a slightly ajar gate with nondescript council signage: HMNZ Steadfast Reserve (a.k.a. Cass Bay Reserve or Motukauatirahi Reserve).
Luckily I had done a bit of a reconnaisanse with my Hoa Rangatira a couple of weeks earlier, so we set off, straight up the derelict old tarsealed road chatting about low carb diets, menopause and constipation (solutions may include wholefoods, mushrooms, linseeds and white flowers). As we ascended, we were checking out each of the old derelict bunkers... numbers 5, 4 & 2 (no sign of #8 though).
At the top we came across some volunteers carrying planting paraphenalia. They told us that the council owns the land these days and there are big plans for the reserve: lots of native plantings; a network of walking and mountain biking tracks - and access to the summit (by the end of this year). Very cool - I love the fact that, despite property developer's whittling away at our beautiful Port Hills, the track network continues to expand. The Steadfast Reserve Discussion Plan has a map of the planned tracks.
Apparently, the Christchurch City Council purchased the land in 2000 but they then proceeded to lock the gates for about 20 years for no good reason (although probably the 1980 explosion and the earthquakes made them a bit antsy). Eventually, after continual pressure from local community groups, the gates were unlocked.
We checked out more bunkers (#1 and #3 but still no sign of #8) and then circled back across the reserve to the high military style barbed wire fence. From there we descended on a track of sorts which eventually peetered out. We were off-piste for a bit but then fortuitously hit the track again, lept the ditch like Thomson's gazelles and we were on the derelict road/path heading towards the TS Sea Cadets buildings. TS stands for "Training Ship" - which can be a building rather than an actual ship. Random. We zig-zagged via a couple of bridges across the stream and looked at the cannon and the anchor and the pot before heading back to the car.
Despite a slight delay dealing with a misbehaving car alarm, we managed to head back to Lyttleton in a timely fashion for coffee and carbs.
