Time: 1 hour and 35 minutes
Distance: 4.8 km
Start: 581 Hororata Road, Coalgate
Finish: Same place (it's a loop)
Date: 18th October 2024
a.k.a. Coalgate Bluffs Walkway
Friday morning - driving across the Canterbury Plains/Kā Pākiki Whakatekateka o Waitaha - and catching up on the events of the previous two weeks. We were on our way to Coalgate - a quintessential Canterbury settlement - a garage, a tavern and a few houses. Population 339. Coalgate, along with Whitecliffs, Glentunnel and South Malvern, is (or was) part of the South Malvern Hills distict. We parked in a small layby in front of 581 Hororata Road, the first driveway on the right after the white bridge (heading southwest). Sans my poles, we set off back towards the bridge on an ancient tarsealed road overgrown with periwinkles.
There are actually two entrances to the Coalgate Millenium Walkway - the other one is directly at the bridge - neither of them are marked at the start or easy to find. Luckly I had sussed it all out the previous weekend with my hoa rangatira and knew there would be copious signage (steampunk themed) once we hit the Selwyn River/Waikirikiri and started climbing the hill. At the stile we turned onto the River Track, the plan being to do the loop anticlockwise.
The River Track immediately descended back to the river, where a couple of paradise ducks were making a racket, and then proceeded along a weedy path on the true right bank. Waikirikiri (wai = water, kirikiri = gravel), has its origins in Thirteen Mile Bush and the Malvern Hills and eventually becomes one of the big braided rivers on the plains. According to Kā Huru Manu, Māori seasonally caught eels and other kai in the upper reaches. "The Historical development of the Southern Malvern District, Canterbury, 1850 - 1900" (PhD thesis by J. Wilson 1949) mentions that Māori artifacts were found in a cave above the Waikirikiri. The thesis contains this lovely map:
The Malvern Hills district has been mined for coal (a.k.a. black diamonds) with (difficult to get an exact number) somewhere between 70 and 180 mines since 1866. Most mines were short lived, but coal was extracted up until fairly recently from the Canterbury Coal Mine (a.k.a the Malvern Hills Coal Mine) by majority Singapore owned Bathurst Resources Limited, for powering local dairy processing plants. All part of that nutty environmentally unsound business model: use river water to irrigate farms so cows produce milk so milk can be made into milk powder so milk powder can be exported overseas. The Canterbury Coal Mine closed in 2021, according to Bathurst, "... due to an inability to reach agreement with the local regulatory bodies ...". I found a 2020 Newsroom article, which said Bathurst "..has breached a series of consent conditions ...". Taking more coal than they were allowed and polluting the streams. The CEO denied it.
Meanwhile, oblivious to all this, we were walking along the riverbank, talking about the youth of today, who seldom talk on the telephone and rarely meet their partners "in the wild" anymore. We entered the pine forest.
A rogue branch catapulted my glasses off the top of my head. We searched for them for awhile to no avail and I began to have doubts I had even had them on at all. Perhaps I had left them in the car - or at home. But alas, they have subsequently not turned up. We reached the steep Link Track and began to climb. The path was mostly easy to follow through the pine needles, with wooden makeshift stairs and trees marked with pink flourescent paint and permoclat track markers. We were soon at the top.
From here the Bluffs Track followed the farm fenceline along the top of the pine plantation then above the bluffs. We stopped to ponder the blossoms of a heavily laden hawthorn tree. Beautiful. Clouds finally cleared to reveal quintessential Canterbury countryside and distant snowy peaks.
We descended the track to the bubbling river where the paradise shelducks were still honking. Back at the car (no glasses, but the poles were there) we adjourned to the Cafe on the Green at Glentunnel and the Hororata Golf Course, for pleasant English countryside vistas and coffees, hot chocolates, "mini benes" and muffins. A good place to stock up on honey and hot sauces.
