Maori Occupation and Routes
Maori were well aware of the resources of Central Otago, with large moa butchering sites recorded, as well as settlement sites related to food and other resource gathering known in many locations, including sites on the Maniototo Plains and at the Serpentine where eel traps were found. There was seasonal weka hunting on the Rock and Pillar Range, and there are a number of rock shelters and possible Moa butchery sites in the vicinity of Deep Stream. Maori from Otago Peninsula and Henley (Mataipapa) were known to go birding in the Maniototo. Routes to inland Otago were known and generally followed the course of the main rivers: in the south the Mataura, centrally the Mataau (Clutha River) and in the north the Waitaki River.
Accessing the Interior: Early Pastoralism
Roading and communications was an important issue for the fledgling settlements in Otago, and with few settlers and a huge expanse of land, a considerable burden for the impoverished province. One commentator reported in May 1858 that the southern approach to Dunedin had been metalled but that the work was incomplete, and ‘[p]erfect road-making is yet beyond our means.’ John Turnbull Thomson on return from his first foray into the interior suggested that a
‘pioneer corps of road-makers would do much to assist the first settlers in opening the country and in developing that highly valuable branch of colonial industry, viz.. the pastoral interest. It is scarcely fair to the one or two enterprising energetic individuals that open a new country to have the burden of forming the roads for others to reap the advantage thereof, while at the same time the property that they invest in so direct and rapid a manner tends to advance the population of the Province in their progress to wealth and prosperity.’
The pastoralism of the late 1850s required the development of routes to the isolated stations, particularly to allow the transport of wool to the coastal transport networks. Turnbull Thomson identified the significance of routes as ‘useful information to intending Stockowners’ wanting to access the ‘natural Pasture’ which extended over 15,000 square miles (9,600,000 acres). The main routes Thomson identified (in order of ease of access) were Oamaru and up the Waitaki Valley which would be relatively accessible by dray, Waikouaiti then by up the Waihemo valley which a dray could follow with ‘some difficulty’ to the Upper Taieri, and then relatively easily to the Manuherikia and the Upper Clutha, the Port of Otago ‘drays can only be taken to the valleys south-west of the same, adjacent to the sea board,’ the Molyneux, and New River by way of the Upper Mataura and Jacob’s River.
Thomson drew international parallels to emphasise the importance of transport in the development of Otago, emphasising unity: ‘easy communication, especially by land, binds separate, and what would otherwise be antagonistic, communities into one.’ A route into the interior, Thomson argued, would mean that ‘[l]ivehold of the money expended would come to the public revenue by the sales of waste lands, and tenfold would accrue to the private settlers in the increased marketable value of their properties; whilst Dunedin, the focus of all, would advance with all.’
By 1858 there was money set aside for roading. A report in the Otago Witness in October of that year noted that £5,000 had been set aside for the construction of the ‘Shag Valley Road to the Interior’, and £500 for roading in the vicinity of West Taieri.
Accounts of just how these roads were formed are contradictory and confusing. At first the routes to Central Otago were simply the work of runholders forming tracks through their land. Historian James Herries Beattie described the experiences of Watson Shennan, who took up the Moutere and Galloway runs in the Manuherikia Valley run with his brother Alexander. Shennan recounted
‘I do not think it possible to experience greater hardship and live – with drifts of snow from 4 feet to 30 feet deep. My party had nothing hot to eat or drink for three days, and the bullocks were not out of the yokes for the same time, and had hardly any food. When I picked the party up with the sheep in Ida Valley they were out of provisions and had only mutton to eat for some days and had lost a man and a horse….The horses had to be moved from one big snow tussock to another, that being the only food they could get. The party could only find enough sticks to boil the billy and cook a chop, not sufficient for a fire to warm them. A journey to the South Pole is nothing to a trip like that.’
More than one account states that the Otago Provincial Council funded or part-funded the formation of dray roads. In 1858, the Provincial Council voted £1000 to construct three roads, but by June the following year, none of it had been spent. It is more than likely that the road from West Taieri to Interior was in fact started not as a formed road but as a track made by repeated use by drays. The provincial government was merely enhancing something that already existed.
By the end of 1860 the road to the interior via the Taieri was further developed and became associated with the development as Dunedin as the Provincial capital. The Provincial superintendent, James Macandrew, asked that the Provincial Council sanction the ‘construction of a main line of road from Dunedin into the interior of the Province, by way of the Upper Taieri Ferry [today’s Outram]’. Macandrew went on: ‘I have no hesitation in saying that, as a main line, that now leaves all other main lines throughout the Province entirely in the shade. It is a road which will directly affect a greater variety of interests – a greater amount of available country, and tend more to consolidate the Province than any other. The effect of this line will be to present an outlet for more agricultural, pastoral, and dairy produce, than can be presented by any other road line in New Zealand. It will ultimately connect Dunedin, by the best and shortest route, with the whole southern country as far as the banks of the Waiau, the Upper New River Plains, the Upper Clutha, the Manuherikia, Lammermoor, Shag Valley, and, I have no doubt, the greater portion of the interior, now supposed to be accessible only from Oamaru, Moeraki and Waikouaiti.’
Macandrew was clear about the benefits the route’s proximity to Dunedin, and linked it to the opening of the Panama Canal and, rather presciently, the effect of the Victorian gold rushes (without the drawbacks!) in Australia. The road would secure Dunedin in it position as the centre for Otago, and will make Dunedin ‘the natural outlet for the produce of upwards of seven millions of acres of the finest agricultural and pastoral country in the Province.’ He waxed lyrical ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;” the same rule applies to communities, and it only rests with out to say the word, to utter the ‘open sesame,’ which will put the hitherto insignificant Province of Otago into the proudest position of any of the numerous colonies of Great Britain in this Hemisphere.’
Runholders joined the chorus. At a meeting at West Taieri there was a call for the immediate construction of a ‘passable road from Harvey’s Flat to the Deep Stream at Mr Walker’s crossing.’ The meeting proposed that the interested runholders be ‘assessed in proportion to the stock on their respective runs, to the amount required for making the road.’ Messrs Valpy, Thomson and Walker were requested to superintend the making of the road. Mr Lee, who also attended went further, stating it was necessary ‘at once to take steps for securing and making the main road leading from the Upper Taieri Ferry into the interior districts, as well as any other sideline from the plain at Maungaatua Bush in the same direction.’ The attendees hoped that the Government, observing the ‘numerous attendance’ would see the necessity of laying off the line so that the runholders ‘may have every facility for a direct communication with Dunedin before the wool season.’
That there were local interests involved in the campaigning for the variety of routes was an issue that the Provincial Government had to pick a wary trail through: ‘Local influences are ever at work to the prejudice of the general interests.’ Survey and proper planning were essential. The superintendent stated that no road should have money expended on it until, in the case of dray tracks, a reconnaissance survey had been undertaken, and in the cue of permanent roads until the line had been finally decided on, the levels taken, and the approximate expense per mile ascertained, and then after these preliminary necessaries had been fulfilled the portions of the road intended for formation advertised for contract.’ Settlers who ventured onto the hilltops to the west of the Taieri River would observe the ‘operations of working parties engaged in blasting the solid rock in order to force a way to the Upper Clutha Valley, a distance of 150 miles, and learns that even a dray track might probably cost about £15,000.’
E.M. Lovell-Smith, writing in 1931, describes work on the dray road, from West Taieri to Black’s station at the Manuherikia (now Ophir), beginning in April 1860 and being completed a year later. The Otago Provincial Council was clearly planning a major road through the middle of the province by 1860. The Superintendent outlined the Council’s intentions at the opening of the Eleventh Session in December that year:
‘Another public work to which your sanction will be requested will be the construction of a main line of road from Dunedin into the interior of the Province, by way of the Upper Taieri Ferry, which it is proposed to bridge... It is a road which will directly affect a greater variety of interests - a greater amount of available country, and tend more to consolidate the Province than any other...It will ultimately connect Dunedin, by the best and shortest route, with the whole southern country as far as the banks of the Waiau, the Upper New River Plains, the Upper Clutha, the Manuherikia, Lammermoor, Shag Valley, and, I have no doubt, the Lake Country, and the greater portion of the interior, now supposed to be accessible only from Oamaru, Moeraki, and Waikouaiti.’
The route chosen was to be by some distance the shortest to Central Otago. It followed a fairly direct line from west of Dunedin to the Dunstan, a distance of 170 kilometres. It traversed four mountain ranges; the Lammermoors, the Rock and Pillars, Rough Ridge and the Raggedy Ranges. The first appropriation for the road was made in January 1861, when £2000 was set aside for the ‘West Taieri to Interior’ road. There were arguments in the provincial assembly about the allocation of funding for roads to the interior with some members calling for just one road rather than several.
John Hall-Jones attributes the design of the road’s surveyed route to J.T. Thomson, then Chief Surveyor and Chief Engineer for the province. However, Hall-Jones suggests that the decision on what route to take was made in haste by Thomson after the Dunstan goldfield was opened up. As there were vehicles on the road within weeks of the discovery of gold it seems more likely that the road was designed much earlier and work was proceeding in a measured fashion. The urgent work would seem to have been needed once the rudimentary road was required for the use of the miners.
The section from the town centre to Saddle Hill had apparently already been built, by the New Zealand Company, in 1849. Tenders were called in 1861 for the construction of the next section, to Silverstream (near Mosgiel, now State Highway 87), but progress was slow.
By early 1862 the section from Saddle Hill to Silverstream was completed and the going to West Taieri must have been better because that was completed by September that year. However, just to confuse matters, the Superintendent made the following comments in a speech to the Provincial Council on 19 June 1861.
‘Heavy as the expenditure has been between Dunedin and the Taieri, amounting to not less than £1600 a mile of actual outlay, the country settler as he rides into town at once recognises the necessity of the work; but when he crosses the Taieri plain, ascends the hills on the other side of the river, and witnesses the operations of the working parties engaged in blasting the solid rock in order to force a way to the Upper Clutha Valley, a distance of 150 miles, one learns that even a dray track might probably cost about £15,000, he asks himself why the present communication with the interior which is now traversed by drays, could not be improved at a comparatively trifling expense.’
The gold rushes
The story of nineteenth century Otago is highlighted by the extraordinary burst of prosperity that occurred after the discovery of gold in the hinterland. In the space of a few years from 1862 it turned Dunedin from a small southern town into the colony’s richest city and established its status for the remainder of the century. The movement of people and goods to and from the richest goldfields became a matter of the highest priority. Roads became the means to connect the coast with the hinterland and the most famous but most briefly used
