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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 4 (August 1, 1929)

The Long Sea Road — From Christchurch to Picton — Beneath The Kaikouras

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The Long Sea Road
From Christchurch to Picton
Beneath The Kaikouras

In the following article, Miss Elsie K. Morton presents our readers with a word-picture of the beautiful sea-and-mountain road that now supplies the only connecting link between Canterbury and the Northern Provinces of Marlborough and Nelson.

You can, of course, make the trip from Christchurch to Wellington in the ordinary way, by rail through the electrified tunnel of the Port Hills, a night on the ferry from Lyttelton, breakfast in Wellington next morning. Very convenient and prosaic, no exertion whatsoever, no loss of time. Thousands of passengers go that way every week; the confirmed traveller does it again and again as a matter of course.

But a few others, tourists from overseas, New Zealanders who want to see all that is worth seeing in their own country, add a couple of days to their itinerary, and set out on one of the most interesting motor tours in New Zealand, the 245 mile run from Christchurch to Picton, via Kaikoura and Blenheim.

The morning is one of sparkling brightness, crisp with the tang of late autumn. Down through the pretty suburban district of Papanui, past miles of gardens and cheerful bungalows, out on the smooth highway, and northward through Kaiapoi to the vast level stretch of the Canterbury Plains. Kaiapoi is the home of one of New Zealand's most famous woollen mills, but its outstanding feature, from the tourist's point of view, is a magnificent avenue of poplars stretching in straight line for over two miles to Kairaki Beach.

Out into the open country we pass swiftly, and for mile upon mile, we speed through some of the richest land in all New Zealand, the fertile reaches of the Canterbury Plains, with their immeasurable wealth of golden grain, luxuriant pastures, and flocks of sheep. Down on the western horizon gleams the mighty wall of the Southern Alps, a shining barrier of glittering sword-peaks upthrust into the cloud-curtains of the sky. Just ahead is one of the lesser giants of the Plains, Mount Grey, bold in outline, red-brown in the glow of sunshine, with deep blue shadows in the sharp-etched valleys and ravines.

By mid-day, we are at Half-way House, Domett, where a brief stop is made for lunch. Then on again, through the hills of Cheviot. The glory of the Alps is left behind; they are just a jagged edge of silver now, a shining shield close-bent over the far horizon. We are in a world of little hills, the wonderful hills of Cheviot, all dimpling in the sunshine, looking for all the world as though some Olympian jester had moulded them in brown dough when our earth was in the melting pot, kneaded and pressed the little soft lumps, and then scattered them with a mighty “plop!” all over the edge of the North Canterbury Plains. These, surely, are the “little hills” of the Psalmist; they look as though at any moment they might skip off their bases, clap their hands and sing! Very rich is this pastoral district of Cheviot, once the estate of one of Canterbury's pioneer sheep kings, now cut up into smaller farms.

Our route takes us across the Waiau River, where we have the unique experience of travelling on the railway track. A few miles farther on we come to Parnassus, the southern rail-head of the uncompleted South Island Main Trunk line, divided from the northern terminus, Wharanui, by a gap of eighty miles. There are great sheep stations in these Parnassus hills, beautiful homes and lovely gardens, but from the road you see only heavy plantations of fir trees and acacia, flax-filled gullies and broken country.

The only sign of life on the long, empty road is a travelling grocer's pantechnicon pulled up beside a wayside home; a motor van with shuttered sides rolled back to show shelves laden with bottles of jam and pickles, tins of meat page 26 and fruit, packages of all shapes and sizes. Once a month the travelling store comes to these lonely homes, and a real boon it is to the isolated, neighbourless housewife.

Soon the last vestige of civilisation and man's habitation is left behind. The lone road winds ahead, through the Conway valley across the surging river, down through fertile Oaro to the sea. Always ahead are the towering heights of the Seaward Kaikouras, black against the clear sky, with thin silver dazzle where the snow rests on the highest peaks.

In from the sea again, and into the Hundalee Hills, sharp-peaked, thickly wooded, out by a narrow road that twists and turns most gaily along the bare edge of precipitous cliffs.
The Centre Of A Rich Farming District. The township of Domett, half way between Christchurch and Kaikoura. The railway line is on the left of the picture.

The Centre Of A Rich Farming District.
The township of Domett, half way between Christchurch and Kaikoura. The railway line is on the left of the picture.

A tricky road this for drivers unaccustomed to the route, but the big car swings to the curves, swoops down the steep descending grade with the nonchalance of perfect familiarity.

Now the world is lit with the dusky flare of sunset. Broad shafts of light strike down the slopes of the distant hills, flooding the valleys with waves of amber light. The high snow peaks burn with sudden fire; the glow dies away; the rugged heights become deeply, darkly blue, remote, like the indigo depths that lie beneath storm-shadowed seas… Now we are out on the coast again, running through a magnificent seaside park, with the blue Pacific stretching away into a pearl-pink haze on the horizon. Twelve miles of one of the most beautiful seaside roads in all New Zealand, a road that runs through groves of ngaio, glossy-leafed karaka, golden kowhai, and bronze-green totara! What grace, what rare beauty is in these woodland temples, rising from close green sward, deep-shadowed, breathing the leafy odours of dim forest places, touched with the salt tang of the sea! Rocky cliffs suddenly close down on the road; a fern-grown tunnel looms darkly ahead. Then out to the sea again, with the little waves making a soft splashing on the shores of tiny curving bays. More tunnels, more groves, and so at nightfall, after a run of 120 miles, into the seaside township of Kaikoura, one of New Zealand's historic whaling stations, happy hunting ground of bloody old Te Rauparaha who came down from Kapiti with his cut-throat gang nearly a century ago, and soaked the coast in blood. Kaikoura's history goes back into the dim days of ancient tradition, for here it was, according to Maori mythology, that Tama, one of the great Polynesian Vikings, landed from his canoe, the Tairea, and cooked his first New Zealand meal of cray-fish on the beach.

But not an echo of those roystering days of battle and carousal sounds in Kaikoura to-day. At nightfall, Kaikoura is one of the quietest, most solitary little townships in all New Zealand. The clear Southern stars flash and burn

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in the indigo deeps of the sky, the wide curving bay lies silent, mysterious, and the wall of the mountains is a vast rampart of black and silver, upthrust twixt sea and sky… Down by the seashore is Kaikoura's Garden of Memories; a simple obelisk rises beside the blue waters, and bright flower-beds, tended by loving hands, carry the names of distant battlefields where the lads of Kaikoura fought and died… Hushed and still is the little seaside garden this gentle autumn night; the slow beat of waves on the pebbled shore, the sighing of wind in the trees, sound a requiem for those who will never return.

“Where the silver river turns and twists.” The Clarence River Bridge on the Kaikoura Sea Road.

“Where the silver river turns and twists.”
The Clarence River Bridge on the Kaikoura Sea Road.

Kaikoura offers to holiday-makers the rare beauty of forest-glades backed by majestic, snow-clad heights, the bird-paradise of seaside groves, sport of fighting-fish, surf-bathing, all the usual tourist attractions, and over all, the exhilaration of ocean breezes tempered by the warmth of clear sunshine, and a mild, genial climate. At the far end of the curving bay is the little port and wharf, where steamers come to take away the bounteous harvesting of the fertile hills and valleys that stretch far back to the foot of the mountains.

A night at Kaikoura, and an early start next morning on the second stage of our journey. Here are more seaside groves and thickets, and the morning sun striking through the glossy foliage with long, slender golden spears. For over fifty miles, our road runs beside the sea-shore, grey-shingled, curving to deep bays where the tempestous rivers of the South come surging out to the sea. We cross the Hapuka and Clarence, over strong bridges with massive concrete supports, built to withstand the wild onslaught of the torrents that come roaring down when the snows melt on the mountains, and turn riverbed and valley into raging seas. The approaches to the bridges are built up with heavy groynes, vast piles of stones enclosed in criss-cross wire casing, built into the banks and bridge supports, to protect them from the swirling scour of the flood. Yet, despite these formidable ramparts of rock and wire, bridges and embankments are often swept away, and the flood goes tearing down the valley. But the river is low as we pass, just a thin silver trickle winding through acre upon acre of grey shingle-bed.

Still on our right is the seashore, bathed in sunshine, sea-birds riding softly on the crests of the little waves, still on our left the frowning cliffs, and farther back, high-piled masses of rugged peaks and precipices of the Kaikouras,

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gashed with great ravines and crevasses, rivulets of glistening snow trickling down the harsh rock faces.

Soon we pass Wakatu Point, and the chauffeur relates a diverting story of a little coastal trader, wrecked one wild night of storm and pitchy darkness on her way down the Kaikoura coast. The boat stuck hard and fast on her rock. The lifeboat was lowered in utmost haste on to the flat shingled beach of Wakatu, within a stone's throw of the main road! The old boat still
“The Glorious Dead.” The War Memorial at Picton on the shores of Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island.

The Glorious Dead.”
The War Memorial at Picton on the shores of Queen Charlotte Sound, South Island.

stands upright on the stony point, so who could doubt the story?

Halfway between Kaikoura and Blenheim is Kekerangu, a tiny post-office-and-store village, lying hot beneath giant eucalyptus trees. Now we are in tussock country, with sheep grazing on hillsides and in bush-filled valleys. A lonely, lonely road now, with the empty sea on one side, wide leagues of tussock-brown hills and snow-capped peaks on the other. The only soul we meet in miles is a drover jogging slowly along in a buggy, his dogs trotting behind, a little sack slung beneath the vehicle to give the animals a spell when they grow foot-sore and weary. Many leagues has he driven in his ramshackle old shay, all the way down from Marlborough, for he is one of the best-known drovers in three provinces, and now he is jogging his long slow way home again.

Now and again we pass the desolate little huts of roadmen and rabbiters, for this is champion rabbit country.

As we speed along, a man in dungarees comes from a roadside hut and waves the car to stop. A silent thin man who shambles up and mutters something, as he hands a scrap of paper to the chauffeur. The latter nods, the man goes back to his hut without a backward glance.

“Cheque for £50,” observes the chauffeur, tucking it carefully away. “Wants me to cash it for him in Blenheim.” Trustful folk, these Kaikourans!

Much of the country through which we are now passing is under cultivation, and beneath sheltering groves of trees we catch glimpses of the comfortable homesteads of station-owners. Close beside the road is one beautiful home with well-tended gardens and sweeping driveway, a home lit with electric light, so our chauffeur assures us, and replete with every modern convenience.

A few miles farther on, at Wharanui, we come in at last from the sea, and pass into typical South Island sheep country, grass and tussock hills, treeless and bare as the back of your hand,

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but yielding magnificent pastures to the great Marlborough flocks. Wharanui is at present the northern terminus of the South Island Main Trunk Line.

On and on through the gold-brown hills, across the dried-up bed of Lake Grasmere, a shallow lake that mysteriously disappeared in 1911, and has never re-filled. Far away on the northern horizon, we get a clear glimpse of Wellington Head, in the North Island, a great blue bluff standing out boldly against the sunny sky. Over the Awatere Bridge, a splendid double structure with traffic and railway tracks side by side, and into Seddon, named after the Dominion's great Prime Minister. Lunch at Seddon, then through beautiful Awatere Valley, where the river runs to the sea through fertile country broken by sheer chalk cliffs, dazzling white in the strong mid-day sunshine. On the horizon rise the Inland Kaikouras, as distinct from the Seaward Kaikouras, austere, snow-clad giants rising grandly above the dimpled brown hills. Soon the hills grow steeper; the road is a narrow ledge cut in precipitous cliffs that slope straight and steep to the river beneath.

“Redwood Pass,” announces the chauffeur confidentially. “Supposed to have been more fatal accidents on this here bit of road than any in New Zealand. Motor car went over a year ago
In The Sunny Nelson Province. The Traffic and Locomotive staffs on the Nelson section of our system, 1929.

In The Sunny Nelson Province.
The Traffic and Locomotive staffs on the Nelson section of our system, 1929.

from that bit straight ahead, and three people killed. Motor lorry was wrecked in the same place a month or two ago, and if you look right down at the bottom of this cliff we're coming to, you'll see what's left of a hawker's cart that went over last week… I don't mention it to too many passengers, they get the ‘wind up,’ but I know it won't make any difference to you!”

I thanked him in trembling tones, trying to shut my eyes, but they remained glued upon the scene in a kind of dreadful fascination until I had looked at the remains of the hawker's cart, seen the exact spot where the other tragedies took place. Yet, had he not told me, my heart would never have missed a beat, for Redwood Pass seemed no whit more dangerous than a dozen other narrow hillside roads of the South.

Early in the afternoon we came down from the hills into Blenheim, capital of “Golden Marlborough,” a prosperous, well-built city, centre of a thriving pastoral and agricultural district. Twenty miles by rail, and we are in Picton, slumberous, picturesque little Picton, dreaming peacefully on the beautiful wooded shores of Queen Charlotte Sound. Out beyond lies Cook Strait, and the North Island… The tour is ended… The long, winding road has come home at last to the sea.