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| | Pupu Walkway
| Many people contend
that this is the number one short walk in GOLDEN BAY. There is, they say,
a wider range of interests - scenery, history, plant life, rockhounding,
engineering ingenuity - crammed into this half-day round trip than
anywhere else locally.
The road up the
Pupu Valley forks about a kilometre in from the highway and a signpost
directs you to the right. A sometimes narrow unsealed road brings you to a
carpark at the head of the valley, then it's on with the daypack (morning
tea, a picnic lunch, maybe, a parka if showers threaten) and away.
Initially quite
steep, the walkway passes through young beech forest and then older forest
until it intersects with the abandoned section of Campbell's Creek water
race. A short distance from the start walkers can take a side track to a
restored hydro station.
After meeting with
the race, at this stage an open, earth canal, the walk follows it, passing
along concrete aqueducts. (Parents please supervise children.) Originally
wooden, these were engineering masterpieces for their time, following the
steep contours of the hillside.
The walkway passes
by dry stone walling, reconstructed using the old goldmining method of
individually stacking the stones. Eventually the weir or intake is reached,
marking the end of the walkway. Part of the creek is blocked off and water
channelled down the race. This is a beautiful area for picnics and a great
place to scramble round for copper ore, quartz and other interesting
rocks.
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| Botanically, Pupu
walkway is very interesting. Bird life is plentiful with lots of tuis,
bellbirds and pigeons. There are also robins which are normally only found
in the larger tracts of forest in the GOLDEN BAY area. Fernbirds live in
the pakihi vegetation higher up the hillside through which a loop track is
planned in the future.
Stretching along
the hillside for more than three kilometres the water race was built in
1901-1902. It was completed in six months by eight men and amazing
engineering feats were accomplished. Large sections of curving race were
stuck on steep hillsides and several beautiful aqueducts built. At the
bottom end, the water dropped in pipes 123 metres to give the gold
sluicers a working pressure of 1400 kiloPascals.
The manager of the
goldmining company was Charles Campbell, after whom the creek and the race
were named. The company mined until about 1910 and then abandoned
theworkings. The claim, in terms of dividends paid for capital invested,
was the richest in GOLDEN BAY.
In 1929 the Golden
Bay Electric Power Board built a small hydro electric station which took
water from the race. Of the original race, about half the total length was
reused and the rest left derelict.
In June 1981, a
fault developed which engineers called a "flashover". The
generating equipment was extensively damaged and the Board decided it was
too expensive to repair. At the time of abandonment, it was thought to be
the smallest station linked to the national grid generating one million
units of electricity a year.
The Pupu Hydro
Society was formed to preserve and restore the old station, which it did
triumphantly. Now generating power once again, the station has a viewing
window and, when Society members are working on the equipment there,
members of the public are welcome to call in, sign the visitors' book and
look around.
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