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Haast Pass - History
Early travellers
At 563 metres above sea level the lowest pass on the Main Divide, Haast
marks the boundary between Otago and Westland. The route was regularly used
by Maori parties visiting Westland for greenstone, but its most notable
travellers were the members of a taua (war party) in 1836. Te Puoho,
relative and lieutenant of Te Rauparaha, elected to take the Otago Ngai Tahu
by surprise by journeying down the West Coast and crossing through the Haast
Pass. The arduous journey took almost a year before Te Puoho crossed the
pass with a war party of about 100. At Makarora (at the head of Lake Wanaka)
a kainga was attacked, but one of the villagers contrived to escape and warn
his kinsmen at Lake Hawea.
The taua travelled on to traverse the Crown Range and continue as far south
as Tuturau (near Mataura). There it was Te Puoho's turn to be caught off
guard, few of his men surviving the slaughter. During the celebrations that
marked the last of the South Island's tribal confrontations "round and round
went the staked head of the dreaded Te Puoho, while children spat and women
reviled".
The first Pakeha to find the pass was Charles Cameron, in January 1863. A
gold prospector, he left Dunedin determined to get to the West Coast by the
most direct route, noting that "travelling in this part is very dangerous,
on account of the glaciers giving way on the mountains with a loud
thundering noise". Hard on his heels was Julius von Haast, who was careful
to name the pass after himself and do all he could to discount Cameron's
claim to have preceded him. He could not, however, overcome the fact that
Cameron had buried his powder flask to the west of the pass on the summit of
Mt Cameron, to be found there in 1881. Vincent Pyke followed and, after a
tortuous return journey, glibly noted that a road "could be made at a
trifling expense". |
Roadbuilding
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For all Vincent Pyke's
protestations, by 1880 the Haast route had been developed only as a
packhorse trail. Roadbuilding was not to begin until 1929 - and then only as
an unemployment relief project. Lake Hawea and Makarora were linked in 1931.
In the next nine years the road was pushed through to the Gates of Haast and
a wharf built at Jackson Bay to handle shipments of equipment.
Work was interrupted by the war and did not resume until 1956. Four years
later Haast township was linked to Wanaka, ending a century of isolation for
farmers on the coast. Many bridges were built and substantial engineering
problems overcome before the difficult 56 kilometres of the Paringa-Haast
section was completed, in November 1965, a century after Pyke had travelled
the pass. His "trifling expense" totalled $11 million. |
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