Moving day today. We’re heading west but we have to go north first! The next big town north is Te Kuiti where we resupplied at the larger grocery store and the department store. We also took a nice walk around town and had lunch at a café in the old train station.

There are lots of ‘larger than life’ sites in Te Kuiti! A huge statue of a sheep-shearer, a statue of a famous rugby player, a mural of ‘Auntie’ at Aunties Laundromat, a mural of the native NZ falcon, and a statue of a Maori warrior!

We continued on our way to our next B&B, a large farmhouse in rural Awakino, about 9 miles to the ocean beaches on the ‘wild west coast’ of the North Island.

A beautiful old farmhouse with 3 bedrooms to choose from, old-growth knot-free wood paneling, doors and window sashes, wood cabinetry in a modern kitchen with a 5 burner gas stove, and 360 degree views of surrounding hillsides cloaked in native bush!

Our adventure started early in the morning, 6am to get breakfast in town. At 7am we boarded a small bus for a 2 hour ride along the “Forgotten World Highway” a 2 lane winding road through farmland and a beautiful gorge that has never been logged, with dense forest rising up high cliffs on either side. The road was just recently paved! Our destination was the Republic of Whangomomona, a semi-ghost town halfway along the Stratford-Okahukura rail line, a spur off the main trunk line that goes through Taumarunui. We are going to ride that spur rail line almost all the way back to Taumarunui, in a golf cart! This line was discontinued of passenger train traffic in 1983 due to lack of riders, then discontinued of freight traffic in 2009 after sporadic use and derailments due to deferred maintenance and lack of investment.

Our chariot awaits! With wheels modified to run on railroad tracks.

We boarded our golf cart in the string of 13 carts after the safety instructions and headed down the track!

Heading into one of the 21 tunnels we traversed on this half section of the track.

We had scheduled stops where our guides gave us information about the rail line and the history of the area. The rail line was started in 1901 and completed in 1932 at considerable cost and back breaking labor, 91 bridges built and 24 tunnels dug by pick ax and shovel. Unfortunately the expected boom in coal mining, logging and agriculture was never fully realized. Life along the track flourished briefly, timber was logged and sheep and cattle farms were established, but the area was still isolated and the expected infrastructure of mills, mines, creameries and support services never materialized.

Scenes along the track. Some farms have been amalgamated into larger ‘stations’ that are managed from afar. Some hillsides have been replanted with Monterey pine (yes the California species) to continue the logging industry.

When the line was completed the first boom went bust when the considerable influx of railroad workers moved on. The towns that had been established for their accommodation during the 32 years of construction slowly emptied. The logging boom lasted until the last accessible logs were harvested and frequent floods in the flood prone fields frustrated the struggling farmers. Thus the ‘Forgotten World’ emptied of residents and the logged hills began to revert to wild bush.

Some of the history explained at the stops, along with food and drink! We had morning tea with cake, a lunch stop and afternoon tea with cookies! Behind the tracks at Tangarakau a worker was busy steam cleaning bee hives.

With the rewilding of the hillsides with manuka bush the ghost town of Tangarakau, which had been a hub of 1200 people in the 1920’s during the railroad construction, has a new lease on life. Manuka, or tea tree as it is also known, has been proven to have medicinal properties, especially with wound healing. The Māori have know this and used tea from the bark for hundreds of years. With the introduction of European bees in the late 1800’s manuka honey became available (native NZ bees are solitary, do not have hives and do not produce honey). The Māori recognized the healing properties of manuka extended into the honey and used it medicinally. Finally in the 1980’s research was conducted and the medicinal value was scientifically proven. This created a new industry of manuka honey production and the scrub hillsides of Tangarakau became lucrative! A honey production facility has been established along the tracks in the ghost town by a few families and a remote campground is available as well.

Look Ma, no hands! We’re on tracks, just have to keep the gas pedal down! Unfortunately they are gas powered golf carts, I don’t think an electric cart could run the 60+ miles we covered today!

Tracks, Tunnels and Trestles, oh my! the bottom picture is of the largest trestle on the route. A wooden trestle was built to cross the ravine and then laboriously filled in for 3 years by hand with wheelbarrows of rock from digging the nearby multitude of tunnels!

A full and beautiful day ‘riding the rails’! We stayed the night at the Forgotten World Adventures Motel, part of the company that in 2011 leased the mothballed Stratford-Okahukura rail line, did copious maintenance of the line and began the golf cart rail trail! We highly recommend the adventure!

This central area of the North Island was one of the last places that colonial British rule penetrated. The geography of the area was rugged, hilly, densely forested and fiercely protected by the Maori tribes. Additionally the ‘New Zealand Wars’ sporadically fought from 1845 to 1872 led to the Kīngitanga movement whereby “Some tribes wanted a Māori king to oversee their affairs, specifically to unite the tribes in maintaining ownership of the land they still controlled. In 1858 Potatau Te Wherowhero became the first Māori king…”. In 1860 he died and his son Tāwhiao inherited the kingship. The Crown did not take this dual monarch plan well and the Governor of  NZ demanded that “Tāwhiao submit ‘without reserve’ to Queen Victoria.” War ensued and Tāwhiao and his followers were declared rebels and their land in the Waikato region was confiscated by the Crown. They moved to the Taumarunui area, the lands of their Ngāti Maniapoto relatives. The area became known as ‘King Country’ by Europeans, and by Māori as ‘Te Rohe Pōtae’, which loosely translates as ‘the area of the hat’ – supposedly referring to an incident in which King Tāwhiao defined the area’s boundaries by throwing a hat onto a map.

This monument in the town park bears the outline of King Country and a top hat symbolizing the method by which the boundary was established!

By 1882 under pressure from the government the local iwi agreed to allow a survey across their land for a railroad. This led to gradual opening of the land to Europeans.

Additionally “The Native Land Court, while ostensibly a legal mechanism for land transfer, functioned as a deliberate instrument of colonization. Its design was to dismantle communal Māori land tenure, as articulated by former Attorney-General Henry Sewell, who stated it was intended to ‘destroy if possible, the principle of communism which ran through the whole of their institutions’. This process created systemic economic and social disadvantage for Māori, directly contributing to their ‘virtually landless’ status and the erosion of tribal structures. The profound effects of these policies continue to be addressed through contemporary Treaty settlements, underscoring the long-term impact of historical land dispossession on indigenous communities.” References HERE, HERE, and HERE.

With the railroad in place exploitation of the natural resources quickly ensued and the native forests were decimated. Coal mining was briefly pursued and with the land opened sheep and cattle were introduced. The soil was poor for this purpose and the animals suffered bush sickness, a wasting disease due to poor nutrition. Many farms failed until the application of fertilizer and especially cobalt to the soil improved the conditions. It is a land of boom and bust and is currently experiencing a bit of bust in agriculture but tourism is increasing!

Main street at 6am on a misty morning, quiet and almost empty. The Bakery was open for a hot meat pie breakfast!

Today’s adventure was a walk in the woods, and these woods felt different from all our other walks in the woods! We visited the Ohinetonga Scenic Reserve at the edge of the small town of Owhango and the Tongariro Forest Conservation Area. The native forest had been heavily logged from the early 1900’s when the railroad arrived in the area until the 1960’s when the accessible timber was gone. In the 1980’s local residents and the Tongariro Forest Park Promotion Committee fought government plans to clear cut most of the remaining forest. However, the Ohinetonga Scenic Reserve was spared the ravages of historic milling because it had been preserved by the town as a scenic reserve early in the 1900’s! Since the 2010’s further work to eradicate plant and pest invasives has revived the native fauna as well, with native bird species including the whio (blue duck), keruru (big colorful pigeon) and kiwi finding refuge here.

The beautiful lacy skeleton of a leaf greeted us as we entered the cool shade of the forest.

This forest felt more open and airy with large trees and tall tree ferns shading us. The lack of thick underbrush was noticeable and we had the feeling of entering an ancient landscape.

A huge totara tree dominates a section of the forest.

We have been to small remnant pockets of the once vast kauri forests in the northern reaches of the North Island and they are impressive. Kauri does not grow in this area though, the big trees here are tōtara, rimu, kahikatea and a few others.

The trail crosses a central lagoon on a boadwalk surrounded by the native forest.

The openness of the forest seems a hallmark of an old-growth landscape.

Going north today we stopped to hike to Omaru falls on the Mokau River.

Someone wants to be clear about the direction to the Falls!!!

Along the trail we had to cross the narrowest, most rickety swing bridge we’ve encountered! We should be glad it’s still here, the recent flood waters were clearly up to the deck of the swing bridge and overflowed onto the trail at several places!

A 30 min. hike through forest and along paddocks brought us to the overlook above the impressive falls.

For a slo-mo video of the falls click HERE.

We decided to drive a loop route back to the B&B and detour into the Pureora Forest Park to revisit the Maramataha Suspension Bridge along the Timber Trail bicycle route.

It is long and high over the gorge!

I can’t imagine riding a bike over it, or even walking a bike over it! It does move a lot with every footstep!