Railway line beside Nuhaka – Opoutama Road, Picture by Catherine McDonald
This railway line goes somewhere . . .
And a tramping club walking group enjoyed following it for an interesting 12.5km section.
The concrete siding and tracks where we started our walk at the old Nuhaka railway station site, on the Palmerston North – Gisborne Railway Line, look pretty much abandoned these days. Prior to Cyclone Bola in 1988 there were two passenger railcars passing through each day, as well as three daily freight trains.
The railway sleepers and track along most of the walk are relatively weed- and obstacle-free despite having no trains running, because Gisborne Railbike Adventures employees have weed sprayed along this section of the railway line, pulled out wilding pines, and chainsawed branches which had fallen across the line.
There are several rail bridges between Nuhaka and Opoutama — over the Nuhaka River and across streams, as well as two road overpasses, and these require care when crossing.
The first bridge we came to, and the longest, was over the Nuhaka River, from where we could see the waves breaking at the river mouth.
The Nuhaka-Opoutama Road goes through a cutting to meet the coast at Blacks Beach, and the railway line stays high and crosses the road on an overpass. A group of motorcyclists roared underneath us as we walked over the overpass. From this vantage point you can see the rough road which crosses farmland, providing an alternative route for vehicles with high loads which won't fit underneath the rail overpass — “Blacks Beach Bypass South”, on the KiwiRail sign.
At the Opoutama end of Blacks Beach the edge of the road has slumped and there is a one lane section here. Work has started on shifting the road and railway line inland, by cutting back the spur of the ridge and forming benches. John Wells is an engineer with a lifetime of experience in road design and he has studied this feature. He explained to our group that this dropout is not caused by the sea. The cause is the seepage from the trapped water in the valleys blocked off by the railway and road embankments destabilising the ground and causing it to slump. The sea simply cleans up the mess off the beach after the slumping has happened.
Each of these swampy areas need effective drainage and this would extend the life of the current retreat work.
I, for one, did not realise how significant effective drainage is in situations like this, but it seems vital to understand these processes because of the prospect of more extreme rainfall events, more vigorous storms, and raised sea levels impacting coastal and hill country infrastructure.
After walking across the overbridge at the Waikokopu Road turn-off, the railway line drops down gradually to the road level and follows the southern edge of Waikokopu Estuary. This estuary was once a landing place for waka and the site of Māori settlements. Nowadays, it is a small quirky fishing settlement. But for 20 years from the mid-1920s to the 1940s it was an industrial port town.
From 1876 wool was loaded from Waikokopu to ships waiting offshore. Later, as the volumes increased, a wharf was built, and this became used in preference to the Wairoa wharf because of the inconsistent and hazardous river bar at Wairoa.
The railway line from Wairoa to Waikokopu was constructed before Wairoa was connected by rail to Napier and it was known as the Wairoa – Waikokopu branch line. From 1924 frozen meat from Wairoa was transported by rail and shipped out from Waikokopu, and materials and equipment for the construction of the rail line from Napier to Wairoa, and the Waikaremoana Power Scheme, were railed to Wairoa.
In 1930 work started on the railway line from Waikokopu to Gisborne, the last section of the East Coast Railway, later renamed the Palmerston North – Gisborne Railway Line. Work stopped for five years, then started again with the cutting and benching of the rock bluffs at Waikokopu and building a sea wall and platform for the railway line with stacks of concrete-filled railway wagons backfilled with excavated spoil. This coastal protection is still intact except for one small slip near Opoutama.
Our walk ended at the rail siding at Opoutama, and like at Nuhaka, the railway station is no longer there.
Now that the Napier to Wairoa section of the railway line has regular log train services established, it is time to complete the reinstatement of the line through to Gisborne. Earlier this year Gisborne District Council, along with Hawkes Bay Regional Council, funded a team of consultants to do a reassessment of the cost of reinstatement, including extra resilience work on the Napier to Wairoa section, and the construction of a multi-modal freight hub at Matawhero. This report has been presented to Hon Michael Wood, Minister of Transport, and a follow up meeting is planned. Although we acknowledge the challenges, the coastal section of railway line we walked along between Nuhaka and Opoutama makes this reinstatement seem achievable, because this section is all in good condition.