PHOTO CREDIT: HEATHER CARSTON
THE King Country, a region of pioneering stoicism, a land where you either got going, or went home. Because you had to have a backbone of steel to live in its mountainous wild backcountry that gave early settlers far more than they bargained on.
If you want to see the real King Country, Taumarunui’s Forgotten World Railcart Adventures is the only way to do it.
This is the history you can’t see from the air, or from the road. Only by cutting the way through the hills – and with 10 tunnels on the 43km Tokirima-Okahukura line alone, that’s quite literally – do you really see the hard grind, the ongoing battle between man and nature and in a number of areas, the shattered dreams that lie covered with vegetation along the century-old track.
You can imagine, as you bypass another loaded apple or plum tree, just how many train drivers ate their lunch along the route, throwing out the inedible cores – and the seeds of these trees are now lichen-covered with age and fruit-laden.
Take for instance the longest tunnel in the country, which happens to feature on this one of the two-track adventures there are, (the other between Stratford and Whangamomona).
At slightly more than 1500m in length it’s almost a kilometre and a half. If you are one of the group who doesn’t mind stopping for a minute in the middle of the curving track and turning all lights off, you will quite literally understand a depth of dark so deep you cannot see a single thing or shade of colour. (If you don’t want to stop, you don’t have to – and be warned, this tunnel is cold, no matter what the temperature is on the outside.)
The amazing feat so often underestimated here is that the tunnel is built on bends – yet in 1901 a crew started on each side of the 1500m-plus build and for 12 years, removed the rock and rubble via hand, oxen and horses and created a tunnel that met perfectly in the middle.
In fact, the whole line, originally a service line from Stratford which joined up with the main trunk line in Okahukura, was built through some of the toughest terrain in the North Island.
You’ll stop behind the derelict town of Ohura, trying like its aunty Taumarunui to reinvent itself and bring new life to its borders which once thrived with life from the state-owned coal mine which supplied the second-grade coal to hospitals and schools for their furnaces, to the white-collar criminal prison which once housed the likes of Allan Hawkins and Centrepoint Place’s Bert Potter among others. It perhaps is no surprise some of its inhabitants are the off-the-grid freedom living people.
No one takes a lot of notice of who lives out there, it’s too far off the beaten track. Signs of improvements are there though, with the significant clearing of land to the left of the rails which our guide believes is something to do with a place for campers.
Matiere is another stop off, the place which made the red brick so prevalent within the precision-built tunnels you go through.
Travelling at the fastest speed the carts will allow of 22kmh, the 43km trip takes roughly two-and-a-half hours from the starting point of Tokirima (smallest post office in the country, there) by the time you factor three other stops in place.
Before you get on the railcarts, the bus will take you for a look at the wondrous Lauren’s Lavender Farm – a fabulous place about 20 minutes south of Taumarunui where you can have a delicious morning tea and buy some of the products the farm makes.
From there, you head for lunch at Tokirima – a couple of sheds and tables brought out for the lunch crowd, with great sandwiches, ice cold drinks and tea or coffee.
Considering the ongoing maintenance work required for the railcarts to run smoothly and the great staff with the required combination of Kiwi number eight wire ingenuity, local knowledge and expert training of their roles, the cost to go on this spectacular ride is well worth the money you’ll spend.
More than anything, you’ll take away the realisation of the blood, sweat and tears that was poured into this region to create the access way to improve the economy, both local and national – and be left with the puzzled realisation too many people who have never travelled these hard-won byways throughout the country have the right to cross a red line through the use of them.
And as one out-of-town visitor remarked to us over the ploughman’s lunch: “I think we’ll stay another couple of days, there’s far more to see in the King Country and in Taumarunui than we realised.”
The beauty of Forgotten World is they have teamed together with other tourism operators and you can enjoy a variety of products that include not only the railcarts, but jetboat or canoe rides on the river – some of these packages can last three days.
With more than 90% of its tourists being the domestic market of New Zealand, and, as one guide told us: “at equidistance roughly between Auckland and Wellington, when the lockdowns ended, people who lived there wanted to be as far away as possible … and we were it,” it’s not surprising why Taumarunui has suddenly become a destination on the map and is continuing to grow.
We had such a fabulous time here, and will be back sometime to do the two-day Whangamomona-Stratford trip.
