page 2

Waitakere Dam and Tramway Track

Downhill from here, as they say.

Right at the top, one of Auckland's many dog-loving vandals has tagged one of the signs.

The track gets steeper still

The railway no longer travels to it's original terminus at the dam. The last hundred yards or so are now so unsafe that engineers expect it to fall at any time without warning

Anyhow, we're at the bottom of the steps, and though the track continues downhill, it is a railway downhill, not a 4WD downhill.

Miranda has been listening to Johnny Cash's new CD and wonders what walking the line is all about. It's much easier with hiking sticks, though we felt right charlies coming down the tarseal bit with them. We head along, following the track. Once again, the embankment and sturdy fence seem strange in the larger landscape around us.

We read the notices and then get going.

These bridges look as though they're a bit narrow to cope with both a train and a pedestrian, but there's plenty of noisy warning, and the train typically slows to walking pace in narow areas and in the tunnel.

Sometimes we're sitting up on an embankment, and other times the track is built out on pillars. The cliff along the way is smooth stone conglomerate and once again I wish I was a geologist with all this stuff at my fingertips and an understanding of how it all got to be this way.

We come across a man-made chute carrying water above the track. the last one of these I saw was at the top of Arthur's Pass in the South Island. This is a much tamer affair, but sitting as we are over a considerable drop, I put myself in the shoes of the guys that built it.

We each have a go at capturing what it's like behind the water. I can tell you for a start, it leaks.

I take some care to include some of the woodwork. Miranda takes just as much care to leave it out. Actually, I wasn't keen on leaning as far out as she was.

Photo by Miranda Woodward

For the most part just along here the track is pretty scruffy, with the kind of wasteland weed growth that you'd expect along any railway track. Here and there a vivid green patch of galinsoga spangled with starry white flowers lifts the general drabness.

It's obviously a damp patch just here - the parataniwha in the top left corner signals that.

Walking between the sleepers is not specially comfortable. They don't match my stride at all. The path to the side is a bit narrow, as well. I'm also getting a tad hungry. I swallow a mouthful or so of water and instantly feel better.

We look back towards the dam and the drop seems even more spectacular from here. A good idea to come back when there's been heaps of recent rain and the cascade down the dam face and the cliff below will be quite impressive.

Just ahead of us the first tunnel appears. Alison Dench and Lee-Anne Parore (Walking the Waitakere Ranges) note that a torch is unnecessary here unless you are looking for wetas. Great... I do not mention this until much later.

We head on through. The rails have a sufficiently thick coating of rust for us not to be unduly anxious about an imminent train passage.