Too wet for our planned walk so we diverted to Wairongomai to find trails. I am fascinated by the way that nature reclaims spaces that were ravaged by industrial engineering. Less than a hundred and fifty years later only remnants of the goldrush of New Zealand are half buried in the beautiful bush. Leaving us to marvel at the labour that must have gone into exploring the land and extracting the gold.
We climbed two ‘inclines’ – Butler’s and May which were originally the tramway up which heavy iron and wood carts were hauled and lowered full of what had been extracted from the mines.
Today’s photo shows the winding gear at the top of Butler’s Incline.
