1st June 2009: Montana Heritage Trail

It was the Queen's birthday bank holiday in NZ, so in amongst some wedding planning we did another trip out to the Waitakere ranges, 45 mins west of Auckland. This time, we headed to the northern end of the park to walk the Montana Heritage Trail, a track through the bush sponsored by Montana Wines who used to be based nearby.

We extended the walk a little to take in the Waitakere tramline. This line was orginally built for the construction of the nearby dam, but now occasionally takes passengers. It wasn't running when we were there but you can just walk along the track instead. It has an unusual railway station at Picnic Flats, a somewhat incongrous area of neatly trimmed grass in the middle of the rainforest.

A novel aqueduct, taking a stream over the tramway

On the way back, we passed along the Upper Kauri track, which has some of the best stands of mature kauri trees we've seen. It some parts you are surrounded by trunks over a metre thick, rising up like towers above you. One of the trees was wider than my arms streched out, around 2 metres across (photo). Much of this part of NZ would have been like this - before it was all logged early last century.

Sophie gives some scale to the kauris

More photos of big trees here.