Victoria Forest Park

We’re in a corner of Te Waipounamu | the South Island of Aotearoa | New Zealand neither of us has explored much before: Reefton. Our base is an old brewer’s cottage in the middle of town. We have three nights here, and plan two excursions.

• Alborns, Fossicker, Globe Progress Mine, and Tāmatahia Te Whenua (12.2km, 713m)

• Klondyke Valley Route (18.6km, 459m)

Day one, we pack lunch and head out to explore Alborns and Fossickers. The gravel access road is promising. It transitions from forestry to tawhai | beech, then to precipitous fall obscured by the tawhai canopy against hard cliff. We park in a coal pit and set out. The walk is immediately fascinating. Goblin forest, train track cutaways, mine shafts, long retired mining equipment. 

We climb through the gnarled tawhai and marvel at the rotting uprights, poisonous gas warnings, and orange liquid leeching out of the mineshafts along the route. We reach a view of Fossicker’s lake, which looks to be new. After some research back at our base, Fossicker’s lake – and much of what we’re about to experience – is the result of one of Aotearoa | New Zealand’s largest restoration projects following the closure of the OceanaGold Globe Progress Mine. And it’s just opened, two months ago. We decide to explore.

We follow the lake edge clockwise. Thick tawhai clings above us on our left; fresh planting and a new, dark Fossicker’s Lake sits to our right. We cross streams and run-offs, pass bare hills that have been replanted, and walk up the mining access road, Tāmatahia Te Whenua. As we climb, the open mine workings come into view, as does another new lake filling the base of the mine. They look somehow beautiful. Like a semi-natural amphitheatre carved out of the edge of a mountain.

Pīhoihoi | pipit keep us company on the walk up, with korimako | bellbirds calling out throughout the walk. We reach the top and spot a look-out point. As we follow the road toward the look-out, a state-of-the-art brand-new outdoor mining museum opens out before us.

The mine dates back to the 1800s. It shut from the 1920s, displacing 300 people living in Cornishtown here on the mountain. As mining technology changed the mine reopened. OceanaGold, it’s proprietors, paid a substantial bond to Te Papa Atawhai | DOC to assure restoration, extracted 610,000 ounces, or $2.6B in today’s money, shut the mine up in 2016, and have reconditioned and restored the site over the years since. It’s pretty amazing. We read all the signs, wander all the laneways, and marvel.

We eat lunch, walk by the old boilers and then head back down. We continue the clockwise circumnavigation of Fossicker’s where Tāmatahia rejoins the lake, regretting the distance after a while. It is beautiful, these inlets and dark waters and high beech and multi-coloured rocks. We reach a sign: “Alborns Back Route.” Reading the map, I’m confident this is a short-cut. We try it out, and we’re both glad we did. We follow the train tracks down past a rotting Leyland Truck shell, past more shafts, past more ancient indeterminate mine machinery, and stop as a toutouwai | robin hops out to inspect us. We sit with it for a while as it grubs around us. 

Day two, we set out just after half ten. We have sandwiches, four water bottles, our usual get-up. It’s a half-hour drive toward Springs Junction, deep in the Victoria Forest Park, before we see the Klondyke Routes DOC sign. We peel off the road, park, suit up, and stop as a weka | woodhen emerges from under our parked car. Such characters.

The route is immediately muddy, rooty, technical – and chocker full of birds. Our shoes are wet through five minutes in. And we’ve seen miromiro | tomtit, riroriro | grey warbler, korimako, weka, and toutouwai ten minutes in – the later standing astride a log as if to challenge our intentions, as the kaitiaki guardian of Klondyke Valley.

The ngāhere | bush is magnificent. Best tawhai forest anywhere. There’s just so much of it. This forest is high. The canopy provides cover for ferneries, babbling brooks, purple pouch fungi (Cortinarius porphyroideus), beech strawberry / honeyball fungi (Citrate gunnii). The canopy itself is home to titipounamu | riflemen in their hundreds. We hardly see them (and I can hardly hear them) on our ascent – but we most definitely see them all along our descent. They flit around us, fly toward us, run up the trunks of the tawhai. We think we see juvenile riflemen too. What a treat.

It’s a hard, technical slog up. We pass a boggy tarn, eventually reaching the second tarn – our turnaround point. This tarn has expansive views of the Klondyke Valley cirque, the waterfall, and the unnamed peaks either side of the valley. It is surrounded by sphagnum moss and peat bog and then thick tawhairauriki | mountain beech. It’s really lovely, worth the trip – although I’d love to know how to get up the waterfall and around the tops to head back down Klondyke Spur – my solo adventure option. Stash that away for next time.

We clamber back down, through tree fall and brook and river crossing (the Rahu), making it back to the car weary, having had a great adventure.