16th November 2009
We left Hahei for the last time this morning to once again head for Cormorandal Town. This time we took a more direct route across the mountains. Whilst this was mainly an unsealed road, the route was much quicker and offered different views to what we’d seen yesterday, climbing and snaking as it does through native bushland. We were also able to stop at Waihu Falls, a small waterfall up in the mountains, which was in full flow after heavy rain last night.
We arrived at Cormorandal Town and made our way to Driving Creek Railway and Pottery. This small place nestled in the hills originally out as a small pottery when Barry Brickell, New Zealand’s first full time potter, bought 60 hectares of land so he could use the clay for his pottery. As time progressed and he needed more clay he had to go further and further up the hill to retrive it. To facilitate getting the clay out and back to his workshop he built a narrow-guage railway up into the hills which gradually became longer and more complex, despite Barry having no engineering training. It now features three tunnels, several bridges and viaducts, switchbacks to get up the hill and even a double decker bridge.
The “station” at the bottom of the hill consists of several cobbled together huts and sheds all containing pottery work and kilns. There is nothing slick about this operation at all, the railway was a means to an end that became a tourist attraction but it is all the more friendly and approachable because of it. They run two scheduled trains a day at 10am and 2pm, but run others in between if there are enough people. We arrived at 11am, and the 11 o’clock train was just returning and it was packed - so busy in fact that they had had to run two trains - there must have been 50+ people. Fortunately by now sufficient numbers of other people had turned up by now, so they could run an 11:30 train, but since there were just 8 of us they used a small single train carriage for us. This was much nicer than being with the massive group from earlier.
The train leaves the station and begins to wind its way up the hill. The track is very narrow, only about a foot wide and there’s very little room between the side of the train and the trees and banks. You are well advised to keep all hands, arms and heads inside the train! We crossed narrow bridges with huge drops beneath them, and went through tunnels with inches to spare - less than that in some cases judging by the gouges in the walls. Some of the walls lining the tracks have been built using old wine bottles, a fantastic recycling idea for those of you with plenty of wine bottles about! (You know who you are!) Eventually, via a series of switch backs we climbed our way to the top of the hill where we reached the final point to be built on the track and the part which was most obviously a nod to the tourist appeal of it, the Eyefull Tower.
The tower itself is made of wood, and has an open viewing platform on the top with a enclosed area as well, which is used for weddings and events. The views from here are stunning, easily justifying the tower’s name. From here you can look out towards Auckland across the Firth of Thames and on a clear day it’s possible to see the top of the Sky Tower. Unfortunately for us it was just a bit too cloudy, but we certainly weren’t disappointed with the view we did get.
After 15 mins of admiring the view it was back on the train for the return journey down the hill. A good hour well spent. From here we made our way into Cormorandal Town and the Umu cafe for a spot of lunch before taking the coastal road down to our stopover for the night - Thames. We didn’t really know what to expect from Thames, but it struck us very much as a small country town, primarily used as a launching point for the beautiful Coromandel region. There isn’t a great deal here at all, so after picking up some shopping we made our way back to the basic but clean hostel to chill out with our books for the rest of the day.