Travels and Birds: East Cape Drive - Coromandel and the Driving Creek Railroad

A little bit nervous at this zig-zag

One of several trains they use

We left Auckland heading east on a road trip recommended by AAA Washington. Thanks to friend Cherie for pointing this one out to us as we were planning. The route follows the coastline for a couple of hundred miles ending in the Hawke Valley wine country around Napier. We are taking four days to get to Napier and will then spend two nights there so we can taste some of those fine wines.

View from the top

Again we had to fool Google to get on the correct roads, but we are used to that now so we managed to get to the coast and follow it pretty easily. We stopped several times along the way to check out the birds and views and had a nice lunch at a cafe/plant store near the town of Thames. Evidently Captain Cook thought the little river here resembled the Thames in England. Probably wishful thinking on his part as he was a long ways from home by the time he got here.

Old Kilns - not the one he built at age seven

We spent the night in Coromandel where we took an amazing narrow guage train ride on the Driving Creek Railway. The train was hand-built by potter Barry Bricknell beginning in 1973. Barry had arrived here in 1961 to become New Zealand’s first full-time handcraft potter. He was a man of singular ideas and driven to complete his projects. His pottery career actually began at age seven when he built a kiln under his house. After almost burning the house down, his mother made him move it outside to the garden. At first he just used it to make bricks, but gradually branched out into pottery.

After an unusually conventional time at university, he moved to Coromandel where he taught in the public school. His unconventional methods cost him this job after two terms, but he had fallen in love with the area and bought an old house on one acre where he set up his kiln and began to make bricks so he could eke out a living. His also made pottery and through self-promotion became well-known around the world. When the 60-hectare mountainside became available he was able to sell his house for $6500 of its $7000 asking price. He was after both the land and the beautiful yellow clay that was on it.

After using up the nearby clay, he decided to build some tracks using those in nearby abandoned coal mines. At first he manually pushed the carts up the hillside and across his hand-built trestle. As he added length to the tracks he built an engine and carts to haul the clay. Everything he did was home-built including the surveying instruments. While not a trained engineer, he nevertheless designed and built a working railway.

We wondered if there might be a million bottles

He had begun inviting potters from all over the world to work with him which also increased his income a bit. His guests also helped him enjoy the railroad and his land. At the end of the day, they would take the train up to the end of the line where they would party into the night. Rather than haul the bottles back down, he used them to build retaining walls. He enjoyed the railroad so much that he just kept adding to it over the years.

One of the trestles

By 1990 enough tourists and townsfolk had come by asking for a ride on the railroad, he decided he might as well open it to the public. He first had to get approval from the New Zealand railroad inspectors. I’m not sure what he expected to happen, but the inspectors marveled at the quality and workmanship and granted him a license. That first year he escorted 1500 paying guests a single kilometer up the hillside. Today that number has increased to 50,000 and they welcomed their 1 millionth passenger in 2010.

Double-decker tracks

The three-kilometer line is an amazing piece of workmanship. It includes three tunnels, several bridges, and five reversing points. One of the bridges is a double-decker as the train loops around to cross the same canyon twice. The five reversing points are somewhat like riding a roller coast as they extend out into the air. It’s a bit disconcerting to watch the train head out into nothingness before stopping to reverse and continue up the hill.

Eyefull Tower

Barry continued to extend the line and work on his pottery almost every day adding another two kilometers, every meter built with hand tools. The last extension was added in 2002 and he also added the “Eyefull Tower” at the end of the line. The Eyefull Tower is a beautiful three-story structure overlooking the valley. The top floor includes a BBQ and large gathering room. Special Glow-worm/BBQ tours operate for two months after Christmas. (Remember that this is summer down under.) They provide all the BBQ tools. Guests bring their own food and eating utensils. Perfect for the locals on a warm summer evening.

Barry was also an ardent conservationist who wanted to restore the land to its original state. The Coromandel Peninsula had been home to massive Kauri forests. These hardwoods were so prized by shipbuilders that the forest was gone and replaced by farmland in a mere 20 years. Over the years of his stewardship, Barry planted over 20,000 native plants including several thousand Kauri. While they grow to be as large as the California Redwoods, they are also very slow growing and long-lived. One tree is estimated to be over 3000 years old. Barry planted some of the Kauri close to the railroad to give visitors a good look at these beautiful trees. They will need to be cut before reaching maturity, but that will be a couple hundred years into the future. Meantime we get great close-ups of these beautiful trees.

Barry unexpectedly died last year of an aggressive cancer. He is buried at this favorite spot along the tracks so he can still enjoy the trains going by every day. He had dreamed of extending the line even further up to the top of the hill to where he would build Eyefull Tower II with views of both coastlines. Unfortunately, that will not happen now, but Barry’s legacy does live on in his railroad and the conservation work and the pottery that continues to be made and sold in the railway’s little store. Today’s Coromandel kids will continue to have the fun of riding the rails to Eyefull Tower for a summer BBQ for many years to come. As will us tourists.