Burkes Pass

It is named after Michael John Burke (1812 Co. Galway-1869 Ballarat), a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, who drove a team of bullocks through the passageway which leads up into the Mackenzie Country in 1855.

Settlers and bullock teams soon found The Long Cutting was the easier of the two passageways to negotiate, becoming the main thoroughfare for travellers in to the Mackenzie, a vast land known by Maori for its plentiful supply of wekas on the plains and eels in the streams and lakes.

A 640-acre (2.6 km2) site, on the west side of the top of The Long Cutting, was set aside in 1859 to establish a central depot for coal, wood, and food supplies.

It was a bleak, exposed site, between Sterickers Mound, near Sawdon Creek, and the foot of the spur from Mount Burgess.

[2] Burkes Pass is home to the critically endangered Canterbury knobbled weevil which lives on speargrass.