Strath Taieri

The Strath Taieri (sometimes spelt Strath-Taieri) is a large glacial valley and river plateau in New Zealand's South Island.

[citation needed] Activity during the Classic period (1500–1642) is attested by a cave discovered in 1949 with its entrance blocked, containing the bodies of a Māori woman and child.

This corresponds with other sites in the area containing rock shelters with mostly domestic articles, wooden bowls, material for garments and gear for hunting weka or fishing.

A group of buildings, including a homestead, office, cottage, cook house, butcher's shop and large shearing shed were all built from the local stone.

From 1861, the Otago gold rushes saw the development of a stagecoach route, the Dunstan Trail leaving the coastal Taieri Plain near Outram advancing north and west across the plateau south of Strath Taieri proper, through Clark's Junction and on over the Rock and Pillar Range to the Maniototo.

In 1864, gold-bearing ground was reported at Hyde at the head of Strath Taieri and now the northern limit of Dunedin.

From whatever source it got its name, the private township of Middlemarch on Humphrey's property of Garthmyl had been surveyed on land adjoining the projected railway and several sections were already sold by 6 November 1880.

[9] By 1891, there was a hotel, eight houses, two blacksmith shops, two stores, a school and twenty tents occupied by workers building the railway.

Construction of the Otago Central Railway from the South Island's main trunk line, which lay along the coast, began in 1879.

Gold mining in nearby areas such as Macraes Flat and Nenthorn buoyed up the development of the Strath Taieri and its townships, but that stalled in the twentieth century.

As the 20th century advanced, this large and apparently empty country maintained the character and atmosphere of a pioneering district.

The plateau country to the south, with its fantastic rock formations, tors, heightens the impression of antiquity and otherworldliness which inspired artistic responses.

[14] In 1945, his younger and also celebrated Otago contemporary, the poet James K. Baxter, wrote 'Upon the upland road/Ride easy, stranger:/Surrender to the sky/Your heart of anger.'

The lines certainly capture the effect on some people of the experience of crossing the plateau, approaching the Strath Taieri by road from the south.

[15] That landscape became greener in the 1960s and 1970s as native tussock was converted to European pasture, a process protested in the works of the artist Marilynn Webb.

In 1993, the course of the track further inland was opened as the Otago Central Rail Trail for hikers and cyclists, by the Department of Conservation.

While the closure of the through railway saw the end of that means of moving heavy goods between the coast and the interior, the completion of the tar sealing of State Highway 87, in 1996, was the effective provision of another.

The rural, pioneering atmosphere of the district was perhaps responsible for the unexpected success of its bachelor dances, recently promoted ostensibly to find partners for its single men.

That, and the emergence of New Zealand's iconic Southern Man may have led to the event's attracting visitors from around the country and overseas.