Sunday 5th November
by Graeme Nicholls.

The meeting place was the village green in Wakefield at the reasonably early time of 8:45 for a 9:00 departure.  Twelve trucks assembled, and Phil and Sam Madill were there to greet everybody, and relieve them of $5 per vehicle for the trip fees.  Phil then gave us the trip leaders speech, outlining the do`s and do nots, and also what we could expect to be doing for the day. He also had gone to the trouble of preparing trip notes for us to follow on the day.  These notes make it real easy for me to do this trip report too, so thanks Phil!

We left Wakefield bang on the allocated time and headed south, turned into Quail Valley, and then into the Kainui forest, following the old logging tracks up to the top of the ridge line.  On the way Phil pointed out the amount of broom that was growing beside the track, and explained that it was not a very welcome plant because of the amount of nutrients that it took out of the soil, as opposed to gorse, which is quite beneficial because it is a nitrogen fixing plant.  We then proceeded down the other side of the ridge, and came out in the Wai-iti valley, where we crossed a railway bridge which had been built when the railway was going to come to Nelson.  Up and over the next hill, to emerge in the Eighty Eight Valley opposite the new dam that is still being filled with water, hopefully to alleviate the water shortages that occur each dry summer.  From there, it was a short drive up Stock Road to the turn off to Inwards Lookout.

This road is a public access road, so providing there is no logging going on, or there is a serious fire risk, the public may travel this road at any time.  We climbed up this road for about seven or eight kilometers, taking in a short steep detour on the way up.  At the top, we were able to go inside the lookout and admire the fantastic views up, down, and across the valleys.  From Inwards lookout, we were able to just make out the Sherry Lookout, which was our destination for later in the day.  Inwards lookout is the highest lookout in NZ at 3500 ft.  As the wind was blowing, we carried on back down the hill, and turned off to travel through some recently felled forest, and then dropped down to Gordens Creek and then across the Motueka River where we stopped for morning tea.

Away again, this time up Wellington Valley, but as we negotiated a tricky little piece of track out of the creek, a branch that was sticking out of the side of the track and extremely hard to see managed to inflict some damage to several of the trucks as they went past.  This mainly consisted of quite a nasty scratch down the side of the truck, and a couple of dents for the really unlucky ones.  Not far up this valley, there is a stand of Californian Redwood trees that were planted in 1928, and have been left as a memorial to the pioneer foresters of the region.  As we were all standing there admiring these, there was a hiss and a roar, and Harald was seen speeding off back down the track in the direction that we had just come from.  After querying his passengers, it transpired that part of his rear wheel flare had been removed by the stick that had done the damage to the other trucks, so he was off to retrieve it. 

Once Harald was back in the group, we set off up Wellington Gully to Blows Road, and eventually ended up on Ridge Road, where magnificent views both north and south were to be had.  We then headed down Winchester Road to Brewerton Creek, and joined up to a right of way through private farmland, which took us out to the bridge at the Korere turnoff to Lake Roto-iti.  We then headed up the Clark Valley to the rest area, where we stopped for lunch. I think that the sandflies thought that we had stopped to give them lunch though!

After our lunch break, we  followed more forest roads from the Clark Valley to Tui on the Tadmore – Glenhope Road, where we entered the TDC owned Sherry Forest.  It was then on to Christian Creek Road to the Dart River Road.  Christian Creek Road was a track that had been closed for many years, but fortunately for our group, a bulldozer had been through recently and opened it up again.  We then proceeded up the winding and at times fairly steep  hill to the Sherry Lookout where we were, once again, able to go inside and have a look  at the views, this time from the opposite side of the valley from where we had started out from in the morning.  We had afternoon tea there, and then descended down the hill to the Dart River, through private farmland to the locked gate, and this was the end of our trip.  We then made our way home via Tapawera.

Thanks to the Madill family for a great trip, and to Phil for giving out so much information about the forestry in the area.