Farmers around the country have found a new use for wild and rugged sections of their land and a willing supply of trampers prepared to pay for the priviledge of traipsing along rutted and slippery tracks, amidst sheep and cattle. David Hall experiences one such walk - the fully-catered Whareama Coastal Walk in the Wairarapa
We expected the hills, the weather and the views – as much inland as seaward – on the Whareama Coastal Walk but were surprised by the isolation. This patch of land is just a couple of hours from the capital, yet it might as well have been in another country. The area covered by the walk, stretching from close to Riversdale in the south to Castlepoint in the north, is, to a townie, of questionable farming value lying mostly on its side, jutting, often sharply, upwards rather than lying flat. Yet it has been successfully farmed for more than 160 years – although Maori occupation is said to pre-date European by many hundreds more – and was amongst the first sections of land in the North Island to be settled for farming. Not surprising, it has history with 100-year-old homesteads, the Ica Station woolshed claiming to be the oldest working woolshed in the country, stories of tough, uncompromising men and women and always the land, wrestled from native bush and forest remaining today distant, wild, buffeted, beautiful. Farmhouses – homesteads – are few and far between, perhaps less surprising when the vast 2940ha Castlepoint Station, with its 12km of beachfront, and currently more than 30,000 sheep – ewes with lambs – is included. Castlepoint, along with Golden Downs, Waiteko, Waierua, Cross Keys and Ica stations adjoin each other and each provides a section of Whareama Coastal Walk. A combination of farms is not unusual in the country’s private walks, but Whareama offers one, two or three-day options and that does make it different. “Our most popular walk is now the two-days. It can be done over a weekend, as people arrive on a Friday evening (after work) and are finished by mid-afternoon on the Sunday,” says Carmen Tredwell, who, with husband Dick started the Whareama Walk a couple of years ago. The Tredwells are ex-UK soldiers who moved to New Zealand in July 2004 to buy a 34ha sheep and cattle property just up the road from Golden Downs Cottage, where walkers now stay on their first night. They own and rent the cottage out to holidaymakers, but thought there could be a better use for it. They knew that other large stations in the Wairarapa – Tora, further south, being the shining example – had opened their land to walkers and had swapped previously inaccessible farm tracks from mud to money. These farmers turned tourist entrepreneurs had gone one step further, of course, and added two enticing words: ‘fully catered’. [caption id="attachment_5016" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
