A tour of Kahurangi’s seven Diamond Lakes.

This topo map is layered with human history. Surveyors, gold prospectors, asbestos miners, forest rangers, deer hunters and hydro workers all came to love this neck of the woods – particularly the lovely Cobb River that trickles along the wide, glaciated valley, bounded by the Peel and Lockett Ranges. My forefathers built the area’s first mustering huts from 1875, when they drove a thousand ewes here each summer. By 1927 Frank Salisbury had erected half a dozen basic whares on his route to muster cattle in the remote Waingaro and Stanley watersheds. Further north, beyond the infamous Dragons Teeth, my great-grandpa herded sheep along the ranges to graze around Boulder Lake.

I’ve spent some 100 days and nights wandering these tussocky peneplains and remote ridgelines and I have developed an affinity for this corner of Kahurangi: the wily weka, the rowdy kea, the rustic huts and tent camps, and Asbestos Cottage where the Chaffeys lived for nearly four decades. It grows on you, and deserves more than a fleeting visit.

Arguably the best overnight trip on this topo map is a tour of the seven Diamond Lakes. An easy-walking 4WD road, a relic of the 1940s attempt to divert water for the Cobb hydro scheme, leads up to Lake Sylvester Hut, a modern 12-bunker set among the tussock with a grandstand view of the sun rising over the Arthur Range.

Adventurous souls will want to explore Lake Sylvester, its smaller twin and Iron Lake. From the hut, an old route sidles to the north of Iron Hill below Lake Lillie, to reach the idyllic shores of Diamond Lake. There are spacious campsites on its eastern shore. 

From the stream outlet, an unofficial trapper’s trail is well marked, sidling down-valley through open forest for 3–4hr to an old quarry site and a road back to the car park. On this alternative exit route, a worthy detour is to Lake Lockett, cradled in an alpine amphitheatre. The basecamp of Captain Lockett and James Mackay was here, under the beech canopy.