Walkway points to future
One of the world’s longest walking trails opens next year – 3000km along the length of New Zealand.
TrustLine newsletter, June 2009
Te Araroa Walkway, a project that began years before the idea of a national cycleway was even dreamed of, has negotiated walking access rights across land from North Cape to the Bluff. Meanwhile, volunteers have dug in to the hard physical labour of creating a legacy for the nation.
CEO Geoff Chapple says the trust was formed in 1994 after he wrote a newspaper article advocating a New Zealand-long trail. Four years later, after a potential trail had been mapped out, Geoff took five months to walk the route. Along the way he talked to landowners about the proposal, raised funds and raised public awareness about its potential.
In 2006, a substantial grant from ASB Community Trust helped put the Northland and Auckland leg of the project on a firm financial footing.
“We always wanted to use Auckland and Northland as examples for the rest of the country,” Geoff says, “and that support made the north the project’s flagship region.”
Secure funding over four years, to be spent in ASB Community Trust’s region, allowed Geoff and his team to concentrate on negotiations with landowners, including iwi, Department of Conservation and farmers, and get the job of track building under way.
After years of negotiation and work, 95% of the nationwide track can now be walked by any keen hiker. Not all of that 95% is signposted or clearly tracked as yet, but by next year Te Araroa will be sufficiently marked out, on the ground and on Te Araroa Trust’s website that the trust plans a national walking event to celebrate its completion.
Geoff admits not everyone will be able to walk the full route – but there is a growing section of society who will.
“These are the fit retirees.” he says, “These are the people who have recently retired. They have the time and they have the money. If this trail follows the pattern of long trails overseas, others with less time will be ‘section walkers’ who do it bit by bit, over time.
"Others will chose to walk only part of the route –there are good day- and two-day tracks scattered along its length - and there is also potential to use parts of it in conjunction with any national cycleway sections”.