Pupu Hydro Walkway

Many people contend that this is the number one short walk in Golden Bay. There is, they say, a wider range of interests - scenery, history, plant life, rockhounding, engineering ingenuity - crammed into this half-day round trip than anywhere else locally. The road up the Pupu Valley forks about a kilometre in from the highway and a signpost directs you to the right. A sometimes narrow unsealed road brings you to a carpark at the head of the valley, then it's on with the daypack (morning tea, a picnic lunch, maybe, a parka if showers threaten) and away. A short distance from the start, walkers can choose which way to walk the loop. Those with plenty of time to cover the full journey should turn left at the powerhouse and take the steadily graded track all the way to the stream and over the bridge to arrive at the intake weir. Part of the stream is blocked off here and water is channelled down the water race. This is a beautiful area for your picnic and a great place to scramble around searching for copper ore, quartz and other interesting rocks.

The path then follows gently alongside the water race, which is in parts an earth and stone wall canal and in others, wooden or concrete aqueducts. (Parents, please supervise children; the walkway is sometimes narrow with steep drop-offs and always close to running water.) Before restoration, the aqueducts were all wooden and were engineering masterpieces for their time. The water race ends at surge tanks from which the water vanishes into the penstock pipe straight down to the powerhouse. The final section of the loop follows a disused part of the original canal for a short distance before steeply zig-zagging down to the valley floor. Cross the bridge and there is the powerhouse again.

For those visitors with less time but still wanting to see the main features of the power scheme, it is quicker, although a little more strenuous to go over the bridge and directly up the zig-zag by turning to the right at the start. Walk along part of the water race and then return the same way. Botanically, Pupu walkway is very interesting. Bird life is plentiful with lots of tuis, bellbirds and pigeons. There are also robins which are normally only found in the larger tracts of forest in the Golden Bay area. Fernbirds live in the pakihi vegetation higher up the hillside.

Stretching along the hillside for more than three kilometres the water race was built in 1901-1902. It was completed in six months by eight men and amazing engineering feats were accomplished. Large sections of curving race were stuck on steep hillsides and several beautiful aqueducts built. At the bottom end, the water dropped in pipes 123 metres to give the gold sluicers a working pressure of 1400 kiloPascals.

The manager of the goldmining company was Charles Campbell, after whom the creek and the race were named. The company mined until about 1910 and then abandoned the workings. The claim, in terms of dividends paid for capital invested, was the richest in Golden Bay. In 1929 the Golden Bay Electric Power Board built a small hydro electric station which took water from the race. Of the original race, about half the total length was reused and the rest left derelict.

In June 1981, a fault developed which engineers called a "flashover". The generating equipment was extensively damaged and the Board decided it was too expensive to repair. At the time of abandonment, it was thought to be the smallest station linked to the national grid generating one million units of electricity a year. The Pupu Hydro Society was formed to preserve and restore the old station, which it did triumphantly. Now generating power once again, the station has a viewing window and, when Society members are working on the equipment there, members of the public are welcome to call in, sign the visitors' book and look around.

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