Linked to Info Post – Taieri Recreational Tramping Club

Cleghorn Street, Signal Hill – Information and Trips Library

Scope:

This page of club tramps and hikes in the Opoho, North East Valley, North Road area (Dunedin City) groups together tramps to Cleghorn Street, Signal Hill area.(map)

Background Information:

Road distances from Mosgiel carpark.

How To Get There:

Follow Old Main North Road to Cleghorn Street which has the best view of the harbour. Walkway sign.

Walk starts starts at the gate on right, up McGregors Hill. Beyond stile Pine plantation on 3rd stile at summit.

Gravel road 10 minutes to end. Locked gate. Last stile. Signal Hill road.

Links to tramps and hikes in this area:

04/12/2024. Cleghorn Street to Signal Hill Monument. Hikers. Leaders: Maria McNee and Peter Dodds.

13/11/2024. Chingford Park, Cleghorn Street, Opoho Circuit. Trampers. Leaders: Ross and Wyn Davies.

Signal Hill Tramps. 2023 – 1992 (19 trips with 5 reports, 4 with photos only, 10 with no reports or photos)
Signal Hill Centennial Memorial, Ravensbourne, Big Easy. 2023 – 1998 (24 trips with 7 reports, 2 with photos only and 15 with no report or photos). See reports dated 18/5/2022 and 24/11/2021 for reference to Cleghorn Street.

Deep Creek Water Scheme Pipeline

Background.
The Deep Creek Water Scheme was built during the depression of the 30s.
The Pipeline is 58 years old and 64 km long.
The intake is 675m above sea level.
The catchment is 5420 hectares; mainly tussock with some grassland.
The steel pipeline, lined with bitumen, was in a bad state of repair by the 80s and the leaks were constantly plugged with tapered wooden plugs until it resembled a porcupine.
The authorities were eventually persuaded to renew the worst section, this being done with the aid of a helicopter in 1992. It is a useful supplement to Dunedin’s water supply.
The Pipeline is made of bitumen-lined steel excepting the first 1.4 km which was replaced in 1992 with concrete pipes.
Water quality is variable and often discoloured.
Over the 58 years the yield has dropped from 11,000 cubic metres to 6,800 cubic metres a day.
The water goes to Booth Road Treatment Station and Sullivans Dam.
Replacing the rest of the pipeline is estimated at $20,000,000 and would increase the flow to 17,000 cubic metres a day.
– From a hand-written record in the President’s file and supplemented with other data.

Sandymount and Sandfly Bay Information

The Sandfly Bay-Sandymount area is remarkable for its native fauna and flora and its dramatic coastal scenery. Among the many outstanding natural features are the Sandfly Bay yellow-eyed penguin colony and the 220m-high cliffs of Lover’s Leap, a collapsed sea chasm at Sandymount. The complex, covering about 500 ha is protected for its wildlife and recreational values. The Sandfly Bay wildlife refuge, created in 1908 is the oldest on Otago Peninsula. Its soaring dunes, dark cliffs, heavy surf and rocky islets give it a character rather different from Sandymount’s chasms, low forest and grasslands. Sandymount summit (320m) is the third highest point on the peninsula.

Sandfly Bay, named not for the insect but for the sand blown up by the wind in this area, has some of New Zealand’s tallest sand dunes which rise for some 100 metres above the beach. With the clearance of coastal forest, windblown sand has migrated inland to create impressive dunes reaching to the summit of Sandymount.

Otago Peninsula was created by a volcano that was active 10-13MYA. Over time, the volcanic peaks were worn down by erosion and Otago Harbour formed along a heavily eroded line of weakness or faulting in the earth’s crust. The exposed rocks in this area are all volcanic, with basalt columns prominently exposed at Lover’s Leap. Both Lover’s Leap and The Chasm were formed when soft lower layers of volcanic rock were eroded by the sea.

Three midden sites, representing early Maori encampments or kaika nohoaka, have been recorded around Sandymount (pikiwhara). There was a Maori settlement here in 1844.

Gleaned from DoC hard copy sheets

Saddle Hill Hotel

(9 miles from Dunedin)

Ewan McColl……..Proprietor

First class wines and spirits.

(N.B. Good stabling and paddock accommodation)

This was the advertisement in the Otago Witness in 1864.

Little is known about the early history of this hotel but it appears that Ewan M’Coll was killed in an accident when he was a young man. The next owner was James Purvis and an early photograph shows the building marked ‘James Purvis Hotel’, and on the Dunedin side there is an extension marked ‘Oats and Chaff’. There was no balcony or iron work but three sash windows upstairs and two windows and a centre door at ground level. Behind the hotel the large hump of Saddle Hill can be seen, with bush right down to the present Saddle Hill road.

By 1851 the route round Saddle Hill had been established as the main road to the south and by 1859 it was metalled as far as Taieri Ferry. On 12 January 1961 James McIntosh, Otago’s pioneer coachman set out from Dunedin to drive the mail coach for the first time as far as the Clutha Ferry.

Saddle Hill and Lookout Point were two of the trouble spots on the south road. Passengers had to walk up Saddle Hill and to steady the coach for the downward journey, a skid, fastened to a chain, was placed under the back wheel.

A passenger commenting on early coaching days writes ‘How Carmichael managed to get his four horse team safely round the exposed places on Lookout Point and Saddle Hill I cannot tell. I turned my head or shut my eyes while he, standing up with the whip and voice, urged them past danger.’

In the early days there was a small settlement further down the hill called The Junction where the road branches off across the Plain. Here in 1869 Sydney Turnbull opened a store and bakery and in his large brick ovens he continued to make bread for several years to supply his second store at the corner of Bush and Gordon Roads. There was a blacksmith, wheelwright and saddler and also Steadman’s Hotel which was a stopping place for coaches. Near here was the toll-house which for some years was in the charge of ‘Cheekie” McKenzie, who had an iron hook over an injured hand.

Mr R W Stevenson whose great grandfather Robert Stevenson came out in the Philip Laing has lived in the former Saddle Hill Hotel with his family since 1957. He has made it more comfortable inside and where he raised the back about three feet to brighten the kitchen he has matched the timber carefully with the skill of a craftsman. He is proud of his old hotel but although he has had all the materials for some time to repaint it he has been unable to do so. – “More Taieri Buildings” 1972 by Daphne Lemon.