Cycling in New Zealand's Otago is a journey into the lives of those who dot its landscape, and history
Central Otago’s ‘Sky Country’ unfurls like the optimism of a spotless mind. Under me, the cycle track is as grating as a tween’s sass. There is a realisation about the importance of padded cycling shorts. Beside me, Neville Grubb, a grandfather, is pedalling as he multi-chats, with me and with joggers and other cyclists. With such a small population—around 4 million—the Kiwis are a verbose lot.
Otago spreads along the southern parts of the Southern Island of New Zealand. Geographically, its got everything: glacier that melts into lakes, flat lands that become ideal grazing ground for sheep and cattle, and the great open skies of that give it the nickname Sky Country. The gold rush of the 1860s gave birth to small towns in the region, but now stag-, cattle- and sheep-farming is what fills the lives of people here. More recently, it has evolved into a wine-growing region, well known for its Pinot Noir and Riesling.
The Otago Central Rail Trail, which gently snakes through hills, was built between 1891 and 1907 and connects the towns that prospered in the gold rush. Within a decade the rush died, and the activity of such towns as Chatto Creek and Waipiata dimmed. When the trains stopped, it was proposed that the track land be turned over for agriculture. A parallel proposition was to yank off the sleepers and turn the route into a recreational track.
Eventually, the part of the railway that meanders through Taieri Gorge up to Middlemarch was left as it was. You could take a trip from Dunedin to Middlemarch on the Taieri Gorge Railway, which will take you through some spectacular sceneries along the Taieri River, and through numerous tunnels and viaducts.
Or, you could opt to walk, cycle or horse-ride (no motorised vehicles are allowed) the 150-km track land from Middlemarch to Clyde, which allows travellers an eyeful of Otago’s blue skies.
Day One
Instead of riding the whole 150 km, I’ve taken the cheat’s way out with a truncated two-day backward version from Wedderburn to Alexandra: 43 km on Day 1 to Ophir, and 39 km on Day 2 to Clyde. Only the first half-an-hour from Wedderburn is a climb; gentle enough to make you wonder if it exists. After that, you roll with the hills for miles and miles of meadows, with sheep and venison farms on either side.
Our coffee stop is at the town of Oturehua (Maori for The Summer Star Stands Still) in the Ida Valley at the Gilchrists’s Convenience Store. And that is where we bump into Brian Turner: Poet, celebrity, friend of artist Grahame Sydney (whose work is a mirror of Central Otago’s austere landscape), brother of cricketer Glenn Turner, brother-in-law to Dame Sukhinder ‘Sukhi’ Kaur (mayor of nearby Dunedin from 1995 to 2004), and an all-round village eccentric.
Turns out that Kiwi children join school on their individual fifth birthdays, as opposed to a fixed day of the year. This means there is a slow trickle of students throughout the year and the teacher is able to give them specialised attention and iron out learning disabilities. On the flip side, not everyone in class is at the same learning level.
(This story appears in the 27 June, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)