One hour’s drive west of the city the open valley of the Strath Taieri awaits you– classic inland Otago country with one or two unexpected features amongst the thistley plains, one-street towns and massive skies.
The area’s first human use was by the Waitaha Iwi as a seasonal food gathering spot, as well as being traversed en route to the West Coast for treasured pounamu (greenstone). It must have been a tough overlander – with its extreme summers and winters, the Strath Taieri valley was certainly a match for the first European pasturalists who attemped to settle here in the mid-1800s and couldn’t adapt. The Taieri river supplied fish and the swampy valley moas, but the natural vegetation, mainly tussocks, could not provide a consistent food supply.
The goldminers who followed didn’t do a lot better – the valley only gathered a permanent community following the construction of the Central Otago Railway line in 1879, which still brings in visitors as it crosses from Dunedin to Clyde. Farmers eventually drained the valley, and what isn’t protected as wilderness reserve is now used mainly for high country sheep farming.
A tiny town in the centre is Middlemarch, where we arrived to find the single wide street deserted aside from two men on horse and tractor conversing in the middle of the road. Things hot up here in April however, with a yearly hoedown known as the Middlemarch Singles Dance taking over the town. The chance for romance draws over 700 people from kiwi high country farmers to women from as far as New York and Switzerland seeking their own Southern Man.
The landscape surrounding Middlemarch is dry and tussocky, scattered with spiny grasses and pancake stacks of red rock. It’s bare and harsh but spectacular at the same time – while I wouldn’t have survived this stretch of the coast to coast crossing all those years ago, it’s a great place to go walking with DoC maintained tracks.
Amongst these plains about ten minutes before Middlemarch is an unusual find, New Zealand’s only inland salt lake whose colour depends on the season. Sutton Salt Lake can be accessed through the walkway from Kidd’s Road (turn off from S.H. 87 near the Sutton railway crossing).
You can also walk, horse ride or cycle all or parts of the old Otago Central rail corridor turned into a public recreational track, which runs from Middlemarch to Clyde.
Getting there:
If driving, take State Highway 87 past Mosgiel to Middlemarch, Sutton Salt lake turnoff is on the way. You can also get to Middlemarch on the Taieri Gorge Railway which departs daily (apart from Christmas day).
