Weekend in Hanmer
FOR 130 YEARS THE ALPINE SPA TOWN OF HANMER HAS SOOTHED JOINTS AND EASED MINDS IN ITS THERMAL WATERS. BUT TODAY’S VISITORS ARE JUST AS LIKELY TO REJUVENATE WHILE POWERING THROUGH THE FOREST SURROUNDING IT
C L IVE L IND A FUNNY THING happens on the drive to Hanmer Springs. Some people feel the pace of life falls away once they have turned off State Highway One onto the quieter SH7 at Waipara, 45 minutes north of Christchurch.
Others remain wired for a further 50 minutes, until they’re on SH7A, driving on the one-lane Waiau River bridge over a deep gorge. Ahead, nestling under a rim of mountains, they see the town itself.
As far back as the 1880s, the government invested in tourism through the thermal pools and, about the same time, began a massive planting of exotic forests. Who would have guessed that today the forests would be as much of a tourism attraction as the famed thermal pools? Those forests now provide 75 kilometres of walking and mountain-biking tracks, ranging from easy to quite extreme, most of them multi-use.
At the heart and hub of this-now massive playground, including the Waiau and Clarence River Valleys, Molesworth Station and St James Conservation area (drawing massive crowds each year), is the small town of Hanmer (population: about 1000). And in the town’s centre, and what began it all, the Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa – now a modern, multi-million dollar complex of 15 different thermal pools. The pools attract more than 500,000 people a year. The publicly owned company’s vision is simple: to be the best thermal pools in Australasia.
Sitting in the recently renovated café, which dates back to 1904, the complex’s marketing manager Shane Adcock can point to