Journey to a forgotten world
Andrew Bain travels by golf cart along a disused railway line to our own selfdeclared republic.
I’M ROLLING through the greenery of the central North Island in a golf cart, but this is not a golf course.
Though a carpet of lush grass climbs up the mist-shrouded slopes, I’m not here to swing a golf club, but to do the seemingly impossible: cross borders in this borderless country.
I’m heading into the so-called Forgotten World, a region where both civilisation and glory have long faded. Volcanoes press at either side and tourist trails swirl around it, but rarely venture inside. These golf carts, however, may just be the vehicles that return the Forgotten World to memory. Adapted to run on rails, Forgotten World Adventures’ carts travel a century-old railway line from the Central Plateau to the self-declared Republic of Whangamomona, at the heart of the Forgotten World. The carts are self-drive, and as we motor out in convoy from the railhead at Okahukura, we have 83 kilometres of rails ahead to Whangamomona.
Farmland and thick bush jostle to cover the land, and the railway line will bore through 21 tunnels, their damp, dark walls illuminated by the headlights of our golf carts.
The first tunnel, a short distance from Okahukura, is the longest – 1.5 kilometres – and took 10 years to carve.
It’s a tunnel of such length that we enter it in sunlight and emerge into thick mist. It’s a rapid weather change that’s clearly no random anomaly.
In this new valley, lichen coats fence posts and hangs like streamers from trees. It feels primeval, haunting, a place worthy of its Forgotten World title.
The name is a creation, originally given to the road into the region early last decade, but it’s also a sound fit.
When construction of the railway began in 1901, the line ran through a thriving corridor of farmland, forestry and coal mines. Supplies came in by rail, and goods and resources flowed back out.
At one point late in the railway’s construction, the town of Tangarakau had a population of 1200 people. Eighty years later, when our golf carts drive through, a sign declares it a ‘‘ghost town’’ with a population of just eight.
The carts trundle along at a leisurely 20km/h, curling through deep valleys and burrowing through creased hills. Sheep scatter as we pass, and an alpaca wanders over to greet the carts. Apples, walnuts and blueberries grow beside the railway line. Quiet country roads meander beside us, though at one point more than an hour passes before I see a car.
It’s an eight-hour ride in the carts to Whangamomona, with the journey flickering between day and the artificial night of the tunnels.
The tunnels provide a stark contrast to the road into the Forgotten World. Named as New Zealand’s first heritage trail in 1990, the Forgotten World Highway (aka State Highway 43) features only one tunnel, a keyhole so narrow it’s been christened the Hobbit Hole.
Instead, the road runs like a rollercoaster over four mountain ranges, with the volcanoes of Tongariro National Park shrinking away behind, and Mt Taranaki looming larger ahead.
The road and the rail come together at Whangamomona, the town with a name as convoluted as its recent history. It’s been 100 years since the railway reached the small town, but the last passenger train stopped here in 1983, with the freight service ending in 2009.
Three years later, Forgotten World Adventures’ golf carts took to the tracks. In the company’s first season, around 2300 people rode the rails, a figure that more than doubled in its second season.
At Whangamomona’s edge, our carts putter to a stop. Here, they’ll be spun on the railway turntable, ready to return the following day (we’ll be driven back in a bus along the Forgotten Highway). There have been no border procedures, but we’ve entered the Republic of Whangamomona.
In 1989 this was just a small and largely forgotten town but local government reforms that year saw council borders adjusted and Whangamomona shift from one council area to another. In protest, Whangamomona declared itself a republic.
Over its 25-year history, the republic has voted in a goat and a poodle as president, and continues to celebrate a Republic Day every second year (including this year). Held on the Saturday closest to November 1, the town’s population is said to swell from 40 residents to a street party of more than 4000 people.
The heartbeat of the town is the Whangamomona Hotel, where the breakaway republic was declared. Forgetting its own rebellion, the hotel calls itself the ‘‘most remote country hotel in New Zealand’’.
Inside, I stamp my passport at the ‘‘passport office’’ – a tiny section of the bar – grab a beer and read through the snippets of republic history that grace the pub’s walls.
I’ve reached the end of my travels by golf cart – this hotel might be considered the 19th hole – and as I look at the crowded front bar, I wonder if Whangamomona and the Forgotten World might be on their way out of oblivion.
It’s an eight-hour ride in the carts to Whangamomona, with the journey flickering between day and the artificial night of the tunnels.
The writer was a guest of Tourism New Zealand.