New Zealand Walk: A taste of the Old Coach Road
Walking the Old Coach Road in Belmont Regional Park is a walk back into our early history.
Maori used two major routes between Porirua Harbour and Wellington Harbour. One ran from the Pauatahanui arm of Porirua Harbour south over the hills through what is now Belmont Regional Park, exiting through today’s Normandale into the Hutt Valley – this very last section is a variation from the original Maori track.
It was part of this middle section of the Old Coach
Road that we decided to walk one day in early summer. We parked our cars at Hill Road, Belmont. Then we did a car shuttle to the end of Normandale Road where it joins the Old Coach Road. (The more energetic could start at Stratton Road but that includes a steep climb which we oldies decided to avoid).
By 1872, the Belmont-Pauatahanui Road had been adapted from the old Maori track. Around 1875, the road was further widened to take wheeled traffic. Coaches started driving through until the mid-1880s when they abandoned it in preference to the Haywards Hill Road.
In 1900, most of this land was still privately owned. Several sawmills had been built and the bush felled. Then much of the land was burnt off. It was good to see that native bush is gradually being re-grown
and protected.
Soon we passed the strangest sight in these rolling hills – the World War II ammunition magazines.
It was in 1942, that the decision was taken to build 60 ammunition magazines at Belmont. Ammunition was continually arriving at Wellington docks, so the structures were urgently needed. Under the Defence Emergency Regulations, 32 acres of land were taken for this purpose. The magazines were built by 1944 but by then the end of the war was in sight.
In 1967, this Department of Defence land was taken over by the Department of Lands and Survey and added to the Waitangirua Farm settlement.
In 1971, this land was released and became Crown land. It was in 1973 that the idea for Belmont Regional Park began to take shape. It was finally decided that the farming activity would continue but the park would be developed for recreation. In the early 1980s further land was acquired and in 1989 the park was officially opened. It is now the largest of the Wellington regional parks.
The ammunition magazines are now used as animal shelters but we didn’t go into any of them, having heard tales of occasional dead carcasses within them.
Soon we negotiate two stiles and cross a section of Waitangirua Farm, the 895-hectare farming block now owned by Wellington Regional Council. The majority of the land is pasture with some steeper slopes and gullies re-vegetating in gorse and native bush.
Against one hilly bank, we sat back and enjoyed our packed lunches before continuing on. The track surface was easy to walk on, mostly gravel and hard-packed clay with very occasional grassy sections.
Much of the Old Coach Road is shared by walkers, runners, horseriders, cyclists and mountain bikers, so it’s truly a shared track – though we only encountered a few other walkers on our trip.
We walked through pleasant sheep-dotted landscapes — ideal for walkers, as coaches didn’t like steep hills either - much of it is flat or undulating. Despite this, we were glad when we finally approached the cars parked on Hill Road.
It was a totally rewarding and interesting walk with early New Zealand history thrown in as well.