Sams Creek, previously known as Rogers Creek or incorrectly as Roger Creek, is a stream in Golden Bay / Mohua in the Tasman District of New Zealand. Since the 1980s, the creek has had prominence due to gold mining proposals, and the area around Sams Creek was subsequently not included in Kahurangi National Park when it was formed in 1996.
Sams Creek is located on the south side of the Lockett Range. [1] [2] The lower reaches of the waterway is located on land that belongs to North-west Nelson Forest Park, with the land classed as conservation park under the Conservation Act 1987. The upper reaches are located in Sams Creek conservation area, with the land classed as "specially protected area".
Where Sams Creek originates, the Kill Devil Track follows the ridgeline of the Lockett Range. The track is located just outside of the boundary of Kahurangi National Park. [3] A major tributary is Sams Creek Middle Branch. [4] Sams Creek crosses the Cobb Road under a 14-metre (46 ft) [5] long bridge just before flowing into the Tākaka River. [1]
The original name of the creek was Rogers Creek, after the Rogers family who owned land and farmed at Upper Tākaka. The original settler was John Rogers (1829–1898), who was born in Shropshire and known as "Shropshire Jack". Rogers bought 495 acres (200 ha) of land, and the southwestern boundary of his land was formed by a creek that became known as Rogers Creek. [6] [7] His grandson, Fred Rogers, cut the track in 1936 on the true-left of the Tākaka River gorge from Upper Tākaka towards the Cobb River that became the Cobb Road. [8] : 95
Early maps of Golden Bay show the creek named as "Rogers Creek" and sometimes (incorrectly) as "Roger Creek". A late instance of this name is on the Tākaka cadastral map from 1953, prepared by the Department of Lands and Survey, with its tributaries labelled South, Middle, and North Branch. [9]
An early use of "Sam's Creek"—at the time still with an apostrophe—was in 1887, when three people applied for an occupation license. [10] Thus, the names "Rogers Creek" and "Sams Creek" were in parallel use for many decades. When Fred Rogers had cut the Cobb Road, the bridge tender referred to Sam's Creek in February 1937. [5]
Beginning in 1920, forest parks were gazetted north of the Buller River. In the end, there were thirteen separate forest parks. The northernmost eight of those parks were gazetted as the North-west Nelson Forest Park in 1970. [11] [12] [13] From the 1970s, mining companies explored within the forest park and that led to public requests to give the area the higher protection of a national park. [11] The area around Sams Creek was one such area excluded from Kahurangi National Park when it was formed in 1996. Macraes Mining had their 4,000 ha (9,900 acres) gold prospecting claim acknowledged and national park status was not applied. Eugenie Sage, who at the time worked for Forest & Bird, commented that "it's not appropriate to have this kind of development on the park's front door". [14]
Kahurangi National Park is a national park in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the second largest of the thirteen national parks of New Zealand. It was gazetted in 1996 and covers 5,193 km2 (2,005 sq mi), ranging from the Buller River near Murchison in the south, to the base of Farewell Spit in Golden Bay in the north. The park has no single dominant landform, but includes an unusually wide variety of landscapes, including mountain ranges, rivers, gorges, raised peneplains and karst features such as caves and arches. Many of the landforms within the park are considered to be nationally or internationally significant.
The Heaphy Track is a popular tramping and mountain biking track in the north west of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located within the Kahurangi National Park and classified as one of New Zealand's ten Great Walks by the Department of Conservation. Named after Charles Heaphy, the track is 78.4 kilometres (48.7 mi) long and is usually walked in four or five days. The track is open for shared use with mountain bikers in the winter season from 1 May to 30 September each year. The southern end of the track is at Kōhaihai, north of Karamea on the northern West Coast, and the northern end is in the upper valley of the Aorere River, Golden Bay.
Tākaka is a small town situated at the southeastern end of Golden Bay, at the northern end of New Zealand's South Island, located on the lower reaches of the Tākaka River. State Highway 60 runs through Takaka and follows the river valley before climbing over Tākaka Hill, to Motueka linking Golden Bay with the more populated coast of Tasman Bay to the southeast. The town is served by Tākaka Aerodrome.
The Tākaka River lies in the northwest of New Zealand's South Island. It runs north for 70 kilometres, entering Golden Bay near the town of Tākaka.
Golden Bay Air Limited is a small airline based at Tākaka Aerodrome in Tākaka, New Zealand. The airline currently operates three light aircraft from Tākaka to Wellington and Karamea, and also from Nelson to Tākaka and Karamea with connecting road shuttle services to the Abel Tasman National Park, the Heaphy Track in the Kahurangi National Park and to and from Tākaka township. Other services provided by the airline include charter flights around New Zealand flown on demand and preset scenic routes around the national parks as well as Farewell Spit.
Mount Burnett is a hill in Kahurangi National Park, in Golden Bay / Mohua, New Zealand.
North-west Nelson Forest Park, also spelled Northwest Nelson Forest Park and North West Nelson Forest Park, is a forest park that was initially very large and managed by the New Zealand Forest Service until the Department of Conservation was formed in 1987. It existed in its initial form from 1970 until 1996, when most of it became Kahurangi National Park. Since then, the remainder of the forest park has been made up of many disparate and unconnected areas around the perimeter of the national park.
The Cobb Power Station is a hydroelectric facility on the Cobb River, in the Tasman District of New Zealand. The power station is located in Upper Tākaka, 112 km (70 mi) northwest of Nelson. Annual generation is approximately 190 gigawatt-hours (680 TJ). The initial stages of the construction of the station began as a privately-funded scheme in 1935, but the investor failed to raise the necessary capital. The national government took over building the station and the first power was produced in 1944, operating as a run-of-river station. A storage dam was completed in 1954. The resulting hydro lake is the highest in the country and at 596 m (1,955 ft), the station has New Zealand's highest hydraulic head of any power station.
The Waingaro River is a river of the Tasman Region of New Zealand's South Island.
Golden Bay / Mohua is a large shallow bay in New Zealand's Tasman District, near the northern tip of the South Island. An arm of the Tasman Sea, the bay lies northwest of Tasman Bay / Te Tai-o-Aorere and Cook Strait. It is protected in the north by Farewell Spit, a 26 km long arm of fine golden sand that is the country's longest sandspit. The Aorere and Tākaka rivers are the major waterways to flow into the bay from the south and the west.
Mount Arthur is in the Wharepapa / Arthur Range in the north western area of the South Island of New Zealand. Mount Arthur, named after Captain Arthur Wakefield, lies within Kahurangi National Park and has a peak elevation of 1,795 metres (5,889 ft).
The Cobb Reservoir is a hydro storage lake fed by the Cobb River in the Tasman District of the South Island of New Zealand. The reservoir feeds the Cobb Power Station and is 819 metres (2,687 ft) above sea level but drops significantly with low rainfall. Cobb Reservoir is the highest hydro storage lake in New Zealand, and is entirely surrounded by Kahurangi National Park. The reservoir, dam, penstock and powerhouse are excluded from the national park.
The Pupu Hydro Power Scheme is a small hydroelectric power station near Tākaka in the Golden Bay region of the South Island of New Zealand. It opened in 1929 as the first power station in the region and was the first public electricity supply in Golden Bay. After closing in 1980 following damage to the generator, the power scheme was fully restored by the local Pupu Hydro Society and many volunteer groups over the course of seven years and re-opened in 1988, again supplying electricity to the national grid.
Parapara is a coastal location in the Tasman District of New Zealand. It is located near Golden Bay, close to the edge of the Parapara Inlet, between Tākaka and Collingwood.
Boulder Lake is a lake in the Tasman District of New Zealand located within Kahurangi National Park. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, water from the lake was used for gold mining purposes for which the lake level was raised by a low dam. British investors lost much money with the venture and large scale mining stopped in 1905 when a flood took out part of the flume. The dam was blown up in the 1930s by a farmer disgruntled with depression-era gold miners stealing his sheep. Boulder Lake is today a tramping destination, with the Department of Conservation maintaining both a hut at the lake and a track to the lake.
Upper Tākaka is a settlement in the Tasman District of New Zealand. It is located in Golden Bay, 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Tākaka.
Bainham is a settlement in the Tasman District of New Zealand. Originally called Riverdale, it is located inland from Golden Bay, 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) southwest of Collingwood.
East Tākaka is a settlement in the Tasman District of New Zealand. It is located in Golden Bay, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of Tākaka.
The Wangapeka Track is a tramping track in the north-west of the South Island of New Zealand. It is one of the main tramping tracks in the Kahurangi National Park, a protected area managed by the Department of Conservation. The route traverses the southern end of the park from the historic Wangapeka goldfields area west of Tapawera to the coastal plains of the West Coast at Little Wanganui. The route is 59 km (37 mi) long and crosses the Wangapeka and Little Wanganui saddles, each over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in elevation. The track passes through the valleys of the Wangapeka River, Karamea River, Taipō River and Little Wanganui River. The majority of the track is in river valleys and under forest cover, with small sections in tussock land at Stag Flat and the Little Wanganui Saddle. It typically takes walkers 4–6 days to complete the route.
The Wharepapa / Arthur Range is a mountain range partially marking the boundary between the Tasman District and West Coast Region of New Zealand's South Island. The range is at the eastern extent of the Tasman Mountains which make up much of the island's northwest, making it easily visible from across the low-lying Waimea Plains further to the east. The range's location and its many uses make it a significant site for local Māori, including the iwi of Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Rārua. This includes the prominent peaks of Mount Arthur and Pukeone / Mount Campbell, which both hold mana in their own right and have become part of the identity of the aforementioned iwi.