Paekākāriki Escarpment Image Abbigail Bishop
BUILDING A TRAIL TO OUR FUTURE THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRACKS AND TRAILS ACROSS NEW ZEALAND OFFERS A VALUE PROPOSITION FOR INCREASED TOURISM WORDS WALKING ACCESS COMMISSION ARA HĪKOI AOTEAROA
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icole works at the Perching Parrot Café in Paekākāriki. A couple of years ago her village changed completely. “It’s not a sleepy little village anymore,” she says. The reason is the Paekākāriki Escarpment Track. Nicole’s café was already a successful business, but now it can be “stupid, crazy busy” she says. On sunny weekends it can be so busy that it’s bursting. Before visitors to the village start their walk along the Paekākāriki Escarpment Track they want coffee and muffins or sandwiches. When they finish their trek, they want a glass of wine and a meal. Opened in 2016, the Paekākāriki Escarpment Track is spectacular. Not just because it towers over the Tasman Sea but because it links two close but previously disconnected communities – Paekākāriki and Pukerua Bay. The story of this track is one of how tracks and trails are the economic, social and environmental future of our country. It starts with the volunteers at Ngā Ururoa – Kāpiti Project and grows to include many others, including Kiwirail, local councils and, nationally, Te Araroa Trust. The Paekākāriki track cost $1.4 million dollars to put into effect, but in its short life it has already drawn over a hundred thousand visitors.
It has become one of the top places locals recommend when asked by visiting friends what they should see while in Wellington. Last year the trail had about 40,000 visitors. That’s not bad when you understand Paekākāriki and Pukerua Bay each have populations of under 2000. These thousands of walkers are particularly big news for the Paekākāriki shops and cafes, not to mention the trains, because most visitors walk the trail one way and use the train at the other end to get back to where they started. What makes the trail special is not just the spectacular views, or the two dizzying 40-metre swing bridges, or the Māori archaeological sites, it is the small things. People can get to it easily by public transport. It connects two small communities. It enhances and protects its surrounding environment. It builds a sense of community and pride in the people nearby; those people that build and care for the track and who see how it links them to their environment, to tourists and to nearby communities. Tracks and trails are New Zealand’s most prominent and successful links between the environment and recreation and tourism. If we care for our tracks and trails right, and expand them into a network that links New Zealanders, we will build an environmental and tourism
16 AUSTRALASIAN PARKS AND LEISURE | Summer 2018
legacy that defines the type of country we want to be. Early this year, when we published our South Island High Country Access Report, we said our goal needs to be creating connections, turning our hundreds of isolated tracks into a network of trails. New Zealand is full of great organisations and individuals doing amazing work creating and maintaining tracks and trails. As well as hundreds of small community groups of volunteers who get out there on the weekend with their spades and trimmers, there are dozens of local councils, the Department of Conservation, trusts and private tourism operators. That means though, that there are too many places to look for information, which is not always reliable or complete. We need to connect these groups more closely. The millions of tourists, trampers, cyclists, hunters and anglers, and families that pass over our tracks and trails each year don’t care who owns them or maintains them, they simply want connections. Connections to where they are going, connections to good infrastructure, connections to nature, and connections to other like-minded people. But to make those connections we need infrastructure. We need carparks. We need public