Old Coach Road

Accessing Ohariu Valley

Ohariu Valley was well known to Maori before settlers arrived in 1840. There were Maori tracks that led to the valley and from there on to Makara and the coast. The first European to see the valley is understood to have been surveyor Charles Kettle. Country sections at Ohariu were bought from the New Zealand Company in 1841 but not many were taken up. Many of the land owners were absent, but this was not likely to have mattered while there was no road access to the valley.

The first route over to Ohariu Valley has been called a road, and would appear to have been regarded as such on cadastral maps and titles, but it was only formed for a short distance and for much of its route was little more than a track. It followed an old route, used by Maori, that left the old Porirua Road about where Onslow College is today and travelled reasonably directly down the ridge to where the unsealed section of Rifle Range Road joins Old Coach Road. Its steep gradient would have made it impossible for horse drawn vehicles; it was, in any event, never properly formed and not a useful means of access for prospective settlers of the 1840s.

Building a road

In 1853 the Wellington Provincial Council took over administration of the province of Wellington from the New Munster Government, which had been inaugurated at the start of provincial government in 1846. The role of providing roads within the province was granted by the Roads Act of 1854. This legislation empowered the Council [the Executive Government] to make, maintain, repair and manage ‘country roads within the Province of Wellington’ not administered by road boards. In 1856, to open up lands to the west of the town and in response to settler petitions, the Ohariu and Makara Roads Act was passed. This granted the Provincial Council the right to make roads in those outlying Wellington districts, a role intended for local roads’ boards, but beyond their resources at the time. The new act gave the Council the authority to levy rates (up to 2s an acre) ‘upon all land...which may be benefited by such works.’The Council did not have the support of the settlers affected, many of whom refused to pay. Early in 1857 a second Ohariu and Makara Roads’ Act, to ‘explain’ the first Act - but actually to reinforce the original act - was passed.

Even before the passing of the Ohariu and Makara Roads Act, preparations had begun for the building of the road today known as the Old Coach Road. On 7 August 1856 the Provincial Council sought labourers for the building of the Ohariu, Makara and Ngauranga roads. Many of those hired were immigrants recently arrived on the Oliver Lang, a ship that brought many settlers to Wellington from Liverpool and which later foundered in Wellington Harbour. That same year Provincial Superintendent Isaac Featherston, opening the council’s fourth session, stated that the Ohariu Road was expected to be finished by mid-1857.The Council granted £1,500 for the road for the 1857 financial year.

The road was surveyed to follow from the Porirua Road, at Johnson’s Clearing (later Johnsonville), across the western hills, over Totara Ridge and into Ohariu Valley. Much of the road passed through Maori Reserve, land allocated to Te Aro Maori as part of the final settlement of the sale of Wellington.The Ngauranga Road was being built at the same time and it was surveyed to finish in Johnsonville at a point a short distance from where the new Ohariu road left the Porirua Road. It is likely that the route chosen for ‘Old Coach Road’ followed its particular line because the link with the new Ngauranga Road. At the other end, Rifle Range Road, which meets Old Coach Road, was aligned with the legal boundaries of the first Ohariu Road.

The actual building of the road was clearly a difficult business. The men labouring on it complained of the bleak conditions and poor pay. In September 1857 the workers went on strike for higher wages, in response to reports of gold being found in Nelson. When the news from Nelson was unfavourable, the men went back to work, presumably no better off. At the time of the road’s construction the area was still well forested, so bush felling would have been an essential part of the road’s construction. The road was built by benching into the terrain, cutting down to firm material at the required width of the road; the bench cut entailed the removal of large amounts areas of clay and rock. This would have been achieved with explosives, but would still have involved hard work with pick and shovel. At least the typical fractured greywacke was workable. Each section of road was metalled and it is likely that some of the greywacke removed was used on the road for that purpose. Culverts had to be constructed, and these were done in a basic but effective fashion, using large rocks capped with smaller stones and finer material to create a conduit for the water but allow passage by vehicles. 

Almost certainly the most difficult section to build (of the existing historic road) was in the vicinity of the intersection of Old Coach Road and Rifle Range Road. In order to maintain the grade and meet the surveyed alignment of Rifle Range Road, the road makes a near horseshoe turn through a series of bluffs. Using the spoil from bench cuts on these bluffs, a 60 metre long ramp cum embankment was built to link the hilly section with the Ohariu Valley floor, where Rifle Range Road headed in a northwards direction. With no mechanical aids beyond hand tools, and only dynamite to help break the rock, the work involved would have been intensely laborious.

As the project neared conclusion, the Superintendent detailed the costs and labour involved (with a little hyperbole) in a statement to the Provincial Council on 18 March 1858.

To give an idea of the formidable character of this great work, and to account for its heavy expense (not less than £3,000 per mile) it is only necessary to state that upwards of a mile and a half of rock, of the hardest description, has had to be excavated, involving the removal of not less than 240,000 tons of rock.

The Provincial Engineer John Roy was almost certainly the designer of the road, to the extent that it was surveyed on his watch and he would have issued instructions as to the route. Born in 1823, Roy was a civil engineer who was appointed first engineer to the Wellington Provincial Government. He remained in the job until mid-1858 when he moved to Otago, to take up a similar position for the Otago Provincial Council.

While work on the road proceeded, the saga over the alleged iniquities of the Ohariu and Makara Roads’ Act also dragged on. In April 1858 a select committee appointed to report on the Act determined that the roads be extended to give more rated land owners the benefit.

In a report to the Council in March 1858 Superintendent Featherston admitted that the road to Ohariu had ‘presented greater difficulties than were originally anticipated,’ but he expected that it would be completed within three months. In fact it was not completed until September. Nevertheless, before the road was even finished Featherston was trumpeting its success. He claimed that Ohariu presented ‘...no stronger evidence of the value of roads.’ Ohariu district was ‘...waste and unoccupied for 17 years... No sooner is a road completed than the value of the land is tripled and quadrupled and population at once begins to pour into the district.’

Advertisements for land sales began in earnest that same month, March 1858. One auctioneer, J.H. Wallace, described the Ohariu Road as ‘now nearly completed, and which will open up the Country, and afford the numerous spirited Settlers locating themselves in the valley an opportunity of sending Timber and Dairy Produce to this market where it will meet with a ready sale.’

With the completion of the road there indeed was a rapid increase in the Ohariu Valley population, not surprisingly given that in 1854 there were only three settlers in the entire valley. Advertisements for prospective landowners appeared in the local press and the imminent completion of the road was a major selling point.The road had made the area attractive to prospective settlers struggling to find good land near Wellington for farming. At this time much of the Wellington region was still forested and, according to contemporary accounts, very scenic. Exhorting readers to go and see for themselves, the Wellington Independent of 23 February commented:

... To the lover of the picturesque there is scenery on the Nga-uranga (sic), Ohariu and Makara roads which it would repay many miles of laborious travel to see. Unfortunately the freshness will not last any great length of time. All [the trees] are destined to fall before the axe of the woodsman, or to burn in the clearings of the hardy settler enticed by the new made road into the hitherto impenetrable fastnesses of the bush.

How prescient this was. Within a few short decades the bush had gone. The settlers moving into the district in the 1860s had to remove the trees before farming could begin. Timber was by then in relatively short supply around Wellington and the Ohariu Valley was a good source of suitable timber for the Wellington building industry. The hills on the Johnsonville side of the road were described at this time as being ‘covered with beautiful specimens of rata.’A local farmer who lived alongside ‘Old Coach Road’ sent rata to Wellington as firewood.The advent of farming in the Ohariu Valley, of course, made any access road an important conduit of produce and materials. It was the only useful means of contact with the rest of the province. A legacy of the abundant forest remains on the Ohariu side of the road, where fingers of pre-European bush still lie in narrow gullies.

A new Ohariu Road

‘Old Coach Road’ was the sole access road to the Ohariu Valley for only a short time. By 1863 a new road was underway, the present Ohariu Road.The road originated on the Ohariu Valley side and was perhaps initially built to provide easier access for timber removal. It also offered access to ‘Old Coach Road’ for land owners on the north side of Totara Ridge. Once it was extended through to Johnsonville it went on to become the main route from Ohariu Valley. At the time of its completion, in 1866, the two roads were managed by the Ohariu Board of Wardens, but their work was taken over by the Johnsonville Town Board when it was formed in 1874.

The Ohariu Valley Road became the main access route to Johnsonville over time but the spur for its construction so soon after the building of the ‘Old Coach Road’ is not known. Old Coach Road did cross the hills between Johnsonville and Ohariu Valley at nearly their highest point. While the road itself was taken on as easy a grade as possible, it was (and still is) a steep route, and very exposed, particularly following the removal of the forest. The later road followed a small valley for part of its route and crossed the ridge on a saddle well below the Totara Ridge crossing of Old Coach Road. For farmers with horse or bullock drawn vehicles, the attractions of a road with a much lower grade would have been obvious. However the new road was longer and users had to travel all the way to north Johnsonville before heading towards Ohariu Valley.

Maintaining two roads

The two roads continued to be used in tandem for many years. The Johnsonville Town Board regularly sought tenders from local contractors to repair the roads. Occasionally tenders were rejected as too high and the Board would find a farmer willing to do the work. This arrangement continued into the 20^th century.

The Town Board continued to distinguish between the two Ohariu roads. However, to confuse matters, jurisdiction of roads on the western side of hills was under the control of the Hutt County Council, which raises the possibility that the two halves of Old Coach Road were maintained by different authorities. Later, the road on the western side of the hill became the responsibility of the Makara County Council.

The road was still being maintained into the 20^th century, possibly as late as the 1920s. In 1907, the dangerous condition of the road led to its temporary closure.The road was used for the carting of material for the erection of the dam, high reservoir and pumping equipment for the Johnsonville Water Works (1910-12). Each week the coke for the gas producer that powered the pump had to be hauled over the road.

When public vehicular use of the route ended is difficult to determine. The arrival of motorised vehicles and the opening, in 1908, of Ironside Road, a steeper but more direct link between Johnsonville and the No. 2 Ohariu Road, may have helped end regular use of ‘Old Coach Road’. However, it still remained in some use. Farmers near the ‘Old Coach Road’ would have continued to use the road until consolidation in land title and a gradual reduction in the road’s use led to its abandonment by all except those farmers with direct access. It remained known as the Old Ohariu Road until at least the 1940s, although the Johnsonville end of the road was changed to Waterloo Road (later, as noted, Broderick Road).

Sixteen years later ‘Old Coach Road’ is shown in one map as ‘Old Road’ but fully formed to its end. Another map, also drawn in 1924, shows the legal boundaries of roads and sections and all three roads are included (see p.11). The road, from the summit to Rifle Range Road, was scheduled to be closed in 1936, although it remained a legal road.

A farm track

At some point after World War II, the road was renamed Old Coach Road. In 1945, and again in 1971, sections of the road on the Johnsonville side were converted to wide modern roads to service new housing subdivisions.As a result, the road was considerably reduced in length from its original extent. The unsealed part of the road remained in a relatively authentic state until 1963, when the NZED began construction of a high voltage DC link between Lake Benmore and the Haywards substation, which also included the laying of the a power cable across Cook Strait. The link was to be carried on steel pylons, erected on a route that took the link from the Oteranga Bay cable station on Wellington’s south coast, north through – predominantly – farmland via the Crofton Downs sub-station to Haywards. The construction of the link was a significant infrastructural investment and, wherever it was laid, dramatically changed the landscape. The link was opened in 1965.

As part of the construction of the pylons, the NZED had to upgrade Old Coach Road. The exact nature of all the changes that took place are not known but among the most significant were the construction of short access tracks from Old Coach Road to the pylon sites, and the widening of the road in places. The NZED may have also replaced several culverts at this time, including the installation of two large concrete pipe culverts near Rifle Range Road, but it has also been stated that these were replaced in 1988.

At about the same time work on the DC link began, controversy arose over a proposal to stop the road. Farmer William Hume wanted the road closed to prevent the public from opening gates and letting stock wander and generally making a nuisance of themselves. This prompted a long article in the Evening Post examining the road’s history and highlighting its considerable heritage value. The road stopping proposal had the support of Hutt County Council but when it was made public, the ensuring protests saw the council back down. Despite numerous calls since for the road to be stopped, it has never happened.

In the period since 1963-64, the NZED (and, later, Transpower) have been back on several occasions to undertake upgrading work on the pylons, including in 1997-98 and again in 2011-12, with the replacement of the ageing Pole 1 with Pole 3. This work, while generally short in duration, has taken a heavy toll on the road, particularly when heavy machinery has been involved.

Subdivision and legal protection

After a portion of its length on the Johnsonville end was taken in 1971 for a subdivision, the road remained largely undisturbed until 1990. Landsdale Development Ltd., a Tauranga-based company specialising in residential development, presented a plan to subdivide land on the hills to the west of Johnsonville and to name this development Hampton Gates. Landsdale was begun in 1950 as Masterton Trimbers Ltd, changing its name to Stella Homes Ltd in 1964 and finally to Landsdale in 1988.The scale of the company’s original plan would have seen most of Old Coach Road obliterated on its Johnsonville side. The plan was rejected by the WCC.

The proposal also sought to take part of the road for subdivisional earthworks, but as the road was not closed, such a change would not have been lawful. Although the WCC was aware of this, in January 1992 its earthworks section gave permission to Landsdale Development Ltd. to dump fill on the road as per its design. The company’s contractors quickly began work and some 200 metres of the road was buried before angry local residents pointed out that the legal road had not been stopped and that the earthworks were therefore illegal. Work was quickly suspended. The WCC then sought to legitimise what had occurred by stopping the road, but changed its mind after considerable local objection. A route through the earthworks was formed to allow users to continue to access the rest of the road.

The burying of part of the road inflamed local passions and began a lengthy campaign that has pitted local interests against, at various intervals, the WCC, Landsdale Development Ltd. and its contractors and consultants. Among those fighting to save the road were Irene Jackson of the Johnsonville Residents’ Association, Joyce Griffin of Action for the Environment, Peter Graham of the Federation of Wellington Progressive and Residents’ Associations, and former civil servant and long-time environmental advocate Frances Lee. They appeared before WCC hearings and committees and attended public meetings for many years and, together and separately, continually pushed back against proposals that might imperil the road. Together with other groups, such as the Onslow Historical Society, they raised awareness of the recreational, scenic and historic values of the road. Organised walks on the road attracted significant numbers of people, while general recreational use of the road increased on the back of the publicity generated over its future.

Early in 1993, the Johnsonville Residents Association asked the WCC to issue a Heritage Order over the road. This was opposed by the Makara Community Board and the WCC declined the request, but it decided to include the Old Coach Road as a heritage area in the Proposed District Plan when it was notified.

In 1994, the WCC notified the Proposed District Plan which listed the Old Coach Road as a heritage area but with boundaries still to be determined. Two years later, the intention to list the road was confirmed by the WCC but it erroneously stated that a portion of the road (that covered in fill) was no longer legal road and therefore should not be listed. Still uncertain about the road’s heritage status, the listing was put on a ‘six month sunset clause’. During this time, the WCC commissioned a heritage significance assessment of the road, which was then evaluated by a panel of experts who visited the road. Later in 1996, with the panel satisfied with the significance of the road, the WCC notified its intention to list the road on the transitional District Plan.

In 1997, the NZHPT registered the road, but it was uncertain about its relative significance so opted to make it Category II. In 2001, satisfied as to the road’s national importance, it upgraded the registration to Category I.

In the meantime, Landsdale shifted tack and from 1993 sought consents to build a series of smaller subdivisions, each getting progressively closer to Old Coach Road. These consents were granted without notification, each of them being small enough not to trigger such an outcome.

By 1999, Landsdale was getting closer to the road, and that year the WCC again moved to stop portions of the road, this time to undertake a land swap with Landsdale, but this also met strong objections from the public. That same year, a conservation plan, commissioned by the WCC, was prepared for the road, but this did not lead to any regular maintenance on the road.

The following year the council notified a resource consent, the first public notification of the Hampton Gate subdivision and a revision of the original subdivision. A resource consent hearing was held in June 2000 and Landsdale was granted approval to proceed with the subdivision. Alarmed that the work would include the sealing of part of Old Coach Road, interest groups, including the Johnsonville Residents’ Association, Action for the Environment and the Federation of Wellington Progressive Associations appealed the matter to the Environment Court. The appellants were among the first groups to get Government funding for its case, under a scheme run by the Ministry for the Environment. The court found in the appellants’ favour, ruling that the Wellington City Council failed to alert the public about the likely impact of the subdivision on an historic road. It instructed the council to re-advertise Landsdale’s proposal. Consent was eventually granted for the development, named Hampton Gate, and work proceeded alongside the road. As some portions of the legal road were by then utterly obscured by metres of fill, part of the subdivision (mainly road) encroached on that land.

A sale and purchase agreement was negotiated between the WCC and Landsdale and signed on 5 November 2002. The WCC acquired land towards the skyline on the south side of the road and all Landsdale’s land on the north side of the land, although both lots remained zoned residential.

In 2003, the Northern Growth Management Plan was released by the Wellington City Council. Intended to manage a long-term increase in population of up to 10,000 in Wellington’s northern suburbs, the plan included provision, at some point, for linking McLintock Street and McLintock Street North. This would necessitate crossing Old Coach Road once. This concept was also met with considerable public objection, as it still does, but at the time of the preparation of this plan had still not been pursued. The 2012-2022 Long Term Plan deferred the proposal until 2022. The designation of the land the road might one day cross remains outer residential, despite the efforts of campaigners to get it rezoned Scenic B Reserve.

In 2004, Landsdale Development Ltd proposed a 5.4 hectare extension (Stages IV and V) to its Hampton Gate subdivision. As this would leave the cul-de-sac of Carmichael Street encroaching on the legal boundary of Old Coach Road and bring more housing close to the south side of the road, there was more public objection. A resource consent hearing was held on 15 July 2004 and the commissioner granted consent. Again, the matter was appealed to the Environment Court by Action for the Environment and the Johnsonville Residents’ Association. In its 2005 decision, the Court approved the subdivision but amended the resource consent. It put a limit on the height of adjacent houses and instructed that a buffer be formed between the road and houses, planted to screen the road from the subdivision. There were other conditions, including prescribing the slope of the buffer, building a rock wall feature at the McLintock Street entrance, and the erection of a timber fence alongside an access road to the subdivision. The intention of the various conditions was that the subdivision and road would be properly separated (visually, if not physically) and that, on most parts of the road close to the subdivision, it would eventually be very difficult to see any houses.

The planting plan was designed pro bono by landscape architect Neil Aitken of Titchener, Monzingo and Aitken. The work, which accompanied some landscaping at the McLintock Street entrance, including the construction of the rock wall, was not completed until 2007 and then not entirely to the satisfaction of every party to the Environment Court decision. The plantings have not taken in their entirety, and have not always been regularly maintained, some of the houses close to the road are larger than stipulated, and the buffers are not as wide as expected. However, parts of the buffer have matured in the fashion intended.

In 2011, with a number of matters regarding the use of the road and its legal status unresolved, the WCC decided to commission a report from consultant Fiona Johnson to give it some direction. It was a recommendation of the conservation plan, and the hope of many interested parties, that the road would be closed and made an historic reserve. However, the Johnson report, entitled ‘Protection Options for Old Coach Road’, concluded that such an approach would not necessarily be for the best, as the process would be lengthy and that the outcome, subject as it was to appeal, was uncertain. Among the report’s recommendations, adopted by the WCC, was to seek ‘to gazette a secondary use for the unsealed sections of Old Coach Road and Rifle Range Road under s191 of the Public Works Act 1981 with similar characteristics to that of a Historic Reserve under the Reserves Act 1977’, and to ensure that ‘all provisions of the Reserves Act relevant to Historic Reserves will be gazetted to apply to the unsealed sections of Old Coach Road and Rifle Range Road’. The WCC has prepared a bylaw, subject to a plan change process, that will ban motorised vehicles from the road, with the exception of farming traffic, Transpower and its contractors, road maintenance vehicles, emergency and civil defence vehicles and certain (unspecified) events that have the approval of the WCC. The WCC feels that this bylaw will give it the control it needs over the road.

In the decades since regular traffic stopped using the road, it has increasingly been taken over by recreational users. Mountain bikers, joggers and walkers have all been ardent users of the road for many years and those uses increase each year. Likewise, horse riding clubs, academies and excursioners have used the road for decades. One of the main users has been the Country Club Riding Academy, founded in 1963 by Roy Kellahan. In the early 1990s, he and his academy strongly supported keeping the road open when it was threatened with closure.

As Old Coach Road’s profile has risen, it has been incorporated in wider recreational initiatives. Its position on the cusp on the boundary of Ohariu and Johnsonville on the ridge below Mt Kaukau makes it well placed as a stand-alone walk and as a feeder and a link for other tracks. It is the northern entrance of the WCC’s Skyline Walkway, which ends in Karori. It is part of the Colonial Knob to Mt Kaukau section of Te Arararoa (The Long Pathway), the trail that extends from Cape Reinga to Bluff, which opened in November 2011.

In March 2012, as part of remedial work undertaken to accompany intensive use on the road by Transpower, a blocked culvert was partially uncovered and successfully repaired by Transpower staff and contractors, supervised by archaeologist Srey Bowron-Muth. It was the first invasive investigation of the road and yielded significant information about the construction of culverts and the road itself.