We went on a cool hike a couple of days ago to the Broken Hills, an abandoned gold mine. The hike goes up the side of a “mountain”, through the jungle, to a beautiful view point. We could see north up the Coramandel Peninsula (richly green forested hills) and east to the ocean. The the trail goes into a valley, where you go through the Collins Tunnel: a 500 m long old mine tunnel. It has a couple of bends in it, so the middle bit is completely and totally dark. And eerily quiet – if you could get all 4 boys to be quiet at the same time. There were glow worms sparkeling on the walls and ceiling – again, if you could get everyone to turn of their lights at the same time!
The last time we were there, the floor of the tunnel was rough, uneven and very wet. This time, they had a rubber mat the entire length, which made walking much easier. There are a couple of side shafts boarded up, but you could peak through the boards: shafts of pitch blackness dropping down and down and down into nothingness. There was another side tunnel that wasn’t boarded up, it just disappeared off to the left into darkness. I did pretty well through the tunnel, considering my dad was behind me: I kept expecting him to creep up to me and scare the s*!#t out of me.
The trail back to the car goes through a water race track, where the water dredged from the mines was funnelled to the river. It’s a straight track cutting deep into the hillside, almost like a tunnel with open air.
No comments:
Post a Comment