Thursday, November 16, 2017
Local history buff Jim Robinson at the Moutohora railway bridge that was built 100 years ago this month.
Photo Sven Carlsson OB4029-05
Sven Carlsson
A HUNDRED years ago this month, a bridge was completed near the railhead at Moutohora.
The vision was the railway, that stopped just short of it having come up from Gisborne, would be connected via a six-kilometre tunnel to the railway line that ended at Taneatua.
That way, Gisborne would have been connected to Auckland by rail.
Last week, the Opotiki News was escorted by local history aficionado Jim Robinson to the beautiful Motu valley.
We were in search of lost time and things that never turned out.
One cannot help but feel sorry for the bridge, as it’s not only time that has moved on, but also the water it was built to span.
For a while there, it had looked so promising.
“The work on a Gisborne railway began in 1900, reaching Matawai in 1914,” Mr Robinson said.
The final stretch of the line, connecting the Moutohora Station, was opened on November 26, 1917 and the railway line was now 78km long.
By 1920, business in the area was booming, supported by the railway line.
That year, the twice-daily trains carried 113,000 passengers, 2180 cattle, 173,945 sheep and pigs, 14,390 tonnes of timber and 16,400 tonnes of metal from the Moutohora Quarry.
The uphill journey took four hours and the downhill three.
“Even today, the railway trip between Auckland and Gisborne would have been considerably quicker than making the same journey by car,” Mr Robinson said.
Back then, travellers from Gisborne to Opotiki could take the train to Moutohora from where they would be driven to Motu.
“There they would either have lunch or stay the night at the 100-room hotel,” Mr Robinson said.
“The would continue their journey to Opotiki on the Motu Road, which was connected in 1915.”
It was not only the difficult topography, the war and debate that hindered the remaining 50km of the Auckland-Gisborne rail connection from eventuating, but also progress.
“Dating from around 1910, there are decades of reports about the best route north from Moutohora,” Mr Robinson said.
“But by 1928, a report states that the motor-lorry and the motor-car are by now undoubtedly affecting the financial side of state-owned means of carriage.”
When the Waioeka Gorge road was opened in late 1929, the Moutohora and Motu settlements were increasingly side-lined.
With the depression also taking hold, people stopped coming to the Motu Hotel, the first variation of which was built by Christian Hansen in 1888 and later improved upon until the 100-room version stood ready.
Now without customers, the hotel was dismantled and one third of it was moved to Matawai in 1933, where it still stands. Another part ended up at Ormond.
“The early-1920s Motu post office, that until 1934 was overlooked by the large hotel, now operates as the Motu Community House,” Mr Robinson said.
However, it was not all a downward slide.
“A couple of years ago, the old Motu general store was restored and is now the Motu-Vation Cafe.”
While exploration work for a potential railway connection had continued into the 1940s, the regular train service from Gisborne to Moutohora had ceased about 1956 with the final day excursion having taken place in 1959.
Thus the bridge at Moutohora stands there spanning a river that has moved on, waiting for a train that will never arrive.