Wangaloa Rehabilitated Mine

This old mine. It was done. It was done with making money, so with a nicknack paddywhack Resource Management Act, the government rehabilitated the mine.

Kaitangata and Districts Promotions Incorporated (KDPI) and Solid Energy have spent over 20 years and a significant sum turning the old (1945 to 1989) Wangaloa Open Cast mine to a 75 hectare park.

Glasson Huxtable Landscape Architects were responsible for the plan which promoted tree planting with the intent of increasing naturally seeded native vegetation and birdlife, and a side goal accommodating mining history and memorabilia. Otago University are studying the process along the way, pointing out that nature had a good crack at Wangaloa before the miners arrived: "the 60 million year old Taratu Formation, that consists mainly of quartz gravels with minor sands, silts and muds, and coal seams. The Taratu Formation at Wangaloa has been extensively eroded over the past 5 million years..."

NZPlaces isn't sure if the KDPI managed to achieve their entire wishlist; car parking and vehicle turnaround area, fences, walking and mountain bike tracks, board walks, handrails, fencing to limit vehicular access, a permanent and self-contained toilet, and picnic tables, and activities like abseiling, group camps and confidence course training.

It is open for freedom camping.

If you are visiting, please fee free to drop NZPlaces a line or a picture. And if you are curious as to how a Maori-Language place name came to incorporate the letter "L" it is said to be that in the deeper south, the combination of the Ngai Tahu dialect and the early adoption by Pakeha, meant that the 'L' was sometimes applied to the written word in the place of the lightly rolling 'R'.

So Wangaloa actually bears the same meaning, and is the same word, as "Whangaroa" as it would be spoken further north. It means long harbour.