The Town Belt Photo Competition

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The 2017 Traverse Was Wild

Posted by daseditor

When you wake up early on the morning of any event you’re planning the first instinct is to check the weather, and Sunday, April 23rd did not disappoint. With a warm autumn day bathed in sunshine nearly 900 people and 100 dogs explored the 8.2 kilometre route through the Dunedin Town Belt. The Society were delighted and humbled at the massive turn out of participants for the Traverse this year. The conservation expo at the finish in Woodhaugh was also a great success for the community groups involved. This is the first time the Society have partnered the Traverse with Wild Dunedin and it was an exciting and natural fit for our city. The Society loves hosting so many families, children and participants of all ages in the Town Belt. Being able to make it a free event is very important so that we can share our love of this historic space. We have been very fortunate to receive the support of generous sponsors and volunteers to make the Traverse such a success. Its shows a real spirit in Dunedin that cares for this great reserve. So to everyone who participated, donated time and supported the Dunedin Town Belt Traverse 2017 our grateful thanks from the Dunedin Amenities Society. (Click on pictures to view in full screen).

Keep going

Nearly there

Last leg

Poetry break

Olveston stamps

Jubilee Park

Admiral Byrd I presume?

Town Belt Traverse 2017

Posted by daseditor

Its time to get your walking shoes on again and explore one of Dunedin’s great natural and historical landscapes. The Town Belt Traverse is an 8.2 kilometre from the Southern Cemetery to Woodhaugh Gardens taking in the heart of the Dunedin Town Belt on Sunday 23rd April and its absolutely free!

The route is a pram friendly (3 wheel buggies with some help) event for people of all ages stopping off at five points along the way. Participants will receive a map and ticket at the car-park inside the Southern Cemetery. The traverse starts at between 10-11 am and all participants must complete the traverse by 1.30. Collect a stamp at all five marshal points and you can be eligible for some great local prizes drawn at the finish. You must be at the draw to collect your prize. The route is marked and there will be marshals at road crossing points along the way. Register on the day at the start of the walk.

The Dunedin Town Belt is one of New Zealand’s oldest reserves and plays a special part in the physical and historic landscape of Dunedin. It has a rich history that dates back to the planning of Dunedin before settlers arrived here in 1848. The Town Belt covers 203 hectares and includes the two historic cemeteries and the Botanic Gardens. With its extensive parkland and forest remnants it creates a green corridor through the heart of the city.

Today the Town Belt is an important recreational and ecological asset for the city and provides invaluable habitat for kereru, bellbird, tomtit, tui, rifleman, morepork, and shining cuckoo. The vegetation is an eclectic mix of exotics that dominates the southern area of the ‘belt to the more kanuka and fuchsia dominated ridges and gullies of the northern areas. At Woodhaugh an old stand of kahikatea remains as a reminder of a significant wetland forest that once stood there.

For the Dunedin Amenities Society the protection and enhancement of the Town Belt was the beginning of its foundation in 1888. The Society was founded through the energy of Thomas Brown and Alexander Bathgate to protect, enhance and promote Dunedin’s landscape and biodiversity. The Town Belt Traverse is your opportunity to explore through a self guided walk one of New Zealand’s great reserve sites.

Traverse Highlights

The outstanding views from Admiral Byrd’s lookout at Unity Park
Walking through Jubilee Park (Thomlinson’s Paddock) the site of the foundation of the Society and a temporary camp for miners on their way to the goldfields
Serpentine Avenue where Toitu stream once flowed
Learn about the old tram line running through Robin Hood Park from the High Street cable car group.
Learn more about the cosmos from the Beverly-Begg Observatory
Take a free visit the gardens and grounds of the Olveston stately home
Experience the lushness of the fuchsia dominated forest of Queens Drive to Cosy Dell
Hear local poets perform at the Clear in honour of Charles Brasch at Prospect Park
Enjoy lunch at the old wetland forest remnant at Woodhaugh (Free BBQ supplied)
Get a kowhai seed kit and learn more about Project Gold in the Town Belt

What to Bring

Comfortable walking shoes
A warm jacket (you won’t need it because it’ll be warm and sunny!)
A drink and a snack for energy (we have a chocolate bar to get you started)
Your camera
Your inquisitive nature
Your friends and family (dogs on leads thanks)
A costume (you might win a prize)
You can use the Normanby bus from opposite Woodhaugh to return to your vehicle at the Southern Cemetery. Check out the bus timetable here.

Nearly there

Arriving at the finish

Through the gate

They walked and picked up rubbish!

Getting instructions for the course

Reading Littlebournes history

The Town Belt Traverse Route
The Town Belt Traverse follows the red line on the map from the historic Southern Cemetery to Woodhaugh Gardens.

Getting the Wild into the Wilderness

Posted by daseditor

In the last 30 years our concepts of recreation, education and even the way we have fun outdoors has altered significantly. Some of those changes have been driven by our eager embracing of digital technology and the ready availability of information and entertainment in the palm of our hands. Other changes have been societal and economic factors, such as the hours we work, our concepts of risk and safety and even having the knowledge to find opportunities for outdoor recreation and play.

British film-maker and founder of The Wild Network David Bond recently presented a seminar to a range of Dunedin people involved in recreation, education and conservation. David has increasingly seen children who no longer have a direct connection to nature and who are fast losing the knowledge that previous generations had of the outdoors. Part of the reason for this has been the upsurge in the availability of television, the internet and the power of advertising creating sedentary children. With an increasing obesity epidemic in western countries including New Zealand our ability to be active and use natural spaces to play and roam in is now vital. It’s also esential that our children are able to explore nature so that we create a new generation of active conservation stewards, advocates and lovers of nature.

With David Bond the group looked at the barriers to kids connecting with nature and there were four main themes;

Fear – for children’s safety, stranger danger, being risk adverse
Time – parents being too busy to be able to supervise children’s outdoor play
Space – the availability of natural areas
Technology – the competing demands from screen-time which takes away from outdoors play.

As the seminar continued and the group looked at the Dunedin example it became clear that the same barriers to connecting children with nature were present here;

People not knowing the value of spending time in nature
Lack of parental time to facilitate children’s time in nature
Lack of access to green spaces
Parental fear
Time-poor kids (too many competing demands such as homework, sport etc)
A perception of ‘geeky nature’; nature-play not being cool
Parental peer-pressure to not have ‘wild kids’
Overzealous H&S requirements and a blame culture leading to time in nature being seen as too risky
Lack of equipment, competency and knowledge

Dunedin is a great city, full of fantastic places to visit and play, but just how well do we promote their values and their use to the community? The Dunedin landscape has much to offer our community, but how well do we know our neighbourhood parks and reserves? By and large those places cost us nothing to use, and as David Bond suggests nature is actually free. So while there is a bounty on our doorstep, some in our community know very little about those areas and the experiences they offer. This was brought home to the Society recently when people on the 2015 Town Belt Traverse said they “didn’t know this was here!“

As an organisation the Dunedin Amenities Society have a role to play in encouraging people in the community to explore our open spaces and encourage our children to put the wild back into the wilderness.

Shoreline Success – Harbour, Heritage and History

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It wasn’t the greatest of day for a walk around the city with a heavy cover of drizzle, but that’s never put Dunedin people off before. More than 200 people turned up for the Shoreline Walk as part of the Dunedin Heritage Festival 2015 on Sunday 30th August. Such a turn out was overwhelming, but pleasing at the same time.

With the line of the 1848 and 1865 shoreline mapped by Matt Schmidt from Heritage New Zealand and some temporary markers painted onto the route the Shoreline Trail was something entirely new for Dunedin. The trail takes in some of the earliest occupations of Dunedin, from the use of the foreshore by Maori in the settlement of Otepoti, to the arrival of the first settlers in 1848, and onwards into the boom of the city after the discovery of gold in 1861. The shoreline is a time capsule of Dunedin’s development in the 19th century to what we see today. It’s also a reminder of how much of an impact human settlement has had on Dunedin, in light of the amount of land that was reclaimed from the Otago Harbour.

Today’s event took in many of the important sites that we may take for granted or have forgotten that existed in the passage of time. Matt Schmidt gave great in-depth detail of the archaeological record of the area and how that record tells the story of Dunedin, while Paul Pope added some of the above ground detail about some of the areas including their relevance to the Society. Overall, this was a very successful event that gave people a real insight into the history of Dunedin. It also promotes the idea of making this trail a permanent feature of the city to engage both visitors and the community.

With the number of walkers attending it wasn’t possible to show people some of the pictures that we had of different sites that we visited. Below is a selection of those photographs to give readers a feel for the historic land and street-scape. (Click on the image and you will view it in full size)

Otepoti – Pre Colonial Dunedin

View from Bell Hill

Queens Gardens 1890

Queens Gardens 1911

Bell Hill – Hard Labour

Bell Hill – Gaol Site

Gaol Site – Stuart St

The Northern Shoreline

The Octagon 1861/62

The Exchange early 1900’s

Always up to the task

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One of the unheralded groups who have done so much for the community and the Dunedin Amenities Society is the Dunedin City Council sponsored Task force Green and Community Volunteers. No matter what the job this group of people are willing and able to put in the effort for the good of the community and its citizens. The Dunedin Amenities Society have had the pleasure of having many of their number undertake a range of work on its projects, always with excellent results. Well led, well organised and always willing, this group have proved invaluable in Dunedin for many years. Recently the Society had six volunteers undertake road marshaling on the Town Belt Traverse. They gave up their Sunday to help our organisation put on a great event and keep people safe. You can’t place a value on that kind of assistance, and the Society would like to publicly acknowledge the team and wish them well in all of the things they do for our great city. (Click on pictures to view in full size).

Karen on City Road

Morgan – leader of the pack!

Cookie looking swish!

Nice smile Hamish

On guard at Jubilee Park

Shyly looking after High St

Into the Town Belt walked the 600

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To paraphrase Tennyson “into the Town Belt walked the 600” on Sunday 29th March for the Dunedin Amenities Society’s second Town Belt Traverse event. The Society was overwhelmed and humbled by having 600 people of all ages wanting to explore one of Dunedin’s great heritage landscapes and explore the 8.2 kilometre course. The addition of the 10 interpretation signs along the course gave information on the history of the reserve and were a welcome addition for the walkers that many found informative and interesting. This year also saw the involvement of different groups at the stopping points including the Air Training Corps and members of the local military vehicles club at Unity Park. Perhaps one of the great surprises for many walkers was an opportunity to visit the Beverly Begg Observatory at Robin Hood. Other highlights included a visit to the beautiful gardens at Olveston and live poetry at the Charles Brasch memorial at Prospect Park. However, the star of the show was the beautiful Town Belt, with its splashes of autumnal colour, native bird song, city views and the lush native bush bathed in a sunny March day. All of these things made the reserve really shine.

At Woodhaugh the Society was rushed off its feet feeding hungry walkers and our thanks must go to the great help we received from the ladies from Portobello School who ran the barbecue. The Traverse was also an opportunity to announce its “Project Gold” partnership with the Department of Conservation. Department staff were really pleased to be able to promote the project and interact with the walkers as they finished the route. Project Gold was established by the Department of Conservation to encourage the revitalisation of local areas with the iconic Kowhai tree. The Society will contribute $1500 per annum for the next 5 years for suitable kowhai planting projects in the Town Belt which will assist in adding new areas of the endemic tree important for wider bird feeding and connectivity in the reserve. The planting of a large specimen tree by Society Chairman Robin Hyndman and Annie Wallace the acting Director of Conservation Partnerships cemented that partnership.

Adam Cullen from Speedy Signs

Alison Beck from Mitre 10 Mega

Like any event you need community and business support and the Society must thank all of the generous business and attractions for their support in prizes and in advertising the Traverse. A special mention must go to Adam Cullen and the team from Speedy Signs for the production of the interpretation panels and to Alison Beck at Mitre 10 Mega Dunedin for supplying the timer for the sign stands. The Town Belt Traverse on Sunday was a resounding success for the Society, but like all events it’s the participants that create the vibe and energy of day. There were plenty of smiling faces, a few tired ones and a few that needed an extra chocolate to get them over the line. For the Society the enjoyment of the Town Belt by so many people was a rich reward that we are proud to promote. (Click on all pictures to view in full size)

Poets at “the clear”

Prospect Park Poet

A captive audience

The ATC at Unity Park

Fairies of the Town Belt

My what big toadstools you have.

Obersvatory visitors

Getting instructions for the course

Well done – keep going!

Not far to go now!

My house is over there!

Reading Littlebournes history

Project Gold partnership

Places

Autumn colour

Robin and Annie

Walkers walk on their stomachs

A quiet breather

They walked and picked up rubbish!

Woodhaugh

Tickets please!

The dreaded Lower Unity Hill

The finish line in sight

Southern Cemetery start

Lining up the observatory

Poet in action

Through the gate

Great view

Thank you to the following businesses and organisations for their support of prizes for the Town Belt Traverse.

Olveston, Moana Pool, Ribbonwood Nurseries, Taieri Gorge Railway, Monarch Excursions, Otago Museum, Cadbury World, Larnach castle, Blueskin Nurseries, Orokonui Eco-Sanctuary, Royal Albatross colony, Nichols Garden Centre, Speights Brewery, Pukekura Penguins, Arthur Barnetts, Coupland Bakeries, Ironic Cafe, Torpedo 7, Cycleworld, Bakers Dozen, and MTF, Speedy signs and Mitre 10 Mega Dunedin.

Thanks to those sponsored adverting.

Bayleys, Slick Willys, Dunedin City Council, The Orchid Florist, Albert Alloo & Sons, Arrow International and Action Engineering.

Thanks to those organisations that have assisted the Society in organising the Traverse.

Task Force Green, Dunedin Rotary, Air Training Corp, Dunedin Astronomical Society, Olveston, Our Poets – David Howard, Alan Roddick, Shae MacMillan, and Carolyn McCurdie, Lyn and Rachel from Portobello School, and the Department of Conservation.