Hakataramea

Hakataramea, spelt Hakateramea in some older sources, is a rural village located in the southern Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island. It is in the Waimate District and sits on the north bank of the Waitaki River at its confluence with the Hakataramea River.

Hakataramea

Several small communities are located in the Waihaorunga rural area, to the north of Hakataramea. The community of Douglas, settled in 1911, has a population of about 20 people.[1] Waihao Downs, on State Highway 82, was the terminus on Waimate Rail Branch, from 4 April 1884 until 11 December 1953.[2]

History

The area in and around Hakataramea was leased by the New Zealand and Australia Land Company in the 1860s and freehold settlement began in 1878.[3] On 7 November 1881, a combined road/rail bridge from Kurow to Hakataramea across the Waitaki River was opened. The bridge carried the Kurow Branch railway into Hakataramea, and this branch line provided an economically valuable connection to the Main South Line, from which it diverged in Pukeuri, north of Oamaru.[4] Plans existed to extend the line beyond Hakataramea up the Hakataramea River valley to a proposed town that would have been home to 10,000 people, but neither town nor railway extension were ever built.[5] Railway services consisted of mixed trains hauled by steam locomotives. Due to low traffic and the closeness of the more significant Kurow railway station, the 1.76 km of trackage between Kurow and Hakataramea closed on 14 July 1930.[6] The road/rail bridge into Hakataramea is now road only and carries State Highway 82.

In World War I, eight soldiers from Hakataramea were killed. A small square obelisk now stands in Hakataramea as a memorial.[7]

gollark: Determinism is outdated. I'm a *super*determinist.
gollark: In this setup, it pushes on the same thing the other magnet is pulling.
gollark: Because the magnet you're holding pushes on you.
gollark: There's a force on the left magnet from the right magnet. There's an equal force on the right magnet from the left magnet. Net force on the body is 0. QED.
gollark: Magnets do, in fact, obey conservation of momentum.
  1. "$25,000 just for being called Douglas". The New Zealand Herald. 8 December 2009.
  2. Geoffrey B. Churchman and Tony Hurst, The Railways of New Zealand: A Journey Through History (Auckland: HarperCollins, 1991).
  3. Beautiful Waitaki, "Hakataramea", accessed 21 October 2007.
  4. David Leitch and Brian Scott, Exploring New Zealand's Ghost Railways, revised edition (Wellington: Grantham House, 1998 [1995]), 83.
  5. North Otago Museum, "Duntroon Railway Station", High Country Herald, 17 October 2007.
  6. Churchman & Hurst Railways of New Zealand, p. 205.
  7. New Zealand History Online, "Hakataramea War Memorial", accessed 21 October 2007.

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