SlackNinja.com Locations

Waikato Carbonisation Plant

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:03:12 +1300

Hidden by coal mounds and protected by the security fences of the Rotowaro Coal Mines, the rusting hulk of the Waikato Carbonisation Plant is well protected from vandals and thieves.

A result of imported German engineering, the plant was built in the early 20th century to manufacture fuel from low-quality coal, and was the only example of its kind in New Zealand. War broke out over Europe just as the plant was completed, and the German engineers were hurriedly deported back to their homeland.

Like a castle of iron, the plant has many secondary defence systems to protect it from vandals – it boasts a chemical defence system, a moat and is also surrounded by hordes of exotic bio-organisms which are equipped with millions of needle-sharp spines, not to mention the masses of cutty-grass that surround the site. Bare legs are not advised.

The “moat” was created during a chemical cleanup by Environment Waikato to prevent contaminated groundwater from entering the nearby stream system, and deep water surrounds almost every structure at the site. Swimming in this water is not recommended! Submerged tanks which were once filled with tar and un-named phenols slowly succumb to death by oxidation, potentially leaking their payloads into the water, which, incidentally, looks just like the stuff that comes out of your taps at home.

We were only able to gain access to the main structure, and to a smaller processing building. However these are nothing short of spectacular. While the site is not the ideal urbex location due to its lack of tunnels, corridors and hidden rooms, the site is nothing less than premium eye candy. One could easily be mistaken to think that it is something from the abandoned city of Pripyat. My pictures do it no favours, the true magnificence of the plant can only be properly appreciated by a long visit to the site.

A sign onsite warns of the chemical dangers, and requires protection which would render a person looking very much like this.

In my opinion, this place is definitely worth a visit. It does not have the same scope for exploration as do sites such as mental asylums etc, but is very cool simply because of its inherent beauty.

It is also worth noting that the site is protected by the Historic Places Trust, and many parts of the site are in full view of the Rotowaro Mine’s main office. Due to the nature of the site, prosecution by Solid Energy would be likely if somebody was caught. I had a run in with one of their security guys while scoping out the place in my car (he was trying to lock me in behind the gate!) and the guy was less than kindly. Just a warning! :)

No fly zone

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:25:53 +1300

Having only recently discovered that this site acutally existed (this morning) I decided it would be a nice day to pop up there at lunchtime. after climbing the stony incline in blistering heat that would have had Buck Shelford in tears, I came to the top of the mountain to be greeted by 4×3.7mm anti aircraft gun turrets in all thier glory that were placed here to protect the inside of lyttleton harbour from any over head attacks, unfortunately as is normal with these sites, anything that could be removed has been, so there are just the bare shells where the guns resided, although they are a different shape to any of the other turrets that i have ever seen, just because of the fact that these guns were designed to shoot vertically, there wasn’t much else of interest other than a small bit of underground area which cool and some dope as old school tags and stencils including one that rob spook about in a post the other day, other than that it was worth the walk if only just for the view.

Also apologies in advance for the image quality i had been pissing round with the white balance and forgot to set it back to normal when i started snapping away

Central Plateau Hydro Station

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:06:44 +1300

This was not a good mission to do alone!

The road to get there had the standard no entry and trespassers will be prosecutes signs at the beginning, and danger signs all the way though to the dam. The road down to the dam itself was crumbling away.

Got down the bottom and parked up and walked. The first thing I found was a grating into a tunnel, looked like it hadnt been open for ages. My description isnt even going to do this justice.. but inside the grating it opened up into a full on tunnel about the size and shape of a train tunnel, it went in about 2 meters and then started decending into blackness. A loud roar was coming from deep down (anyone for blackwater rafting?) and there was a fine spray of mist wafting out of the grating. Even if you found a way to get through this gate, I dont reckon it would be a very good idea!

Next I made my way up to the dam itself, which was gated and barbed wired.. never mind onward and upward…

Once inside the gates I wandered around taking photos as I went. All the doors were locked up pretty tight with big padlocks so couldnt look inside:( Then I saw a small entranceway blocked by some bars, There was a a good 8 foot drop to the bottom and a couple of pipes about a 3 foot down, I stood there for a while and um-ed and ah-ed about the stupidity of squeezing through the bars and dropping down into the bowels of the dam by myself with no idea if I would be able to get back out, and no cellphone reception, and no sign of anyone having been there lately… thought fuck it and squeezed through (idiot!) Had a look around and there was fuck all except a ladder going into some of the rooms upstairs but the hatch was locked, and a much closer view of the intakes. Judging from the staining on the walls, the concrete room I was in was quite often filled with water, and it was raining so I started to get nervous and decided to attempt climbing back out quicksmart. The pipes i needed to climb on were slippery as hell and couldnt lift myself from ground level, luckily there was a big broken bit of old wood i managed to wedge against the wall and get a better grip on the pipes. Felt real good to be back topside!

Next I found some metal grating on the floor which i managed to move, was mean heavy.. layed down on the ground and peered in. Looked awesome, iron stairs dissapearind into darkness and more running water, but I was way to dodged out by the last hole and gave it a miss. Hopefully Ill get to go again with other people, and a rope!

Warm and dry in national park now thank fuck, that could easily have gone pear shaped

Central North Island Hospital

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:12:48 +1300

Well, I’ve been meaning to do this one for a while now.. And as I was headed up to national park anyway, I decided to go check it out! The place was seriously derelict, no security, waltz on in… Graffiti everwhere, and most stuff was smashed up… kind of a shame they let the place go to that extent..

Have to be really careful in this place, roof falling in places, floor rotting in several places!

Anyway managed to have a decent look around without injuring myself, got wet feet tho.. However I was by myself on this one, and yep it scared the shit outta me! Creepy as! Was getting dark, so I was outta there!

Worth a look if you are up that way

Godley Asses

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:50:08 +1300

Went for a walk around the Port Hills and decided to check out the tunnel track. Have been to Godley Head many times and even across this track at night but somehow missed it. There’s a tunnel 104m long in the side of the cliff with venting tunnels spaced along it. Easy to get to, open to the public just not known about. At the end of the track there’re two gun embankments on the rocks. It looks like there could be more tunnels around but you’d need good climbing equipment. Saw more evidence of subterranean spaces looking down vents found around the area.

Rarotonga

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:14:38 +1300

Traveled to Rarotonga in October of 2003 and found an abandoned resort on the island. Apparently the Mafia had invested money in the venture and when the Cook Islands Government found out they pulled the plug on the project. Rumor has it that a .NZ company is finishing off the project and will have it complete by 2009…

The place was littered with expensive Italian tiles still in their original packing, drawers and whiteware. The locals considered the place Tapu (forbidden or restricted) which means it was in pretty much the same condition as when the Mafioso abandoned it.

Harbour Hillside Military Installation

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:27:50 +1300

The ginj and i have had this one on the cards for a while, so we headed and found a mint parking spot, underestimating the amount of physical effort that was going to be exerted on this excursion, heading up over a small rise we were confronted by some good old new Zealand military compound fencing, 8 foot concrete posts with between 25 and 30 strands of barbwire running down them, the perimeter is around 1.7 kilometres so theres a good 42 ish kilometres of wire surrounding the facility…overkill if you ask me…...moving on…..we made our entrance, and slipped and slid down the hill towards our first target, only to arrive a the first building and find it locked, from there we went across to another building labelled “Stores Branch” we couldn’t open this main door either so we wandered around the side and found a bit of wall missing, noting that these building are all built like the magazines at Godley head but in a much bigger format, with an outer wall the a half meter gap and then the inner wall of the building, heading round in the wall cavity we made it to two doors labelled “Clothing Store” and “Bosun Store” now bosun for those who don’t know is one of three things, a ships officer in charge of sails and rigging or a wooden seat suspended from ropes for work on the side of a ship or a yard where boats are built and stored, this room provided no evidence to support any of those descriptions, so we moved to the next building, up the hill and to the left a bit, this one we are assuming was the kitchen as there was nothing written on the door but from what we could see through the gap in the unmovable door there were lots of teapots and bowls etc, going back to the other side of the hill we entered an unmarked building almost identical in design to the first one we entered, neither of the rooms had anything in the really apart from some dead animal bones and an old bed, the room on the right had a sign high up on the wall though (as pictured) that read “INSIDE SAFETY LIMITS ” MAX WEIGHT IN LBS 250 ,000 – ACTUAL WEIGHT IN LBS 30 ,806 – CATEGORY Z ”, coming out of this building we went further up the same side of the hill only to find another building we had not seen, this one had been burnt by the look of it has the roof was totally missing, but outside there was a dope as old car with a tree growing in the engine bay we moved down the hill from here to our last building of the night, this one was well flooded and had a couple of tables in it and lots of stuff about “U2” and “OCTOBER” painted on the walls. We made a command decision at this point to bail, only forgetting we had to climb back up the hill we had come down….not cool….it was only then we realised that it was on a 45 degree angel covered in all manner of small prickly shrubs, and in all honestly me and ginj have never fallen over so many times on our lives some of our fall were even in unison what better way to bond with your fellow man…..(I await covert_one’s comment on this) This is not all this site has, other than the locked buildings we encountered there is live site further down the hill separated by yet another barbwire fence, but there was zero cover and i mean ZERO COVER like seriously there about 11 trees on this entire site and even ginja mentioned in passing that the moon was the brightest he had seen it in several years, so bring on the moonless night for our future missions, more to come

Abandoned House

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:23:31 +1300

captain_caveman: I just found this old, rotten house in greytown that was left on the hill to rot up in the weather. There were was bird shit all over the place pigeons were flying all over and gave us a fright i think cows will go inside that house when its raining coz there was animal poo too, the inside was old and rotten i had to climb the stairs with grifstar. The floor boards were all rotten and we thought we were going to fall through, it was scary!

grifstar: Lol hes real proud of this one! But we couldnt help ourselves, it was way too much like a horror film to not go at night.. was pretty cool, managed to scare the girls quite nicely! (not referring to myself of course hehe)

Southland Industrial River-Monsters

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:08:14 +1300

The last place we visited down south was a small, quite derelict town in Southland, of which we had seen a photograph with two large decrepit-looking industrial buildings perched on either side of a river with waterfalls.

Upon arriving in the town we easily found our way to the factories, with the Freezing Works on the the western bank and the old Mill opposite. The freezing works is still operational, although to what degree I am unsure.. we headed over towards the Mill as it looked suitably abandoned and a bit cooler than the big box-like meatwork buildings, although I have since heard that it is used by the meatworks as storage.

We approached the buildings from upstream, in awe at the sight of the huge industrial beasts that sit feeding on each bank. There is a sizable weir system upstream of the falls which channels the water into each of the factories, some of which is returned back the river from a multitude of orifices that exist in the side of the meatworks. Both of these buildings have been heavily designed to take full advantage of the river that flows between them, with the meatworks appearing as if about half of its main structure was shored up on stilts.

The mill – which started production in the 1870s and eventually closed in the 2000’s, also has a side channel that carries water towards its main buildings and there are a couple points where you can cross this channel via gangways and get onto the rocky ex-riverbed.

The mill’s channel leads up to a large, almost totally submerged grate which has automated debris scrapers that still look quite functional, behind that there was a large hydraulic gate that was lowered to block the flow of water from the channel and was definitely in working condition, behind this gate there were a couple of open manholes, and a health and safety warning regarding confined spaces, a peek down the manholes revealed a quite a large tunnel, roughly 2M in diameter with about ankle-deep water running through it, leaking from around the sides of the huge hydraulic gate. If you go down there and the gate opens you are fucked. We opted not to.

From there you can continue along the riverbank a wee way and stand right next to the falls but the rocks on this side run out before the mill buildings end.

When we got to this point Grifstar noticed the mouth of quite a large tunnel, with only a trickle of water coming out of it further up the bank, she headed back the way we came to go around the Mill compound and get to it from the other side. Captain Pete, Dirtyfilthy and I mucked around on the riverbank a bit more taking photos and enjoying the sun. This is when I noticed an open window on the 3rd floor of the Mill, Pete and I managed to reach it without too much difficulty, I stuck my nose inside and had a look around.

The place was literally buzzing, lights were on everywhere and there was a duffel bag at my feet with lots of quite new-looking powertools both inside and next to it. To my left there was a pretty flash-looking silver laptop that was powered on – so thats what that Cat5 was for! The room I was in also happened to contain a quite a large (compared to the ones I’ve seen at only other power station I’ve visited) AC Generator, partly set into the floor. Everything actually looked pretty bloody operational. I was kinda hesitant, and had careful look around to make sure I wasn’t about to bump into someone, I couldn’t see anyone and it was a sunday so I figured they’d just left their gear out over the weekend. I moved around the room to try and find a better angle to take a shot of the generator and noticed some movement inside the generator through the holes in its outer casing. For a second I thought that maybe Grifstar had managed to walk up that tunnel opening on the side of the river and into the generator (this is impossible), but then I realised it was some dude in a white boilersuit, clanging away, fixing something – the rotor that I would have expected to reside inside the generator must have been removed for maintenance.

I hastily made my way back to the window, pausing only to take a single photo of the generator hall before escaping.

We descended and started back to meet up with grifstar and see what she had been up to (we really need some radios). Just as Dirtyfilthy and I were leaving a tired-looking old dog rocked up to us while we were still inside the compound, it didn’t make a sound but then we didn’t stick around for very long either.

The moment we caught up with Grifstar she informed us that she’d also been inside the place. It turns out one of the large doors that open onto the road were actually wide-open, most likely due to our boilersuit-wearing friend in the generator. The inside of this building was mostly warehouse space, with the workman’s car parked up the far end of one of the quite large rooms, through a crack in a door I spotted the generator I had seen up close about 10 minutes earlier.

At this point we left, it being about 6pm with all of us dying for a beer or six and still facing a bit of a drive back to the holiday park where we’d pitched our tents. We stopped off and grifstar bought us all a big box o’ beers, under-the-counter from some dodgey local pub, as the liquor store had already closed. Cheers!

P.S. We noticed a number of PIR sensors in the mill’s warehouse area, we assume they had been temporarily disabled due to our mate in the boilersuit being in the building. We also only scratched the surface of what the mill has to offer as there are a number of other buildings that make up the compound. The meatworks is still active, although who knows how much of the place is actually being used, but even just making your way along the side of it above the river would be a fun mission.

P.P.S. This is the coolest set of industrial building’s I’ve ever seen! :D Unfortunately I seem to have neglected to take any decent photographs of the mill itself, maybe grifstar and captainpete can help out here?

Otago Hospital

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:26:19 +1300

So… the great south island mission!!

Off we went saturday morning, me, rob, dirtyfilthy, and captainpete, a little behind schedule thanx to our meetup at the pub and the mint mission through the canterbury maltworks!

Anyway, reached an Otago town and were messing around down the beach looking at some cool old train wreckage… I was looking up on the hills, and saw a really big group of buildings that looked pretty old. We decided to go and have a driveby and check it out and I am bloody glad we did!! Turns out it was the old town Hospital, disused for almost 10 years! Was so mint!

We started wandering around the outside, and came across an old toilet/shower block, there was rubble everywhere as all the shower and toilet walls etc had been knocked down. I clambered over some mess to see what was behind a wall, and hello theres a old spiral staircase descending into darkness (was totally my day for mint discoveries!) called everyone else and headed down there! Ended up being this MAD AS tunnel system that went for miles, it had rooms off to the side too! We found our way into the main hospital too.. Mint! Had a look around there, and then went and looked at some of the other buildings that were super old! There was also a mean as boiler complex (thats the one with the sweet spiral coal slide!)

Took us a good 3-4 hours to see the whole place. Well recommended for a mission!!

Im putting my stuff up now, Rob will be adding his photos soon, and his camera way betterer than mine lol

Mt Magdala Farm Buildings

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:39:00 +1300

Mt Magdala was a Catholic institution run by the Good Shepherd Sister’s on the outskirts of Christchurch, near Halswell. It operated from 1888 to 1968, at which time it was taken over by the St John of God Brother’s, who ran a boys home. It is interesting to note that both of these groups have paid out compensation to people who claim they were abused while in their care. There is an interesting article about abuse in Magdala institutions at www.peterellis.org.nz/church/2003/2003-0503_Press_DirtyLaundry.htm

My dad ran a nearby bakery and would donate each days leftovers to the St John of God boys. Lord knows if the boys ever got the leftovers but at least the dirty old priests didn’t get their hands (or any other parts of their body!) on me! Like many large institutions of the time, Mt Magdala was largely self sufficient, which included running their own farm. There are 5 buildings left, but 4 of them have been given demolition consent. The remaining one, called the granary (a building where grain is stored) is safe for now. It is a long thin building – maybe 6m x 30m.

Access is easy but best on the weekend so as to avoid the workers from the subdivision next door. Machinery was parked near the buildings when I was there. I don’t know when these buildings were last used, or when they will be demolished, but some interesting items were left behind.

It really pisses me off when these so called pillars of society abuse the power/responsibility given to them and they end up being the ones you end up having to protect yourself from

Another North Island Hydro-Powerstation

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:32:09 +1300

After reading about the power station here, i was keen as to find it.

We walked down the track, the excitement building all the way lol, until we got to the door. The door was locked but there were lights on behind it and looking at the powerhouse we could see some construction work taking place. I think the station is getting revamped by a historic society or something and is going to be open to the public which kinda sucks:( The walkway is up top of a cliff and the power house is quite away down. We got some photos of the door and falls but were really disapointed we couldnt find a way down to get in:( We’re planning another mission there to get inside so hopefully next time.

Hamilton Central Station

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:33:46 +1300

I thought it was about time someone wrote an experience for Hamilton:D Im sure most people in hamilton know about this place so its no secret but unlike most i go down there quite often, just find it real peaceful haha dont know why. Most of the station is gone now due to the wharehouse being built above it but the original platform is still there. When the wharehouse was built most of the platform was boarded up, being the hearty explorer i am i managed to squeeze through a hole into an old office. I got through and to my disapointment the office had been destroyed by a support from the building above, i noticed there was a small opening at the top of the wall, which happened to be about 8m up! I managed to scale the wall into the rooms behind it. I found my way down a ramp to a plywood door, which i unlocked(my pics explain). Its a cool place and worth a look. If you find your way down there beware of trains ive had a few close calls! haha:D

monastery

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:17:24 +1300

i found a old monastery that was being built but never got finished. i took my mum to show her i found a way in without useing a gate because it was locked! thers only the underground area and the foundations! people shouted at us from the houses so we had to go home!

Old Government Bonds Building

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:06:27 +1300

Having forgotten this place was here (even tho its blatantly in the middle of town and disturbingly close to the police kiosk) we thought it was about to=ime we had a look, only to find that one of the buildings has been turned into a vacant lot (thank christchurch!!) but thankfully there is still one three/four story high and like 50 metere long building left, we made our entrance, instantly greeted by the smell of hobo urine (shudder) went through a couple of rooms and found a stair case…..to nowhere, so moved onto the next room, finding another stair case that this time went up to floors and then to a door which had been nailed shut, it was at thsi point we realised that this part of the building had no connection to the rest of the complex, so back out of the building again we moved down further to the other end of the building, found a new entry but due to the nature of the entry and what we were equipped with at the time we had to abandon tonight’s mission until later this week, so stay tuned more to come on this one!

Wrights Hill Fortress

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:59:37 +1300

Well, another drunken night in town cruzing in the skyline (yes we had a sober driver lol) anyway when its time for a puff, an urbex type location is always a good mission! So we headed out to karori and checked out yet another wellington fortress! Was pretty cool, there were ladders decending into darkness, and tunnels, gunpits etc etc.. all the usual stuff! It was wierd though, the tunnels were sealed by some pretty sturdy iron doors, no way we were getting in there, although we did try! Glad we failed though because we found another door somewhere else in the grounds (all pits seem to be interconnected by tunnels) that had the mean security swipe card plus pin code, WTF ! Imagine if we had set something off haha we’d be wasted as hell with the army after us! Good times!

Heres some info on the history of the place http://www.whfrs.org.nz/history.html

I am going to go to one of the open days, I wanna see if the public get to go in that security door!!

All in all, good little random mission. Spectacular views of all wellington too!

Tikao Bay Mine Depot

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:32:41 +1300

Having had a read up on this place during the week and having nothing to do today, myself, ginja and knobcity went for a quick scout (and to buy some fudge) over in Akaroa. we arrived at the driveway to the site, and seeing no signs or gates we headed on up, only to come to a gate with a rediculous warning sign (see photo) as we were back down the narrow drive with a cliff to one side, we ran into three young folk walking up the drive, so we stopped and had a chat and found out they were doing the same thing as us, one of thier group lived in the area and said not to worry about the live in groundskeeper, so we dropped the car of and got our walk on, over a small gate and down the hill to the main building, which contained nothing but an old morris and a real mint landy, several sinks and misc broken wood, the buildings are in suprisingly good condition considering they are right on the water basically, moving on we went past the empty but locked guards house, then up the hill a bit to a locked brick building with no other entrances other than the aforementioned locked door, noticing some fresh tyre tracks in the grass, we decided to move on up the hill a bit more to where we found another bigger brick building and a smaller one, but neither of them had anything of interest in them, so from here we headed in the direction of the main admin buildings, noting a car there we made the call to go up and over the hill and see what we could see from there, we got ourselves to a good vantage point with plenty of cover and sat and waited for a bit, but nothing seemed to be going on, we did note that there were sky dishes on two of the buildings and also power lines and phone lines running into the buildings, so after we jotted down the rego the car there (for future info gathering purposes) we decided to leg it and go get our fudge, but stay tuned….more to come on this puppy.

North Island Hydro-Powerstation

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:25:59 +1300

After spending the night in smelly old Rotovegas and doing the customary gawk at bubbling mud and hot pools brimming with amoebic meningitis, we headed off towards a location we knew very little about but had decided to go check out because it was sort of on the way..

We noticed a caged-off hole that appeared to have been hacked out of the rock at base next to the river. Upon investigating we discovered that the hole continued deep into the hill, there was a little bit of water trickling out of it but it wouldn’t have been much past your ankles.

The grating covering the entrance appeared quite secure at first glance but closer inspection revealed that it wasn’t actually that great of a fit for the mouth of the rough-hewn tunnel. Fortunately the tunnel entrance was mostly out of view so we managed to squeeze around the side of bars without catching anyone’s attention.

The tunnel has been made with explosives or pick-axes (or maybe both?) but it runs without deviation right into the hill on a very slight incline. Its totally walkable – no need to hunch, but the floor is rough like the walls and there are small pools that vary in depth from an inch or two to just below your knees. It is really damp – I’m pretty sure there was actually mist in the air.

We soon realised that the tunnel contained a fair number of glow-worms and as we headed further into the tunnel their numbers increased; so much so that we could make out a faint greeny-blue glow emanating from the tunnel ahead – it was really quite amazing!

I’ve never seen so many glow worms in my life. The tunnel went on and on, the walls thick with glow worms almost all the way down the walls to the water. They were so close you could see the slimey wee buggers sliding around in their nests of sticky snare-lines.

We made it probably the good part of a kilometre into the tunnel before we decided to turn around and head back out into the sunlight – although it was still quite possible to go further there didn’t appear to be any interesting features up ahead and the tunnel’s condition did appear to be deteriorating slightly the further we went in. Moving over an uneven wet rock floor in pretty much pitch-black (aside from a torch) does a good job of taking it out of you too.

Kaimai Railway Tunnel

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:42:26 +1300

One fine day I was bored out of my mind, after looking around the net for places to explore, I found myself on the wises.co.nz maps. Looking around the area that I lived, I found a long stretch of perfectly straight railway… which appeared to go through the Kaimai mountain range!

I checked it out on Wikipedia, and discovered that yes, a rail tunnel runs underneath the mountains. It also told me that it was the longest rail tunnel in NZ. I got pretty excited and rang my brother, who was keen for the idea to explore it. We got ourselves some torches and headed off, not sure what we would find.

We headed down Old Te Aroha road, until we got to a rail bridge. We hid my car and walked down the railway tracks. We came around the corner, and there it was, a gaping hole in the side of the mountain, with the tracks disappearing into it.

We walked up to it, and… gutted. A sign told us that there were dangerous fumes in the tunnel. That made sense, we thought, with diesel trains passing through, it’d fill up with carbon monoxide and diesel dust. We were about to turn back, when my girlfriend-at-the-time (yes she came along) yelled “Train!”

We jumped into the bushes, and the train roared past. When it was gone, we came back out and looked into the tunnel. The mouth of it roared like a cyclone and we could feel wind rushing past us, into the tunnel. That decided us. There was NO WAY there was any poisonous fumes in that tunnel. For about 15 minutes, air rushed into the tunnel, so we switched on our torches and headed in after scouting the area for cameras. None seen.

Further into the tunnel, we found that every 100 metres or so there was a concrete bunker built into the side of the tunnel wall, in case someone was in there when a train came. That answered the question that was running through all our heads: “What if a train comes?”

Heading further in, we found something else. About 300 metres in, there was another tunnel perpendicular to the main tunnel. We found it was just another place to hide in if a train came. There was all sorts of crap in there, a mattress, beer cans and bottles, cigarette stubs… the lot. Someone with very low standards had been living in there a long time ago. We carried on, getting more and more excited.

About a kilometre in, we heard a faint noise… and turned around to see a bright yellow light in the tunnel. We all panicked, yelling “TRAIN! TRAIN !” and fled into the nearest bunker. It roared past, going much slower than we thought. The train was so close, if we reached our hand out, we could touch the carriages. The train soon was past, its little red light blinking in the darkness until we lost sight of it. We couldn’t actually see the other end of the tunnel, either it curved slightly or there was just too much dust in the air.

We carried on, with trains coming past every 15 minutes or so. At about 5 kilometres in, we didn’t even get worried if we saw a train come into the tunnel. They went so slow, it would take about 15-20 minutes before they even got to us.

So we kept on going for another couple of kilometres, then one of us said casually – “Train ahead.” There was, or so it seemed. The light didn’t get any bigger, but when we turned our torches off, the light seemed to move up and down and around. We kind of started crapping ourselves, it looked like a very blue light and we started to get worried that it was a person with a torch. We hid in a bunker, peeking out every now and then. Nothing happened, the light just stayed there. That was when we realised that it was the light at the end of the tunnel! We assumed that it seemed to roll around in the darkness because our eyes were rolling around trying to focus on something, which made it look like the light was doing that.

Every couple of kilometres there would be a sign that told us how far into the tunnel we were. There was a signal about half way along, and in one of the side tunnels, we found its circuit box. We pulled of the cover and marvelled at all the blinking lights and wires. There was also a microphone, like the ones truck drivers use. None of us pressed the button on the side because we were too scared of someone being alerted to our presence.

Also in the side tunnels were big steel boxes, like the ones the military use for ammunition. First time we found one, we got pretty excited and proceeded to break the padlock off, which was dumb I admit, but there was no WAY we were going to just pass it by. We were disappointed to find nothing in it except some hand tools and rusty spare train parts. We didn’t bother opening any more boxes after that.

We eventually got to the end, and mucked around there for a little while. There was a bridge there that went over a stream full of crystal clear Kaimai water. I drank some, and didn’t get giardia. A train came around the corner suddenly, and we made the FATAL MISTAKE of trying to wave him down to give us a lift through the tunnel. STUPID STUPID STUPID ! I still can’t believe we did such a damn stupid arsed thing! The guy drove right by us. We still didn’t click that it was a dumb thing to do.

We eventually decided it was time to go home, and walked nearly the whole way back. By the time we were 1 km away from the entrance, we were walking at about 1km/h and we were all completely STUFFED . But nearly there, we thought. Oh, how utterly, utterly wrong we were.

“Train!” someone said. We all piled into the tunnel, but then realised we couldn’t hear the train. We peeked out the tunnel… and we could see it wasn’t a train. It was a maintenance truck, and it was stopping at every side tunnel, shining in a torch.

We panicked. We had taken some tools with us from the steel box, because they seemed too good to waste, and they were in the backpack. My girlfriend had the video camera (tape got lost sorry!). I threw the bag down the tracks, hoping they wouldn’t find it, and we all packed into the darkest corner at the end of the side tunnel, all of us shit scared.

We heard the engine of the truck coming closer and closer, and saw the light shining up the tunnel. At last, it came past our tunnel… AND KEPT GOING ! We all breathed a sigh of utter relief… but it was not to be. We heard the sound of a vehicle reversing, and back it came. “THERE THEY ARE !” yelled someone, and out jumped a bunch of cops! One of them came back with a bag, yelling “THEY’VE GOT RAILWAY STUFF !”

The cops didn’t talk to us much, just ordered us to get into the tray of the ute, and it set off towards the tunnel entrance. We were all completely GUTTED , pretty much in shock because we were so tired, it was about 11:00pm at that stage, and it had all happened so quickly. Then I realised we had the camera, which had footage of us playing with the signal box and writing our names at the end of the tunnel. Luckily, they had been so excited about the bag that they forgot to search my girlfriend. I tried to get the tape out to chuck it away, but the battery was dead! I was ready to chuck away my mums $700 camera, but then we decided to let my girlfriend stuff it down her top, since she was wearing a big thick jacket thing.

We got to the end, and there were about 5 trains lined up, cause they refused to go into the tunnel while there were people in there. One of the guys told us we had caused $10,000 worth of losses because the trains couldn’t meet their schedule.

The cops took us back and processed us, got our fingerprints etc (GUTTED) and even tried to get my DNA , which I refused. The cop didn’t like me after that. We got given a court date, which we turned up to. The cop refused to give us diversion; he obviously wanted us to have criminal records, the dickhead. The magistrate set a court date in the Hamilton court. We hired a good lawyer, and she defended us. My brother got discharged without conviction, and the cops immediately offered me diversion when they realised I was about to be let off too. They charged us with trespassing and theft (of the tools.) The cops didn’t even do anything to my girlfriend, maybe since she was a girl or something! She successfully hid the camera though. I’m damn glad that we took those tools, because that distracted them from the camera. We would have been in deep shit if they had found that.

Anyway, the magistrate ordered us to pay $300 each to the salvies, and the lawyer cost me $500. I later worked it out that every metre we walked in the tunnel cost me about 6 cents! 17.8km, there and back. I think it was worth it!

Sorry about the long story, just wanted to share what happens when it all goes wrong! My advice for anyone wanted to do the tunnel is:

MAKE SURE NO TRAIN DRIVERS SEE YOU ! (That was our fatal, stupid, brainless, retarded fault. I still can’t believe we tried to catch a ride with him. Stupid, stupid, stupid!)
Take two high powered torches (you can’t see ANYTHING without them)
Water and food. (It’s a long walk. We were in the tunnel from 1:00pm to 11:00pm, there and back.)
A camera! (Don’t fail where I did!)
Good footwear (Walking along the rocks is pretty tough on your ankles.)
A fishing line to catch the eels that live in the little stream that runs down the tunnel! _(We saw some pink coloured eels that must never see the light of day. But don’t catch them, that was a joke.)

Sorry about the lack of content, but I’ve attached some pics of it that I found on the net, and also the location and length of it on Google Earth. Also a Youtube vid, entering from the Tauranga side.

Would be really excited to see anyone’s pics if they have been through it as well!

Oringi Meatworks

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:45:28 +1300

Well was driving by here and totally couldnt help myself! Drove straight in main entrance and up to carpark, and hello, theres a car parked right by the security booth:( I thought, great, off to a flying start! Thought oh well theyve seen me now i might as well go talk to them.. waltzed up to the booth and it was deserted! I walked along the fenceline taking a couple of photos until i got to the main gate. The small gate on the side was open and I still couldnt see anybody, so I wandered in.. I thought if I came across the security I could just say I went to the security booth but couldnt find anyone! Wandered along the main path in full view of everything, taking pics as I went along. Got around the back a bit further and there were open doors everywhere, tonnes of machinery including forklifts etc just lying around, was really spooky, could hear something banging inside one of the buildings where the forklifts were and thought I had found the owner of the car at the gate, called out and still got nothing, but ventured inside.. was drafty in there so decided something was banging in the wind and explored around in there, keeping a keen eye out for people. Wandered back to the main building and hello theres more open doors, and a direct rooftop access!!! Decided to have a look inside first and took a couple of pics, went upstairs and took pic overlooking yard too… then disaster struck….

Now this was only supposed to be a reconnaisance mission, so wasnt exactly well prepared, next thing I know.. FLAT BATTERIES !!! NOOOOOOOO so I explored around some more with nothing at all to show for it and then left. Didnt see anyone the whole time I was there, I suspect that car was a decoy, but cant be sure!

The place is huge, only slightly smaller than longburn, and I didnt see half of it by a long shot! But it didnt stink at all like a recently closed meatworks should! Bonus! Definitly worthy of missioning to!! (after all who lives in Oringi lol)

So there ya go folks, plenty of fresh territory! Go finish what I started! Ill definitly be going back!!