Taitua Arboretum (Autumn)

I would often leave the house an hour or so before sunrise, arriving at the arboretum in the dark of pre-dawn.  You will notice the fog and mist in some of the photos due to the time of day, and many of the “route” shots were taken on the return journey once the sun had come up.

 The Taitua Arboretum is 4km from the Dinsdale Countdown supermarket.  To get there you walk West along Whatawhata road, almost to the end of the residential houses.  Head left on to Melva Street and walk the curve of the road up hill until you arrive at Till’s Lookout reserve.  A track leads you up to the high point of the reserve, a point from which you can look back over the south-western part of Hamilton City.

From there you follow the track alongside farm paddocks and farm houses, arriving at Wallace Road. 

The track parallels the road up a slight incline for about 550m.  Cross the road to follow the gravel driveway into, then in front of, the ugly modern looking house (oops, apologies to the builders/owners), to the access straight ahead.

 

The path then drops down through the fields to the southern end of the arboretum.

You can access the reserve from here or continue west and then north around to the main car park (the route I often did to increase the distance of the walk). 

The arboretum itself contains a, mostly, circular walk.  The 20 hectares of land was gifted to the city of Hamilton in 1997 by Bunny and John Mortimer, after they had spent over two decades planting and nurturing it.  An arboretum is essentially a “tree park”.  Technically it is only open from 8 a.m. until half an hour before dusk, but that only applies to the chain that is padlocked across the car park.  If on foot, you can access it at any time.  There are public conveniences at the car park.

The arboretum is a safe place for birdlife, as well as other wildlife that might be lucky enough to glimpse.  Dogs are allowed but must be kept on a leash (so as to not stress/harm the wildlife, or upset other users of the park), a rule that unfortunately is ignored by some irresponsible dog owners who frequent there.

I visited the arboretum many times in the summer of 2017 and autumn of 2018.  The autumn pictures are included in this post, while you can find the summer ones here.