Xtra-Long Beach (Dunedin, Otago) Mystery Cache
Hidden : 9/13/2013
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
3 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:


Up until the 1900s Long Beach was a great deal shorter than it is now
         – it was 1.89 km long, now it's 2.34 km long -
so maybe we should rename it “Xtra-Long Beach”?

The puzzle start icon is at Drivers Rock, which used to be the northern end of Long Beach. The final cache is an easy walk plus a short sharp scramble away. It's that familiar ex-2012 Mega Event container; please make sure it's left safely clipped in and well concealed.

NOTE: At high tide you cannot walk along parts of the beach - the dunes are being eroded at present.
Beach entry points for some access tracks are included to help your return. Dogs permitted, but must be kept under control. You'll find the cache at:

Oui Yes Leap of Faith Cuttlefish Not Love Don't Live Here Anymore Jumping Jellyfish Canoeing Down Everest Beachwalk Bumpkin Myopia Alesia Go Drury Lane

The geocheck will give you the updated hide coordinates and hide clue: Check solution

Drivers Rock, also called “The Climbing Rock” or "The Pinnacle" is regarded as “the epicentre of Dunedin rockclimbing”, popular from the 1950s to the present day. It was here in the 1960s that Bob Cunninghame introduced the use of nuts, a form of climbing protection as safe as and less damaging to the rock than pitons. Climbing History; Long Beach - Pinnacle Backside; Pinnacle - Lower Sunnyside; Pinnacle - Upper Sunnyside. Apparently there are half a dozen members in the "Long Beach Broken Back Club", one paralysed, but no modern day fatalities (touch wood).

At high tide, the sea used to come right up to the cliff face at Drivers Rock. The northern bay with Cathedral Cave and the Ballroom Cave was called “Cave Beach” or "Purakanui Ladder Beach" and could only be reached at a low spring tide. From the late 1800s a ladder was fastened at the low part of the cliff beside Cathedral Cave, giving easy access from Purakanui across farmland. The last ladder pulled off in 1974 when an exceptionally high tide flooded part of Long Beach township and washed many metres of sand away from the beach, leaving the ladder’s anchor block dangling. You can still see concrete and twisted metal on the rock.


The macrocarpas on the clifftop were planted by Richard Driver (1809 – 1897), a whaler, first official Otago Harbour pilot and keeper of the Taiaroa lighthouse. He married Motoitoi (daughter of the local chief) in 1839 and lived with her in the Kaikai Beach cave. After Motoitoi's death he had a de facto marriage with her sister. In 1849 Richard married 17-year-old settler Elizabeth Robertson. In all, he had 15 children. When Richard retired as pilot in 1860 he farmed land granted to him by Governor Grey at Purakanui behind the clifftop.

In 1890 Richard and Elizabeth's youngest child, 13 year old Agnes, was hiding behind the macrocarpa saplings spying on her sister who was being courted by a local lad. She fell, was discovered that night alive but badly injured, and died ten days later. Agnes is buried in the same grave as her father at Purakanui Cemetery. Otago Witness 15 May 1890 Inquest; Casualties

Until European settlement, Long Beach had a tidal lagoon where the swamp is now, with the entrance by Pilot Point. Once the bush was felled the lagoon silted up. A settlement area on an old boulder bank behind the lagoon (shown by the dashed line in the diagram) was a seasonal fishing spot for Maori from moa-hunter days. It was named Wharau Wera Wera, warm shelter; a sunny spot tucked away from southerly winds. Middens show that barracuda, red cod and hapuku were caught and dried, and greenstone was worked. In 1947, 1950 and 1954 burials were excavated. In 1977 a wider excavation was carried out, finding another burial.

Long Beach was a popular place for fossicking (in the days when that was considered acceptable - of course any disturbance of an historic site is now illegal). The Otago Museum has a large collection of artifacts from the area.

The Maori coastal track here descended from Pilots Point to Long Beach, followed along the beach past the lagoon, crossed the flat to a gap in the cliffs (starting from the recreation reserve about 100 m west of Mihiwaka Rd- a rockfall has blocked it now), climbed up to the top of the hill and crossed to Purakanui. Mantell (Commissioner for the Extinguishment of Native Claims) followed this track on 9 April 1852. From Pilot Point he went down a very disagreeable sloping track with a precipice below it to Long Beach. Fine hard sand – about a mile long. Went to the very end of this, and turned sharp under the cliffs along the track to the bush. Again up the hill and at 2 stopped at the top. A second Maori track went through the bush, descended to the back of Long Beach Flat, passed through the settlement, climbed back up the hill and joined the first track around Purakanui cemetery.

The sale of land from Kaiapoi down to Heywards Point (for just £2000) was negotiated by Kemp in 1848, on behalf of the Crown. In 1865 a Maori Reserve, Wharau Wera Wera (warm shelter), was granted at Long Beach. (However, the court ordered it to be partitioned into individual titles in 1891 and by 1933 it was lost through sales.) Twenty years after Dunedin’s founding in 1848, most available farmland on the fertile Taieri (part of Tuckett’s original 1844 Otago Purchase ) had been taken up and settlers had to look elsewhere. In 1868 the district’s surveyed farmland was sold by ballot and was slowly developed as subsistence farming.

From around 1900 Long Beach started to attract holidaymakers, with people camping on the beach frontage over Christmas. Some arranged for local farmers to transport them in carts from Mihiwaka station.

In 1921 James Spence, a coal merchant and carrier of Dunedin, bought the main property at Long Beach and developed it as a township. The quarter acre sections were auctioned off in 1922. Extensions beside Drivers Stream and the beachfront were developed in 1953. Cribs were built from whatever was cheapest – look for the one with a railway carriage! There is no reticulated water or sewerage.

In 1942, during the threat of Japanese invasion, National Reserve troops camped where the playing field now is and gun emplacements and machine gun posts were installed on the cliffs. As described in the information board at Long Beach carpark, after WW2 the Long Beach Amenity Society and Domain Board developed the present beachfront reserve and in 1962 built the McCurdy-Grimman Hall. You'll admire the work that's gone into replanting native trees and pikao along the dunes.

Information:
"Te Pari Rehu: the Misty Cliffs" Stan Durry & Dawn Paterson (1998)
Rural Rambles: The Coast from Otago Heads to the Pleasant River Mouth (Otago Witness, 11 Jan 1894 p35)

Additional Hints (No hints available.)



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