Tunnel Beach (Dunedin, Otago) Traditional Cache

Tunnel Beach is one of Dunedin’s most popular tourist attractions, visited by about 40,000 people each year. You'll enjoy a short walk, spectacular 30 metre high sandstone cliffs and an historic tunnel down to the beach. The cache is placed in a safe area, well away from cliff edges.

The Tunnel Beach walkway and surrounding property is now conservation land - in future, a connecting track through public land to the end of Hillhead Road and through easements along the coastline to Cargills Castle will be developed.

WARNING: Unprotected cliff edges. Keep children close.

It’s a 2.6 km return walk to Tunnel Beach with a 150 m ascent. The track is a zig-zag with a fairly gentle gradient and several viewpoints on the way.ou to sit and admire the view on the way back up.

Allow 1 hour for the return trip (a fit person can do it much faster).

NO DOGS. The beach is unsafe for swimming - there is a strong current offshore.

FINDING THE CACHE: About halfway down the grassy slope to the east of the track. It's in a mown grass area - it's not in an area being revegetated. You might want to sit down beside that biggest rock in the bank and admire the scenery for a while. Then reach behind you and slip your hand into the gap under the boulder. Please replace the cache as far back as possible and camouflage the gap with grass.

If you visit at low tide, you can enjoy a sandy beach and explore a cave underneath the main headland. You can also get around a headland to see the second bay at the eastern end of the beach.
St Clair tide times: Visit link

It’s exhilarating to be at Tunnel Beach during a stormy high tide, feeling the headland shudder as waves crash into the cliffs and watching spray flung high into the air. Only salt-tolerant native herbs such as glasswort, usually found in salt marshes, can grow on the headland.

The sea arch under the headland is spectacular but, as you can see in the 1925 photo, there used to be two more very photogenic sea arches at the eastern end of Tunnel Beach. Photos seem to show the arches beginning to collapse in the 1960s - they were certainly gone by 1983 when the walkway was opened. Now, just a sea stack remains.

Tunnel Beach's namesake feature is the historic 1876-77 tunnel through the cliff with 72 steps down to the beach. There is enough light from both ends to go through easily without a torch.

HISTORY

This tunnel was built by John Cargill whose residence “Sea View” was only 800 m away from the beach on Hillhead Road. His 152 acre farm stretched along the clifftops towards St Clair.

In 1876 John’s brother Edward commissioned architect Frank Petre to build Edward’s new house “The Cliffs” on the clifftop above St Clair. (It was soon nicknamed Cargill’s Castle.) Since “The Cliffs” was only 1.6 km away from Sea View, it would have been very convenient for John Cargill to hire Petre and his workmen to cut the tunnel at the same time.

The Burton Brothers photo shows the tunnel in the late 1870s (interesting to see that the shield in the cliff at the top left of the exit must have been carved later).

Tunnel Beach, usually called “Cargill’s Cliffs” or “Seaview Beach”, became a popular beauty spot. It was recommended for sketching from nature Otago Witness 19 February 1891

In 1885 the Otago Witness 21 March 1885 recommended “the best sport is to come at high tide and let down a net containing lumps of meat over the cliff. You can actually discern the awkward, ungainly crayfish moving up solemnly to the bait. As many as fifty have been taken at a haul”.

By 1892 the stairway was “partially ruined by mischievous boys rolling stones down it” Timaru Herald 15 November 1892

And the steps were “almost impassable “ by 1900 Otago Daily Times 12 January 1900

The Otago Witness 1 July 1903 reported that Mr Millar gave two exhibitions of his model for drawing motor power from the waves of the sea at the Tunnel Beach on Saturday, when great interest was shown by the public in his novel and apparently very promising invention.

Something like 200 persons, including many ladies, made their toilsome way over the rugged country from St. Clair to witness the operation. The machine ran freely, and demonstrated the fact that a new mechanical power had been introduced into the industries of humanity by the fertile genius of man. US Patent 702577A

Caversham Harriers regularly ran from St Clair baths to Tunnel Beach e.g. ODT 6 Sept 1920

As the 20th century wore on, landowners discouraged people from their previous “wandering at will’ from St Clair along the clifftops to Tunnel Beach. By the 1970s, the only way the public could visit Tunnel Beach was in an organised group tour.

Luckily, public pressure brought about the 1975 Walkways Act, and on 16 March 1983 an easement over private land down to Tunnel Beach was opened as a walkway. The tunnel steps were concreted at this time. The walkway was officially gazetted 30 March 1992. The track was regraded, gravelled and fenced on both sides in 2012.

The next access goal is a walkway from Second Beach in St Clair, to Cargill’s Castle, and along the clifftops to Tunnel Beach. (Incidentally, the Maori track from the Peninsula to Green Island went up Forbury Head and along the clifftop.) This walkway was first proposed by public access spokesperson Bruce Mason as a Millennium project. Now it is an aim of the Cargills Castle trustees: ODT 15 May 2015 ODT 20 May 2015. Much of the land along the clifftops is public (see WAMS map), but there would need to be easements across a number of private properties as well.

GEOLOGY

The 30 m high cliffs at Tunnel Beach are Otakou group Caversham sandstone, 13.5 to 22 million years old. (See GNS geology map Visit link )

This 230 m thick layer of "calcareous sandstone, sandy limestone and minor tuff" was laid down while eastern Otago was under the sea. From about 25 million years ago the land was gradually uplifted by tectonic plate movement along the Alpine Fault.

In the sandstone layers you can see rusty streaks formed by iron staining, shell fragments, brachiopod or sea urchin fossils, and even eroded whale vertebrae about 5m up the western side.

From the access track you can see more recent volcanic cliffs. Looking west is the jagged ‘tooth’ of Blackhead, basalt organ pipe formations from the Dunedin Volcanic group 10-21 mya. Looking east are the basalt cliffs above St Clair, 12 – 13 mya formed during the first eruptive phase of the Dunedin Volcano.

Related earthcaches nearby: Fancy Some Fun Fossicking Fossil Fauna; Blackhead Basalt Columns;
Rakiriri Remains/Reminders.

POETRY

Poets have drawn inspiration from Tunnel Beach. James K Baxter visited with his first serious girlfriend, medical student Jane Aylmer, in 1946. Clearly there were no other people around at the time…

Tunnel Beach (1946)

The waist-high sea was rolling
Thunder along her seven iron beaches
As we climbed down to rocks and the curved sand,
Drowned Lyonesse lay lost and tolling
Waiting the cry of the sun's phoenix
From the sea-carved cliffs that held us in their hand.

Forgotten there the green
Paddocks we walked an hour before,
The mare and the foal and the witch-tormented wood
And the flaked salt boughs, for the boughs of flame were seen
Of the first garden and the root
Of graves in your salt mouth and the forehead branded fire.

Through the rock tunnel whined
The wind, Time's hound in leash,
And stirred the sand and murmured in your hair.
The honey of your moving thighs
Drew down the cirrus sky, your doves about the beach
Shut out sea thunder with their wings and stilled the lonely air.

But O rising I heard the loud
Voice of the sea's women riding
All storm to come. No virgin mother bore
My heart wave eaten. From the womb of cloud
Falls now no dove, but combers grinding
Break sullen on the last inviolate shore.

Rhadamanthus (1966 -67)

Above the place of love
The cliff was a high stone Rhadamanthus
Washed by the black froth of the sea

The Tunnel (draft 1966)

…one vast face
Like Rhadamanthus crowned with
Toppling rocks, who is the myth
Of judgement when love dies.

Letter to Robert Burns (1963)

Biology, mythology,
Go underground when the bookmen preach,
And I must thank the lass who taught me
My catechism at Tunnel Beach;
For when the hogmagandie ended
And I lay thunder-struck and winded,
The snake-haired Muse came out of the sky
And showed her double axe to me.
Since then I die and do not die.
'Jimmy,' she said, 'you are my ugliest son;
I'll break you like a herring-bone.'

Tunnel Beach (2004)

John Cargill
flaunting his wealth
preserved his daughters'
Victorian modesty;

Drove a tunnel
with slippery steps;
penetrating the rock
to their bathing cove.

So much digging for
wetness and decency;
did Cargill ever get
his own joke?

Pride and decency
found the air sharp
the cliffs stark naked
the sea unimpressed.

There was a judgement;
a last day of walking up
and on to the eternal city
of antiquity and icecream.

Rome`s a world away, decently
clad in cut stone and occupancy;
comfortably far from clawing
ocean, raw cliffs, harsh gulls.

At the foot of the Spanish Steps,
beached in Miss Babington's shop,
they sell icecream to tourists
who gather like Dominican gulls.

CARGILL FAMILY NOTES

John Cargill (1821 -1898) of "Sea View" near Tunnel Beach

John Cargill was in the Royal Navy, and settled in Ceylon as a coffee planter until 1846. He accompanied his father William Cargill (lay leader of the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland Otago settlement) on the “John Wickliffe” to Dunedin in 1848.

In 1849 John married Sarah, eldest daughter of John Jones (early whaler and pastoralist at Matanaka). It was the first wedding held at First Church.

John Cargill was a successful merchant and very prosperous runholder, holding the Tokomairiro, Mt Stuart (Meadowbank), Tuapeka and then the huge Teviot run (Old Stones, First Phones).

From about 1859 John moved back to Dunedin, living at the 152 acre Sea View farm above Tunnel Beach. After Sarah’s death in 1866, John married Eliza Featherstone in 1869 (daughter of the Superintendent of Wellington Province). He was Colonel in command of Otago volunteers and took part in provincial and national politics.
John Cargill lost his money following the Long Depression of the mid-1870s, the rabbit plague which reached Teviot in 1877 and the Great Snow and floods of 1878. He and his family left for England in 1884 and then migrated to British Columbia in 1887, where John Cargill died in 1898.

John Cargill (1821 -1898) married
[1] 1849 Sarah Charity Jones (1831 -1866 aged 36)
[2] 1869 Eliza Featherstone (1847 – 1901)

Children with Sarah:
•1850 – 1931 Charlotte Eliza - married Charles Warburton in 1877 - died in Victoria British Columbia
•1851 – 1941 Madeline - married John E. Harris in 1877 - died in Victoria, British Columbia
•1853 - ? Eliza Mary - married Edward Robert Anderson (co-leasee of Teviot run) in 1872 - was living in Europe at time of her father’s death in 1898.
•1855 – 1920 Eleanor Sarah - married Charles Gilbert Fauquire 1880 - died Salmon Arm, British Columbia
•1857 – 1922 John Jones - died Washington State, USA
•1860 - 1867 William Robert - died in Dunedin aged 7
•1862 - 1903 Edward Chalmers – died British Columbia
•1864 – 1914 Isabella - died in Vancouver, British Colombia
Children with Eliza:
•1870 – 1959 Anthony Featherston - doctor in London - died UK. (In Verdun in 1940 his daughter Georgette received the Cross of the Legion of Honour for bravery in combat- see lognote 1 August 2015 to see the full story.)
•1872 – 1872 Muriel - died aged 1 hour
•1875 – 1876 Raleigh Ansell Featherstone - died aged 8 months on board the steamer Alhambra, of inflammation of the lungs
•1877 - 1954 Campbell Featherstone - died in UK


John & Sarah Cargill at Sea View farm with children Charlotte with Eleanor in pram; John Jones on pony c1860
Aerial photo showing Sea View farm (pines); arches; Tunnel Beach (Hardwicke Knight) c 1960;

Edward Bowes Cargill (1823- 1903) of "The Cliffs" (Cargill's Castle) above St Clair

Edward Bowes Cargill served in the merchant navy, then from 1844 as a banker and merchant in Ceylon. In 1857 he went into business in Melbourne and the same year joined his parents and siblings in Otago. He built "The Cliffs" (Cargill's Castle) in 1876.

Edward Bowes had business interests in almost every major enterprise in Otago, served on the boards of many public institutions including chairing the committee establishing Otago University in 1869, served as Italian consul, and was active in local and national politics. In a rush of nostalgia, Dunedin elected him mayor to preside over the city’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 1898.

Edward Bowes Cargill (1823 – 1903) married [1864] Dorothy Jemima Nesham (1823 - 1889)

Children:
•1859 Margaret - married Frank Petre in 1881 (Scandalous! He was a Catholic!)
•1861 Frances Mary (Fanny) - looked after an elderly gentleman Mr Marshal, and inherited his house Wildwood in Belmont Lane, Dunedin.
•1863 Anne Elizabeth - went to Rome and ran a pensione (private boarding house).
•1864 Isabel - went to Rome; with Derbyshire woman Anna Maria Babington opened Babington’s English Tea Rooms; married portrait painter Guiseppe de Pozzo in 1903. Her daughter Contessa Dorotea Bodini later ran the tearooms, still in business by the Spanish Steps.
•1867 Helen - died in Dunedin aged 30 in 1897


"The Cliffs" with hounds about to set out on a hunt
Aerial photo showing "The Cliffs" (Cargills Castle) with Tunnel Beach headland just visible in background

A FINAL MYSTERY: A LONG-LOST STALACTITE CAVE AT TUNNEL BEACH?

And, there is a mystery… In the Timaru Herald 15 November 1892 Frank Petre reported a Stalactite Cave in that second bay of Tunnel Beach, only reachable by squeezing through a narrow fissure near the high water mark. Petre found himself in a lofty cavern, pierced for perhaps sixty feet straight into the sandstone, in some places about thirty feet and in others twelve feet or fourteen feet wide... From the roof of the cavern depend groups of stalactites, several a foot or more long.

A lost cavern? No doubt the cave entrance has been covered by sand for the past century? Since these cliffs are "calcareous sandstone" there are areas of low grade limestone, depending on the conditions when the sediments were laid down, so a stalactite cave would be possible... Sea kayakers say that there are caves between St Clair and Tunnel Beach, which can be paddled into in calm conditions, with flowstone inside. So if you rediscover this secret cave, let us know!

Information:
Department of Conservation track information visit link
Our St Clair: A Resident’s History Barbara Newton 2003
St Clair tide times: visit link
Cargill’s Castle: visit link
Biographies:
John Cargill: Obituary Otago Witness 1898 visit link
John Cargill: Wikipaedia John Cargill politican visit link
Edward Bowes Cargill: Obituary Otago Daily Times 1903 visit link
Edward Bowes Cargill: Cyclopaedia of Otago article (1905) visit link
Edward Bowes Cargill: Wikipaedia Edward Bowes Cargill politician visit link
Wiliam Cargill: Cyclopaedia of Otago 1905 visit link
Wiliam Cargill: Te Ara biography visit link
John Jones: Te Ara biography visit link
Dr Featherstone: Te Ara biography visit link
Dr Featherstone: Clan MacFarlane genealogy biography visit link
Frank Petre: Te Ara biography visit link
Dunedin Family History Group Nov 2009 newsletter p10visit link
New Zealand Book Council: James K Baxter visit link
Geology:
GNS geology map visit link
Dunedin Rock and Mineral Club visit link
The Coastal Paleontologist visit link
Botany:
DSIR Botany Division Vegetation report Tunnel Beach 1981 visit link
Photo sources:
Digital NZ - Tunnel Beach photos visit link
Hocken Snapshop – Cargill photos visit link