The Eastern Bay of Plenty has several geocaches which owe part of their stories to the Tunnicliffe Mills.
Lake Rotoma has its own "Tunnicliffe's Track" ....a popular track for hunting as it provides easy access into some pretty nice native bush. Here you can find GC43VZA, GC26V89, GC2EJM0 and GC2ERRC
In 1929 the Tunnicliffe family started their native sawmilling business in this area when they moved to Manawahe from Te Karaka and Tuai
The Rotoma track is an old logging road put in by the Tunnicliffe Timber Company post WWII (1948). The area was logged for mainly Rimu, Tawa and some of the Rata, there are still some very nice specimens in the facade that were left along the State highway and there are plenty of young rimu further into the track. The logs were hauled out and taken to their Rotoma mill for milling. This mill ran until 1970, the equipment was dismantled and taken to Edgecumbe; Tunnicliffes ran this mill till 1976, when it closed. The mill building stood until 1987, when it was toppled by the Edgecumbe earthquake in March that year.
Tunnicliffe’s Mill was one of the last steam run mills in New Zealand. This Steam Engine was made in 1882 in Yorkshire, England; and it has stood in front of the Whakatane Museum for 40 years where it was home to a cache for some years. Now it has come HOME to the Ratahi Reserve in the centre of the Edgecumbe Township due to the endeavours of the voluntary “Edgecumbe Development and Improvement Team”. Eventually they hope to build up steam and have it running again.
The engine was taken apart for its journey and reassembled where it is now and the old nano cache remained undisturbed throughout it all !
However we have since replaced it with an ECLIPSE tin cache, still NO pencil --- BYO! Please take care replacing the cache as not all parts of the Steam Engine are magnetic, thank you.