Telephone line to the lonely Nevis

The famed Nevis Valley is now all but deserted.  It was not always so.

To get into "The Nevis" you have to drive right up over the Carrick Mountain Range and down the other side.  1300 meters (4000 feet) straight up then down on a quite minimal road. 

1150 Meters (3400 feet) straight up. 

There was/is a lot of gold in "The Nevis" and a gold rush in the 1860s with hundreds if not  thousands of miners.  A long period with 600 or so Chinese miners and later periods of gold dredges, those marvels of Victorian technology, working the river flats.

But few live there now and only about two people stay over on the cattle stations when the snow comes in the winter

There were no trees at all in this landscape when people first came.  So the sole telephone  (telegraph?) line was mounted on the rock outcrops which so typify our local mountains.

Telegraph line.  No Trees mean no poles.  So use what you have.

You can see how steeply this goes up.

 The rocks were there and worked.  Who needs timber poles? 

Wises         "Directory of every place in New Zealand 1912" has the entry.

"NEVIS, Otago. A mining settlement, 175 m north-west from Dunedin. Rail to Clyde, then coach via Cromwell and Bannockburn 20 m, thence by mail buggy bi-weekly (Monday and Friday) in summer (15s), returning following days; or rail to Garston, thence coach weekly (Friday) 20 miles (15s). Large areas have been taken up for dredging purposes, and six dredges are now working. Sluicing is also carried on to some extent. There are also first-class coal deposits showing here. One hotel. Roads bad. Telephone and post office.  Doctor at Cromwell, 25 m"

The top

There is no telephone to the Nevis now.  There are not enough people.

Down to a lonely valley