A Damn Good Fossick....

Am_Fet writes:

Well, Monday found me again in the wilds of Taranaki occupying the left seat of a few locomotives with hospitality and lunch provided by Drew. As I dont get up that way as often as I'd like, I decided that Monday was the day to spend some time in Patea photographing the old waterfront cool stores and trying hard to get the song "Poi E" out of my head....


Turned out that it was well worth the visit and an enjoyable hour was had by all (well, Drew and I) as we risked life and limb walking over end-of-life timber.


First stop was the compressor room that drove the refrigeration plant. Drew can remember it when it was full of equipment, but now regrettably only the main wheel remains on its pedestals (its about my height, BTW, so it aint small).


The cheese stores are massive reinforced concrete structures, and this is the view on the ground floor showing all the buttressing needed to stop the 2nd floor suddenly being at ground level....It was very eeiry walking through here, and Drew mentioned the local scroatlings used the area to abandon cars in.

After traversing an external staircase that looked none to stable, we emerged onto the upstairs loading bays for a view over the old wharf and the river.


From there, we wandered back out through a gaping hole in the other side of the building to find the worlds most perfect "railfan deckchair" spot. Might have to visit this again, methinks...


Our final stop was the old railway wharf further to the north which is in a similar state of dereliction to the cheese store wharf.


Although I was a bit ambivalent about the exploring when Drew first suggested it to me (I had been awake since 0300 that morning), I am very happy that I relented. I've now got enough photos and a new understanding of the place to help when I get around to building a layout based on the place (obviously not soon!)

For those with a similar love of industrial archeology, I've uploaded the whole collection to flickr here.