shania.funurl.com

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AGREEMENT REACHED ON 'TWAIN TRACK'

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stuff.co.nz
September 25, 2007

A link in what will eventually form a walking track the length of New Zealand has been secured after an ongoing wrangle between the Department of Conservation (DOC) and a Wanaka farming family was resolved.

An agreement over the marginal strips on the Fern Burn, a stream near Wanaka, was reached with the McRae family after more than a year of negotiation, DOC said today.

The track along the Fern Burn, also known as Jack Hall Creek, was a condition of Canadian singer Shania Twain's 2004 purchase of the Motatapu and Mt Soho Station pastoral leases.

Twain, whose real name is Eilleen Lange, and her husband Robert, gifted 27km of track in September 2004 as part of the condition of sale.

However, the track was stymied after the McRaes, on the neighbouring station Alpha Burn, questioned whether the marginal strip rights existed all the way through their farm.

The Fern Burn provided a natural entrance point onto the so-called "Twain Track" but as a result of the dispute it could not be finished at the northern, Lake Wanaka, end.

Otago Conservator Jeff Connell said the mediated settlement involved a payment of $250,000 to the McRaes to cover costs.

The agreement cleared the way for DOC to complete a day walk to a new beech forest conservation area in the Fern Burn.

"This also opens up our preferred route for the new Motatapu tramping track," said Mr Connell.

The Motatapu tramping track will be part of Te Araroa/The Long Pathway, which is the walkway planned to go from one end of New Zealand to the other.

The tramp will follow the Fern Burn to its headwaters on Motatapu station, and then travel across the mountains to the goldfields ghost town of Macetown before linking to existing tracks to Arrowtown.

Mr Connell said it was expected to have the Motatapu tramping track open for the public by Easter 2008.

Duncan McRae said the family were pleased dogs would be banned on the track through Alpha Burn Station.

The family would be able to continue farming deer on their station, and cross the marginal strips for farming purposes.

Te Araroa Trust chief executive Geoff Chapple said the Fern Burn provided the "very best start" to what would become both a popular two-day tramping track, and also the main Te Araroa link track between Wanaka and Queenstown.

DOC has said the Fern Burn was capable of bringing 1000 trampers a year to the old mining site Macetown by the end of its third year of operation.

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