An odd road

Renata Hut, Tararua Forest Park

Roads are convenient things, often providing easy access to the playgrounds of trampers. That being said, ‘road-walking’ is often something thought to be best avoided if at all possible. A trip down Odlins Road (aka Waiotauru Rd) presents a unique exception to this rule.

When I was trying to think of easy places to go on Waitangi Weekend Renata Hut sprang to mind. The weather forecast was terrible, but this bothered me little. It was well into the afternoon by the time Florence and I arrived at the Akatarawa Saddle via the winding road that climbed from Waikanae. To our north sat the Kapiti Coast and to our south the Hutt Valley. The Akatarawa had been proposed in the 19th century as a potential route for a railway north from Wellington, but surveying soon proved this impractical. Scattered around the saddle were the remnants of cars, broken and burnt. A friend of mine had forewarned me not to park my car here, and in regards to Odlins Road said “you won’t get a long way in…”. I took this as a challenge, not least as I thought that it would be great not to have my car torched.

On the side of the road a parting in the trees could be made out, with a steep muddy track ascending into the darkness of the forest. This was Odlins Road. The road was constructed in the 1960’s by Odlins Timber, which was at a time the largest…