USE OF HAAST PASS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28679, 1 September 1958, Page 8

USE OF HAAST PASS

Cattle From Westland

Although no date has yet been given for the completion of the Haast pass road which will permit a full tourist circuit of th« South Island, the route is now being used commercially for the first time.

Last Friday the first stores for the works camp at Haast arrived from Otago.

Also last week, 150 bales of hay were carted by truck from Hawea Flat through to Okuru by th> same route. Now, the first heavy consignment —26 prime bullocks—is on its way from South Westlano to Otago. Messrs W. D. Nolan and Spns, of Okuru, who “imported” the hay as a trial, have fitted special decks and sidings on conventional five-ton trucks. The 26 Hereford bullocks were carted to the Clark bluff, 23 miles from Haast, then driven on foot seven miles (including the crossings of the Haast ahd Burke rivers, where the heavy loads might have been treacherous for the trucks). They- are spending the night in specially-constructed holding paddocks on the Otago side of the Burke river, and in the morning they will be loaded on to trucks of a Luggate transport firm and taken to the railhead at Cromwell. The bullocks are standing the journey well and, in less than a week from home, they will be sold at. the Burnside stock sale on Wednesday. By any other route it would have taken much longer to take them to a major market.