Eyre Creek is a locality in

Southland, New Zealand Southland ( mi, Murihiku) is New Zealand's southernmost region. It consists mainly of the southwestern portion of the South Island and Stewart Island/Rakiura. It includes Southland District, Gore District and the city of Invercargill. The r ...

, situated to the north-east of the Five Rivers Plain. It lies on , 18 km (11 miles) north of Lumsden. On its northern side is the Jollies Hill Pass (396m, 1300 ft), commonly known as the Jollies, which skirts the western flank of the Mid Dome.

Jolly Waggoners

The first settlement in the area was in early 1863 when P. K. Bracken, Thomas Crawley and John Groves built the Dome Pass Accommodation House, known as the Jolly Waggoners. This was just north of the junction of the roads from Riverton,

Invercargill Invercargill ( , mi, Waihōpai is the southernmost and westernmost city in New Zealand, and one of the southernmost cities in the world. It is the commercial centre of the Southland region. The city lies in the heart of the wide expanse of t ...

and

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

and was a popular resting place for waggoners as a night of good fun and a jolly time could be enjoyed. Crawley sold it to John Heath in 1867. By 1871 Donald McLean was the licensee and the hotel was in serious decline. On the opposite side of the road to where the hotel was sited is a small graveyard where four people who died around the time the hotel was open are buried. Two of these are known. Margaret Smith died in 1865 after the coach she was travelling in overturned in the creek at Parawa, while in 1871 James Cameron died after eating tutu in the bar of the hotel. A

cairn A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehis ...

beside State Highway 6 commemorates these early pioneers.

Eyre Creek Station

In 1859 Eyre Creek Station was taken up, originally being run as an extension of the neighbouring Five Rivers Station. However, when Dalgety, Rattray and Company took it over in 1868 they built a manager's cottage at what is now known as Eyre Creek. The

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

itself was on the northern side of the property and doesn't run through the locality. In 1873

William Larnach William James Mudie Larnach (27 January 1833 – 12 October 1898) was a New Zealand businessman and politician. He is known for his extravagant incomplete house near Dunedin called Larnach's castle by his opponents and now known as Larnach C ...

bought the 45,100 acre station for £25,000. He later sold part of his interest to Henry Driver, before they sold, in 1879, to the New Zealand Agricultural Company, of which they were both directors. The company was not a financial success but gradually disposed of parts of the property. Over the years a number of company managers were based at Eyre Creek before the homestead block was sold to John Gibson in 1902. The current Eyre Creek Station, a small remnant of the original, has its homestead closer to Athol.

Railway

The

Kingston Branch The Kingston Branch was a major railway line in Southland, New Zealand. It formed part of New Zealand's national rail network for over a century: construction began in 1864, Kingston was reached in 1878, and it closed in 1979. For much o ...

railway opened through the area on 28 January 1878 and soon after a

siding Siding may refer to: * Siding (construction), the outer covering or cladding of a house * Siding (rail) A siding, in rail terminology, is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch l ...

was built at Eyre Creek. The station, at 1093 ft above sea level, was the highest on the branch line. In July 1939 a train from Lumsden to Kingston got stuck in an eight-foot snowdrift at Eyre Creek. Although it was eventually freed the train was forced to spend the night there. It took two further days for it to eventually reach its destination. The branch line closed on 26 November 1979. The Around the Mountains Cycle Trail follows some of the trackline through Eyre Creek. A replica of the old station sign has been erected on its former site.

References

{{Southland District Populated places in Southland, New Zealand