How is it possible for the car park at a Dunedin walk to be chocker on a Monday morning?
If it’s Tunnel Beach track, since its makeover.
The car park hosts campervans, hire cars, even someone being dropped off by taxi.
The whole thing’s nuts compared with the 20th-century version — a steep downhill track across lonely paddocks. Now it’s a graceful, streamlined experience with space-age shaped viewing areas. The track is wide and compacted with fine local gravel.
It would be hard not to feel just a wee bit proud to be a Dunedinite, the place bringing so much pleasure to so many. Seeing the sheer number of overseas visitors nails home tourism’s financial benefits to our region. A disadvantage is noticing one’s own perfectly functional vehicle humbled in the carpark.
For locals, the outing could be squeezed into an extended lunch break from work. Alternatively, what a pleasant stand-in for a team bonding exercise. There’s a hill to walk back up but staff might do that cheerfully if the other option is standing in a circle, throwing a hacky sack to the next participant who is required to tell us something about themselves that we didn’t previously know.
No worries anyway, as track designers have done a brilliant job compensating for the slope. Instead of the old direct route, a meandering loop floats out to one side over a gentle slope. Visitors almost levitate downhill.
The loop allows not only physical ease but broad sea views too. Beyond is the island after which Green Island is named. Span the distant horizon back to town and there’s White Island, normally seen dreamily from our main city beach.
We know the tunnel’s somewhere ahead and a headland in the distance could be it. Slowly the headland seems bigger. It has a sea cave. Children can run safely ahead as the scary cliffs of yore are no longer track-side.
Covering the headland are carpet-like rare native plants. According to the Department of Conservation, these coastal turf communities are so rare in the wild that, in total, they cover an area equivalent to just 50 rugby fields. Despite signage, ongoing trampling of this headland is creating patches of compacted, barren soil rather than the thin layer of open soil that the plants need. But hey, Trix got their selfie.
It’s been roughly that long since his last visit, for a recently visiting local, a vague memory of a school trip, the man now in his 60s. He was blown away by the “magic experience”, saying he felt drawn into it from the first step.
My previous visit was also last century. At the time, I noted a piece of graffiti carved into the cliff, dated ’98. But 1998 hadn’t arrived yet so it was a salutary lesson that graffiti should always be properly annotated.
Choose your time and the tide will reveal an open sandy beach with explorable nooks and crannies. Another time and high tide smashes at cliffs, catharsis for the finest revenge fantasises.
Just beyond the edge of the city, Tunnel Beach is served by the Wakari to Corstorphine bus. The carpark has bike stands.
The track is two and a-half kilometres, about an hour return but longer to fully absorb the coastal glory.
