Twizel’s hydro-era earthmoving machines line the road into town

Drive into Twizel on Wairepo Rd and the first thing you’ll see is a row of big iron. A dump truck, a scraper and a watercart sit freshly painted at the front of town, and the line-up keeps getting longer.

They belong to the Twizel Heritage Group, which collects, repaints and displays the machines and buildings used during the town’s hydro construction days. The group works under the Twizel Promotion and Development Association, and the display is part of the Upper Waitaki Hydro Heritage Trail.

Twizel exists because of that work. Meridian Energy says the town was built specifically as a base for workers on the Upper Waitaki hydro scheme, which started in 1968 and ran until Ōhau C was commissioned in 1985. Twizel peaked at 6,000 people in 1977.

Fifty million cubic metres

According to Meridian, the Upper Waitaki scheme has two dams and six canals running 56 kilometres, and about 50 million cubic metres of material was excavated for the canals and other earthworks. On Ōhau A alone, around two million cubic metres of rock and gravel came out of the northern bank of the Ōhau River. Meridian puts that at about half a million concrete truck loads.

Rick Ramsay, the heritage group’s convener, wants the display to tell the contractors’ side of that story as well as the Ministry of Works and Development’s. “The contractors had as much plant as the Ministry of Works,” he told the Otago Daily Times, and the group wants to recognise their contribution.

A Baker Construction 769 dump truck has been repainted and is now on site. A Green and McCahill D9G bulldozer, rescued from a farm in Amberley by Tim Smith, is due to be sandblasted and painted in Christchurch before it’s trucked south. Ramsay says it will sit behind a Doug Hood-branded S24 scraper.

Any site manager will recognise the job done by the group’s Caterpillar 769 watercart. Ramsay says haul roads were in constant use, and dust on them was a safety risk. The clay lining in the canals also needed the right moisture content or it wouldn’t pack down.

The Ministry of Works designed and built the tanks on the back. Taggart Earthmoving in Christchurch had listed this one on Trade Me, then withdrew it from sale and offered it to the group for $10,000. Spencer Winn, managing director of TransNet New Zealand, paid for the machine and its paint job.

Loaders, a crane and a big grant

The biggest boost so far is a $50,000 grant from the Hugo Charitable Trust. Maryanne Green set up the trust, and her father Hugh Green was a partner in Green and McCahill, which worked on the Upper Waitaki development. Ramsay says the group’s application included the cost of sandblasting and painting the Green and McCahill dozer.

Matamata contractor J Swap has also agreed to donate an ex-Ministry of Works and Development 992B Caterpillar loader, one of two it bought at a disposal auction. Ramsay says Lewis Swap told him there were four 992Bs, and that this one’s last big job was the rebuild and strengthening of Matahina Dam in the Bay of Plenty. It has a knock in the engine and is in parts, but the Swaps will put it back together for the group.

A Wabco 35C the group bought is coming from Raglan. C & R Developments, formerly Baker Construction on the Upper Waitaki job, has agreed to get it to Twizel. The group has also acquired a 988 Caterpillar loader, a J5 Bedford flatdeck and an ex-Ministry of Works dragline.

There’s a home-grown machine in the mix too. The HamiltonJet Heritage Trust has lent the display a Hamilton crane. Ramsay says it lets the group tell the story of the cranes’ use on the Upper Waitaki scheme and of the prototype developed at Irishman Creek.

Bill Hamilton designed and built an angle-dozer in his workshop on Irishman Creek station in the Mackenzie in 1939. Te Ara says loaders, graders, mobile cranes and ditch-diggers followed there, all running on Hamilton-designed hydraulics, before his company moved into heavy engineering, including equipment for hydroelectric schemes.

Where the machines worked

Plenty of old plant ends up in museums. Ramsay’s point is that these machines stand where they were used, out in the open.

Next to them is a restored Ministry of Works “Reg 130” house, fitted out as a hydro-era worker’s home and built to be viewed through the windows from a platform. Single men’s huts from the hydro era sit beside it.

The machines are on display outdoors on Wairepo Rd. Brochures for the full 18-site heritage trail, which takes in dams, power stations, spillways and more large machinery, are at Twizel Promotions in the town centre.

Ramsay says there are still machines out there the group would love to have. He says Green wanted the grant to help the group grab more machinery when the chance comes up. So if an old scraper or dozer from the Upper Waitaki job is sitting out the back of your yard, that’s exactly what Twizel is hunting for.