Plan it right and catch the boat back to town. The Roxburgh Gorge walk is not on the bike trail, it’s on the other side of the river. The Roxburgh Gorge walk is my favourite walk in Central Otago. You get to walk back into the late 1880 with the gold miners, through this amazing gorge with just a bag of flour and few tins of bully beef over your shoulder.
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The Lake Roxburgh Walk starts from Graveyard Gully. It’s a easy 25 minutes walk from Alexandra shopping centre. Behind the Graveyard you will see the start of the track. The 1863 flood and the big snow storm on the Old Man Range took many lives, it is known there are 30 men buried in this grave yard.
The walk up to Butchers point was a very hot walk. I did find the remains of a couple of old miners huts made out rocks, but I had to do a little rock climbing to get to them. The walk up the Clutha River was interesting, on the other side of the river I could see more stone huts but I did not fancy the swim. The miners brought with them a few sprigs of thyme to help add a little flavor to the rabbit stew, now the whole Lake Roxburgh Walk has pleasant smells of thyme. It took us 2 Hours to walk to Butchers point. Our ride back to Alexandra zoomed up river. It was a good move to be picked up at Doctors Point, man it was getting hot.
Now it is getting interesting, I lost count of the old stone huts I hunted down. One stone hut had some gear stowed away in the back, I could have stayed the night. The track was OK, just a bit stony.
We left Graveyard Gully at 1030 hr and stumbled into Doctors Point at 1515H. I had a feeling that last climb to the top looking for caves would do me in.
I did run into a small mob of smelly goats, next time I will bring the Bow, no the thyme did not help kill the smell, he was an old billy. There is a lot to see here at Doctors Point so don’t rush home, have a look around at the workings and see if you can catch that big slimy eel down in the river. The largest stone hut I found slept 18 gold miners, it is still used today by the brave mountain trampers. There are two places where your better half might have trouble negotiating, they were just minutes after leaving Doctors Point, one is a rock fall and the last one is trying to work your way around a rock face. The boat arrived to take us back to Alexandra, thank goodness.
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