Your place - Waiau

Today's place is one of the oldest settlements in North Canterbury and the largest on state highway 70, otherwise known as the Inland Kaikoura route. This was once a busy railway terminus. From 1919 locomotives hauled goods to and from Christchurch and the line was to have continued on to Kaikoura, with another branch going through to Nelson. But an alternative route was found, it became a branch line station and, like so many branch lines around our fair land, it was closed in the 1970s.