Weld Road (Tataraimaka)

Like many rural roads in Taranaki, Weld Road splits into an upper and lower section when it intersects with the state highway.

Upper Weld Road runs toward the Kaitake Ranges and it was at the end of the road in 1869 that a reporter for the Taranaki Herald began a trek into the ranges to investigate the progress of the Perseverance Prospecting Company at their Boar’s Head mine. Nearly three tons of quartz were crushed but yielded no gold or other precious metals and other prospecting ventures proved similarly fruitless.

Lower Weld Road comes to a halt at the coast and a car parking area, part of which was once a popular camping ground. In October 1996 the Daily News reported that the maximum length of stay was to be reduced from 28 days to 14, due to pressure on the limited facilities and abuse of the current limit. However, in July 2003 it was closed permanently when New Plymouth District Council decided that the ongoing costs outweighed the number of campers using the site.

Turn left along the beach at the end of Weld Road and you pass the remnants of the wreck of the Gairloch which ran aground on Timaru Reef late at night on 5 January 1903. A right turn leads along a walkway known as Te Ara Tahuri Hau (pathway of wind changes), carefully by-passing historic Hauranga Pā and crossing a new footbridge over Whenua Ariki Stream.

The road is named after Frederick Aloysius Weld, a former Premier of New Zealand. Born in Dorset on 9 May 1823 he arrived on the ship Theresa in 1843. With his cousin Charles Clifford he established two South Island sheep stations and his 1851 pamphlet, Hints to intending sheep-farmers in New Zealand, ran to four editions.

Weld married Filumena Phillips in 1859 and the couple had 13 children.

Weld entered politics in the 1850s and was elected to the Marlborough seat of Wairau in 1858. He became minister of native affairs in 1860 and, after the fall of the Whitaker-Fox ministry in 1864, became prime minister. Lasting only a year before resigning, he then left the country.

Weld later embarked on a career as a colonial governor in Australia and south-east Asia. A fever contracted in Malaysia ultimately proved fatal and he died in West Dorset on 20 July 1891. 

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.

Further reading: Bridge, walkway designed to protect pā site (Taranaki Daily News 16 June 2025 page.1)

Related items:

Long time Weld Rd free campers plead for facility (Daily News 24 April 2002)

$2m bridge and pathway to protect beachside pā (Taranaki Daily News 13 November 2024)