Coromandel Township: hippy haven
04 February 2025
Perhaps it’s the stillness of the rainforest, the misty vistas of mountain, headland and sea that called the souls of the commune-founders hither.
Travel through native bush via train or zipline in The Coromandel
At Driving Creek on The Coromandel Peninsula, you can choose between chugging through native forest on New Zealand’s only narrow-gauge mountain railway or zooming above it via zipline.
The railway at Driving Creek is also New Zealand’s steepest. With an average gradient of 1-in-24, (one vertical metre for every 24 metres of length), the small trains climb 115m to the quirky EyeFull Tower viewing area which sits 167m above sea level.
Driving Creek is set amongst native kauri and rimu forest that has been painstakingly cultivated over the decades from farmland to resemble what it would have been like in pre-European times.
To further immerse yourself in this remarkable regenerating environment, ride the train to the start of the Coromandel Zipline, where you can fly on eight separate ziplines spanning gullies, streams and taking in the native forest from above.
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