The Waikato

The Waikato River is the longest river in New Zealand. In the North Island, it runs for 425 kilometres from the eastern slopes of Mount Ruapehu, joining the Tongariro River system and emptying into Lake Taupo, New Zealand's largest lake. It drains Taupo at the lake's northeastern edge, creates the Huka Falls, then flows northwest, through the Waikato Plains. It empties into the Tasman Sea south of Auckland at Port Waikato. It gives its name to the Waikato region that surrounds the Waikato Plains.

The name Waikato means 'flowing water'.

Nine hydroelectric power stations at eight dams extract energy from the river between Taupo and Karapiro. All the lakes in this stretch of the river (apart from Lake Taupo) are artificial.

Above Lake Taupo, the river is not properly navigable (perhaps it could be done in a slalom canoe – see next year’s expedition), so we are proposing to start our journey at Turangi, close to where the river flows into Lake Taupo. This means our first day will be spent crossing the Lake itself.

The journey from Turangi to Port Waikato is approximately 380 kilometres. For now, we are estimating about 5 days for the trip, but this may be revised as we gain better knowledge of the river flow and further revised once we can actually try out our boat.

The first major obstacle will be the Huka Falls and, while many wellwishers are keen to see us ‘shoot’ the Falls, discretion and the need to keep our sandwiches dry dictates that we need to lift the boat out and transport it by road to a suitable place from which to resume our journey. The same will apply to the other dams along the way. We are unaware of any existing record for this journey and it isn't really a major concern, but we shall try to identify clear points for embarkation and disembarkation, so that we can feel we have done as much of the trip under our own power as is reasonable, given these obstacles.

A Thames Camping Skiff