New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

If anyone needs help working out who owns land in order to enquire about access then let me know. I have land title data for the entire country.

I think it is quite criminal to allow individuals or groups to claim the likes of the Arrow, Moke Creek, Moonlight and other places where many people enjoy going and tourists can be taken to pan and potter about to their hearts content. The government should be forced by popular demand and pressure to put these areas aside in perpetuity for all - in other words areas classified exempt from claiming for the good of the public. This could be forced upon the government by pressure from hobbiest miners, tourism industry, DOC etc with the DOC estate being automatically exempt as public estate with rights of access to he public for recreation use including non invasive mining restricted to skuba diving with hand held devices such as snifters (correct name - they are not sniffers) bent screwdrivers, a drag hoe and similar but excluding mechanical means.
If it is deemed reasonable to allow the claiming of some rivers for mining the a 1k limit be placed on that river with no less than say four 'sharholders' and no shareholder can be named in any more than one claim. That may seem a bit draconian but when you look at Deep Stream and the Taieri river it is the same group who have many, many miles of river claimed and it would take many lifetimes to work it all thoroughly...they should only be permitted 1k at a go.
At the same time it should be easier for claims to be taken up by ordinary citizens - the old wardens court system should be put back into place.
The government has purposely made it difficult for ordinary Kiwis to take out small claims where they can go during weekends and leisure time.

The weekend hobbiest gold fossickers should band together to form a club similar to the Pig Hunters Club, The Deerstalkers Club, Landrover Club et al - this club would pay a subscription as any club would, have its constitution, lobbiests on behalf of its members and so on. It would liaise with DOC, other departments, Landowners, Tourism Industry and so on.
Its aims would be to protect the rights of all New Zealanders to access THEIR own country in pursuit of their hobby. To gain support and popularity it would support other clubs with outdoor interests, tramping clubs, Hunting organisations, 4WD clubs and all who have an interest in the outdoors. The object here is in unit there is strength. The Gold Fossickers federation or whatever they might call themselves would be low impact and they would support only as far as say 6inch dredging maximum. They would need to show that they were not high profile miners but rather hobbiests in order to have the support of DOC and others and also that they only operated within the bounds of the law.

The above idea could work well if it was formed properly and no one was permitted to join to use the organisation to support their own hidden agendas. Its main goal and priorities would be low impact mining in keeping with the historical and environmental values of the land, protect the rights of all New Zealanders to access the land for the purposes of enjoying their hobby and interests, to ensure that large areas of rivers were not tied up by groups or mining companies, to ensure that large areas were open to public fossicking, to ensure access to leasehold land subject to certain conditions (eg no access during trout spawning or lambing etc)

Edited by user Thursday, 2 June 2011 6:46:23 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

@Karl - I'm often wondering who ownes a bit of land, even just for 4wd access to a spot. Do you mind telling me where you can get hold of land title data? Cheers :)

@Lammerlaw - Sounds like a good idea! Any volunteers out there?

Hi Gavin,

There are a couple of different options for obtaining land parcel data for use in GIS software.

Firstly for a modest fee you can purchase a bulk data extract from Land Information NZ and parse the data into a suitable format. If you're not compentent at writing a parser able to do this it is damn near impossible to extract anything meaningful.

Alternatively there are several resellers who will supply the data in pratically any spatial format you could name. The downside is that this attracts additional cost.

Cheers
KM

I was once told that if you get a topo map of the area you were looking at then take that round to the local council they have a transparent map with all the paper roads on it you place it on top of your topo map and bob,s ya uncle...so i was told...

Hello All.

I dont think that they are designated "Paper roads" any more?

They are now called U.L.Rs,== "Unformed Legal Roads"
These ULRs were written into the very earliest surveys to provide future access to the Interior of the lands/and/or landlocked areas.
There are thousands of these proposed roads still logged in all over the country.

Cheers---Colin.

Edited by user Friday, 3 June 2011 5:59:42 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yes indeed they are everywhere - many however are tied up in the darndest ways - rake Halfway Bush road for example where it goes right down to Wingatui - DCC have close it off to vehicular access and it can now only be traversed by foot or horse. Another one I know leads right through the middle of a swamp so totally impractical. The one on my boundary is 25m from my track in one or two spots but it aint my track - it goes through high flaxes, across a swamp and straight up the mountain face without detouring from a high rock face.
I was once told that back in the old days many of the paper roads were put in place by the first cartographers without any idea of the topograhpy of the land in some cases...and that makes sense!

The old paper roads have made the news many times before because of were they are... a lot of them running through private property some people take it upon them selfs to guard (paper road,s url,s)sometimes some people put a lock,s on gate,s then someone chop,s the lock or the gate! and so on..i remember last year on the news some cocky up north was trying to charge people for crossing his land but it was actually a paper road so he bulldosed a road block up! its never ending...there was a fella locked up a few years back for clubing some cyclist over the back of the head leaving him unconscious then shot the guys dog!...never a dull moment when it come,s to access!
gbm.

Edited by user Friday, 3 June 2011 12:28:43 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Dave. (GJJ109)

Hey I thought you had a good memory? or do you rely on "GPS:

It was me that sent you that info site--- http://wams.org.nz/wams

God I don`t know what to do about these people with collander memories. :):)

Edited by user Friday, 3 June 2011 3:03:48 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The map showing paper roads is interesting but no different from a cadastral map I dont think. The interesting point however is that one has to keep within the bounds of the road and in many cases these roads can lead you past many interesting and exciting places but you cannot access those places legally so that in truth the maps are of no practical use whatsoever inmany cases!
In other cases they provide an impractical route to a place to which one might wish to access due to the topography of the land while a good farm track or alternative route far more easily accessed runs parallel or close by.
The map Colin has indicated is really only of use as a handy reference to where the roads exist but on the ground itself it is much harder to determine the correct position of the legal road.
It is also a fact that due to the ignorance of people becoming high handed and trying to 'get it over' the farmer, leasee or other parties with a vested interest in the road or land, dictating terms to the land user or occupier, they make of themselves a burden which only makes access harder because there are more and more moves afoot to have these roads closed and indeed they can be for special reasons, lambing etc. Access to these paper roads can be restricted by various means usually to foot traffic only and not only that but the very nature of the country can make it impossible to access or traverse said paper road by any but foot access.
Vehicles attempting to traverse these paper roads can provide a great deal of embarrasssment for their owners when they decide to sink in swamps, roll on slopes and otherwise fail. Farmers in these situations are hardly sympathetic and one situation I remember some years ago saw the Landrover belonging to a person who decided to be belligerent stay stuck in a swamp for several weeks before its rescue was negotiated with the very farmer who had been laughed at some weeks previously.