simon wrote:lammerlaw:
well put.
paper roads are definitely not magical routes to anywhere. they generally never got constructed because they never made sense. nowadays as you said most have been incorporated into adjacent farms. in southland when i was younger you could always tell the paper road. it was the strip covered in broom and gorse. i often wondered why the neighbouring farmer didn't just merge it into his block and graze them to keep them tidy. they were always a haven for pests, especially when the nextdoor farm was mostly pest free. the rabbits etc knew where to hide!
that said a lot of the paper roads were used for river access etc, so in small communities the farmer often didn't want to upset anyone. i know nowadays they can be like a crime corridor with hunters and drug growers in some rougher areas.
just the other day i was on someone's land out by a river. they allowed my access on their land. a mate was wondering what people were doing up the drive. the drive was in fact 3 legal accessways. each landowner had his own drive and straight up the middle was a paper road, only this one was grazed and fenced. there was a gate at its end but that was just to keep the end landowners stock in his land. i think the paper road was a remnant of one of the old wagon routes as there were a few old stone hut nearby, and beyond the paper road where it became crown land adjacent to the river there was a gradual track down to the water where i guess a ford was utilised.
simon.
I examine maps for paper roads myself but am very sceptical about using them as they are fraught with controversy. Some have plantations planted on them and not so long ago I noted a case somewhere up north that the local council had given someone an easement or something whereby he could plant trees on the paper road as it was under their jurisdiction.
At the very end of the day a person can use a paper road to access on foot and if the farmer comes along going ballistic then one can argue his/her case providing they have their facts absolutely right taking into account that it is hard to locate the exact location of the paper road by map alone or even by map and GPS.
The exact location of the paper road might not even be known to the farmer himself unless it is parallel to his boundary and up against it. In the case of my property the paper road is up alongside the fence so all seems to be well and good for anyone who wishes to access on foot BUT the fence itself does not follow the boundary being at times up to fifty metres from the boundary so that the paper road is not where one might assume the paper road to be!
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