Distance: 33.8 km (9.5 DOC hours) - Road - Easy terrain
Altitude: 460m to 632m. Gain: 331m. Loss: 413m . Gradient: 1 deg (Flat)
Skills: - Occasional rivers (3/6)

Road (1/9)
Formed road, 4WD track, etc

Primary, mapped (1/5)
Formal route, on maps, principal access to hut or along range / catchment

Flat (difficulty: 1/5)
Flat

Easy (difficulty: 1/5)
Grass / prepared surface

None (difficulty: 1/7)
No alpine skills required

Occasional rivers (difficulty: 3/6)
Occasional rivers - impassible after heavy rain

Unknown (difficulty: 0/7)
Not specified

No description

Note: Described in the reverse direction to your journey

From Golden Spur, head past Manuka Point Station, crossing station land (with permission). At the station gate, take the signposted public 4WD track that provides access to the Mathias.

Cross the Mathias — a wide, mostly dry gravel bed in mid-summer flows, with a few sluggish, ankle-deep braids — and head toward Algidus point and the Wilberforce, avoiding the large swampy area marked on the map.

Permission to cross Mt. Algidus Station land should be sought in advance. The station, which was for sale this summer, did not return multiple calls and messages left over the preceding weeks, so I set off somewhat nervously up a gravel 4WD track that headed from Taylors Camp to the point. There is a paper road through this area and into the Wilberforce, although it crosses multiple fences, so I stuck to the gravel. There are also marginal strips for walker access along both the Mathias and Wilberforce rivers. I saw no "No Trespassing" signs on the approach to the station, and I had made a good faith effort to seek permission, so I continued on my way and hoped for the best. Oddly, when I reached the station, on a weekday morning, I did not see a soul. My arrival was greeted by a paddock of cows, who started lowing as I passed, and a watchful, enormous Angus bull in a pen with a pond in the middle of the station, but in terms of human presence, it was a ghost town.

I left all gates as I found them and continued north up the Wilberforce. The gravel road, which soon became a 4WD track, made for generally fast progress, but this was overall a long, pretty boring day of river valley walking.

Conservation land begins and ends multiple times on the TR of the Wilberforce; you enter, leave, and reenter Craigieburn Forest Park three times between the last station building and the private Manuels Hut. Somewhere near that hut, I did see a "No Trespassing" sign; ironically it seemed to be posted on the conservation land, at least according to my map.

The edge of Kiwi Flat also lies within the forest park, and there is decent camping on the flats in a clearing near the bush edge, close to the stream. I was tempted by, but ignored, a much more attractive campsite with a fire ring in a soft, grassy clearing a shorter walk from the stream, which lay just outside the conservation land boundaries. If you can stand to go further, the flats near Moa Stream 3km further are equivalent in campability to Kiwi Flat.