Thorburn >> Portfolio >> Ruakuri Caves

Thorburn Consultants has been the Project Engineer for this prestigious new visitor attraction since its inception.  The cave network was discovered by Maori as much as 500 years ago and was first opened as a tourist attraction in 1904, but had been closed to the public for almost 20 years.

 

The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company have been running "wet" tours through the underground river system in recent years and decided to enhance their visitor experience with pedestrian access.  In order to reopen the full cave network for visitors it was necessary to construct - from scratch - a new entrance to the cave system.  This ultimately resulted in the construction of a spiral walkway in a shaft 10m in diameter and 13m deep.  The shaft connects into the cave network through a 20m long "airlock".  This is part of the complex environment management system required to maintain near-constant levels of temperature and humidity, so as to protect the fragile cave formations.

 

Thorburn Consultants were engaged for the duration of the project, from concept to completion, and were responsible for extensive civil and structural engineering design, including; excavation of entrance shaft and tunnel network, entrance spiral and elevated walkway network, visitor entranceway.