A paper road running adjacent to a farm near Hurunui. (File photo) Photo: Herenga a Nuku
Across New Zealand there are 55,000 kilometres of paper roads, a term which may not be familar to many.
While these roads won't appear on Google Maps and aren't maintained in the same way as the rest of the roading network, they still carry the same right of public passage for anyone to use.
Dot Dalziell, a regional field adviser with Herenga a Nuku Aotearoa (the Outdoor Access Commission), told Afternoons, while these roads may look a little different they're still there for the public to enjoy.
Dalziell wasn't a fan of the name paper roads and said she preferred the term unformed legal road when referencing the tracks.
"It's a bit more accurate than paper road. The reason we don't like paper road as a term so much is it sounds like something you could write down on a piece of paper, screw up and throw in the bin."
What is an unformed legal road?
Dalziell said when talking about an unformed legal road or paper road, what was meant was that while these roads counted legally as part of the roading network, these were not maintained by the roading authority in an area, usually the district council.
But, these roads did carry the same right of public passage as any other legal road.
Many of these roads were formed before colonisation, Dalziell said, as tracks and trails to connect up between people and places.
"For instance, there's an ancient waka portage that goes from Waiuku all the way to the Waikato River and I've heard kaumātua talk about that as the original State Highway One. So these are connecting lines that have been around for a long time."
In the 1800's, future towns and roads were drawn, and while some of these towns were never built, some tracks were formed.
"Some of them have fallen into less use once cars became more prevalent," Dalziell said, "other roads were created for combustion engines..."
Unformed legal roads were not on private property, Dalziell said, and were strips of public land which belonged to everyone.
How do I find them?
The best place to find paper roads was by using Herenga a Nuku Aotearoa's mapping system, Dalziell said, which could be found on its website.
Dalziell said Herenga a Nuku Aotearoa also had an app called Pocket Maps which would allow people to download maps and take them into the wilderness to help navigate the unformed legal roads.
She said the roads could be found by looking for purple lines on the maps.
A lot of erasure of the roads had gone on over the years, Dalziell said.
"Partly what's happened is because no one is actively looking after them the public may have forgotten that they exist.
"It only takes a generation or so for local knowledge to be forgotten."
People needed to get around, Dalziell said, and these roads had existed for a very long time.
"They may not even look like a road you may drive on, but they're still there for all of is. They're a fantastic resource."
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