Waitahuna

11km southeast of Lawrence is the little village of Waitahuna, which in the 19th Century was also a flourishing gold-miners' town.

At Waitahuna, there is the unusual Waitahuna River Suspension Bridge, built around 1905-6 worth seeing, and the Waitahuna Gully Miner's Monument. This monument commemorates the discovery of gold here in June1861 and also the Pioneer miners.

The town was briefly a railway terminus, when a branch line from a junction in Clarksville with the Main South Line was opened to the town on 22 January 1877. A little over two months later, the line was opened beyond Waitahuna to Lawrence and it went on to become the Roxburgh Branch. Passenger trains served Waitahuna until 4 September 1936; from that date until the line's closure on 1 June 1968, the line was freight-only. Despite the line's closure, Waitahuna's goods shed, station building, and even men's toilets still stand at the site of the former railway yard.