Bendigo Lookout via Mt Koinga Track, Tarras
The Bendigo area, northeast of Cromwell. Mt Koinga Track is labeled 6. Kānuka Track is labeled 5.
Screenshots of DOC publications are Crown Copyright and licensed as CC BY 4.0 by DOC.
Bendigo Scenic Reserve Lookout (595m) is the summit of an unnamed hill about 15 minutes south of Tarras and 15 minutes north of Cromwell, Central Otago, South Island. It is part of Bendigo Scenic Reserve in the Dunstan Mountains. Based on the map, it seems to be a buttress or outlying portion of the obscure Mt Torumano (860m).
Between the highway and the beginning of the scenic reserve runs a farm easement, Mt Koinga Track. Mt Koinga the geographical feature is an adjacent smaller hill on private property. Hikers are not permitted to visit its summit. AllTrails calls the entire hike the Mt Koinga Track, causing some hikers to assume that Bendigo Lookout/Point 595 is the summit of Mt Koinga.
Bendigo Lookout is near the high point of Kānuka Track, which is also part of the scenic reserve. They are separated by a small, wooded valley containing the headwaters of Pigeon Creek.
Time
DOC estimates 2 hours return. Including breaks, my hike took about that long.
Route
Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).
According to AllTrails, elevation gained is 380 meters over 4.7 kilometers return. Since almost all the elevation gain is outbound, that means that the route rises around 1 meter for every 6 meters it runs, which is pretty steep.
Let’s compare with Mt Iron in Wānaka, which is another choice in this region to satisfy your feeling of ‘I just want a short hike to the top of a hill’. Their tracks are approximately the same distance, 4.7km. Over that same distance, this hike involves around 50% more elevation gain than Mt Iron does.
The trailhead is Bendigo Freedom Camping, which sits between State Highway 8 to the east and Lake Dunstan reservoir to the west. Near the toilets, an impact track ascends two meters up an embankment to the highway. Across the highway, the hike begins on a steep dirt track. This is a farm easement, which is marked by orange poles.
The poles continue until the fence with Bendigo Scenic Reserve, which can be crossed with a wooden stile - although the bottom two steps were broken when I visited. In the scenic reserve, an impact track through the tall grass continues steeply uphill to a saddle between Point 595 and a lower hump to its southwest. There are no poles.
From here, instead of following the main track over the saddle, I followed a switchback to the left on a narrower track that led up beside Point 595. It was much less steep than the preceding tracks, and brought me right beside Point 595, a rocky outcrop which I was able to reach easily through a gap in the trees.
There was no need to scramble steeply uphill through the grass and trees at any point. One just needs to pay enough attention to spot the impact track continuing.
The view over Lake Dunstan is very nice for something requiring so little effort. I watched the sun set beyond the Pisa Range.
If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give this track a 2 at its worst, except for one second of stepping on boulders at the very summit, which is more like a 3. The majority of it is a 2, because the often-steep track is both somewhat rocky and somewhat loose.
Other pages about this hike
Pages about nearby hikes
Devil’s Creek Track (not to be confused with the track of the same name near Queenstown and Arrowtown)
Lindis Peak (in progress)
Bannockburn Sluicings (in progress)
https://hikingscenery.com/mt-pisa-via-tinwald-burn-ridge-track/
