There was talk of doing a Kaimai Ranges walk around Karangahake between a group of friends. The plan kind of then evolved to discussing doing Te Aroha Loop, Some discussions of Tui Mine and doing the tunnels there included.

I do a search about Tui Mines and end up at a thread on Game Planet Forums, then go searching for Tui Mines on Youtube… which then leads me to viewing some Urbex videos, where I then end up watching a YouTube video discussing “UrBex NZ” Q&A…

I then discover the video is laced with unusually abusive comments and a rather unusually high thumb down rating for a what appeared to be a fairly orderly video.

After more mindless surfing, it appears there are in effect two different Urban Exploration groups “Urbex Central” and “Urbex NZ” with the later being run by a guy named Nathan Harpur. The two have quite DIfferent ideologies… One is “Take only photos and leave only foot prints” and the other group appear to have openly admitted to tagging the places they visit (Urbex NZ). This I would see naturally concerns Urbex Central as potentially getting all UbEx’ers being tarred with the same tagger brush.

Now I at least know what’s happening, but blooming hell, Initially, these petty squabbles had completely no context to an outsider, or curious Joe public like myself (until I investigated).

Anyway, I don’t think I’m thrill seeking enough to do the sort of things they do. Will leave it to Urbexers to record and post videos of their visits. From there, will watch in the relative comfort of my chair.