Burkes Pass

Burkes Pass is a mountain pass and at its base, a small town on State Highway 8 at the entrance to the Mackenzie Country in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It is named after Michael John Burke (1812 Co. Galway-1869 Ballarat), a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, who drove a team of bullocks through the passageway which leads up into the Mackenzie Country in 1855. This was an alternative route to the Mackenzie Pass, which the notorious alleged sheep stealer, James Mckenzie, had used to take his sheep into the Otago goldfields. Burkes Pass separates the Two Thumb Range to the north from the Rollesby and Albury ranges to the south, and sits at an altitude of 709 metres (2,326 ft). A memorial to Burke stands close to the pass's saddle. Burke may not have been the first European to cross the Pass called after him. G Dunnage camped in the vicinity in 1855 before the geographical features were named.

A dray track was cut through Burkes Pass in 1857–58. Settlers and bullock teams soon found The Long Cutting was the easier of the two passageways to negotiate, becoming the main thoroughfare for travellers in to the Mackenzie, a vast land known by Māori for its plentiful supply of wekas on the plains and eels in the streams and lakes. With travel slow and arduous, the need for a resting place for weary travellers soon became evident.

A 640-acre (2.6 km2) site, on the west side of the to

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