Along the route of the Waimate Gorge Branch out of Waimate, the line's formation including a cutting, a bridge abutment, and some brick culverts can be located, and for about 5 km, a walkway follows the route of the line beside the Waihao River.
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One of the proposals for the Otago Central Railway was to build a line from Oamaru to Naseby, and in 1877 an invitation was extended to the Waimate County Council to partake in a plan to connect Waimate to the Oamaru-Naseby line in either Duntroon or Livingstone and thus establish a through route from Central Otago to Canterbury.
Waimate Creek runs roughly eastwards, rising in the Hunter Hills before reaching the narrow coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean, skirting the west and southern side of Waimate township and then discharging metres from the sea into the Wainono Dead Arm, which links the Waihao River and Wainono Lagoon.
Maori knowledge of the region is evidenced by an earlier sketch map from Chief Te Huruhuru at Waimate.
His next commission was a memorial in Waimate for Margaret Cruickshank, the first registered woman doctor in New Zealand; she had died from the 1918 flu pandemic.