WEST COAST EXPLORER

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1931, Page 8

WEST COAST EXPLORER

SIR A. DOBSON'S ADVENTURES

DIFFICULT, DANGEROUS WORK

ARTHUR'S PASS DISCOVERED,

The very last of the old brigade of pathfinders and road-builders in the South Island, men who went into an unknown, unmapped land and traversed it from Alps to ocean, fording its snowy' torrents, cutting trails through its forests, enduring wet, cold and storm, facing' death often, breaking the way for gold-hunters and settlers, Mr. Arthur Dudley Dobson, the veteran engineer of Christchurch, has had a knighthood conferred on him by His Majesty the King. Although nearly 90 years of age Sir Arthur is still active and enjoying life, and he recently'published in book form hif notes of an uncommonly busy and useful life. He was only 22 when he _ pluckily undertook a formidable task involving two years of adventurous work m Westland, at a period when ad that part of New Zealand lay unknown The surveyino- of a strip of country 75 miles long, from the Grey River southward and extending back from the sea to the Southern Alps, was a great opportunity for a Toun/man. This territory then forned part of the Canterbury province, and Sir Arthur's work was done under ana ou Provincial Governcontract with the JrOVl ' n L . . •r.+ Tbprp was no way oi o eniii D T bv si and so the young ; there but J d a vessel at Nelson, surveyoi cnarterea ™ f twe]ve loaded her with and S et months, e "S a o v River. After five sail for the G y- and a ship . SS on tte tor, Dobs»» tijo), and tie exp ore g to him a their places. > n liar dshi?s, pleasure, V P talentprocess. He and he made excellen P j sadd i e tramped ack . over f ? e ,M r ep° rted at

pioneer carried out bush and mountain work in Nelson. By about 1880 his real pioneering work was over and he bcame and engineer and was for many years chief engineer in Christchurch. The West Coast rivers were always dangerous, says Sir Arthur, in his book, and he paints a graphic picture of a trip down the Buller from above the Inangahua junction with a Maori canoe. He took Bishop Suter, of Nelson, as a passenger. - ,' "I put Tainui, the best boatman, at the bows, as a canoe can be steered to a great extent by the bowrinan. and I took the steer paddle, as I knew the river well. : The other four Maoris did not know the . river well,,but they were good canoe hands.'. . The worst place on the river was a fall known as the Whirlpool Fall, at a point where .the river turns at a right angle. The water piled up in a round roll: against, the face of the cliff and. then rushed away to the left at a great rate. In , the middle of the river was broken waterand waves which were far too high for the low freeboard of a canoe, and further to the left was a " whirlpool about sixty feet in diameter. With high water • the only way -to handle a canoe was to keep well tothe right-hand side, then when nearing the cliff- to throw the canoe broadside on. It would then rise up on the round wave. All the crewwould put out their hands -to prevent the canoe from hitting the face of the cliff ' and at a given signal they would push hard at the cliff, then. seize , the paddles and paddle hard to get headway on again in the canoe'.", • 4; ' Sir Arthur Dobson's reminiscences are valuable for the impressions they give of the resourceful courageous men of, the outbacks in the days when New Zealand life was in the raw, and he who ventiired into the new places, of the land had to be a man in every sense of the word.