The Last Man On The Road

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30901, 6 November 1965, Page 12

The Last Man On The Road

[Specially written for “The

Press” by

BRUCE CAMPBELL]

MR D. D. GREANEY, roadman, bird-lover, and former Milford track guide, is now the sole inhabitant of Jackson Bay, at the end of the road in South Westland where in 1875, and in the late 19305, were settlements of 100-200 people. Dan Greaney came to Jack son Bay in 1940, when the

Ministry of Works was completing the road linking the bay with Haast, 30 miles to the north. When the work was finished, he stayed on as a roadman —and apart from seasonal guiding on the Milford track in 1950-57, he has been there since, with no communication with the outside world, except a radio-telephone. Mr Greaney is a lover of the bush, and birds, and solitude. “I like people, but I can live quite happily on my own,” he said.

His job as a Ministry of Works roadman makes him responsible for the three miles of road between Jackson Bay and the Arawata. The Jackson Bay-Haast road was begun in 1936, before a good wharf was built at Jackson Bay. Road-making was by pick, shovel, mattock, and wheelbarrow. The only transport was a draught horse, which had been brought down the coast in a ship, and swum ashore.

Now vessels of up to 2000 tons can come in to the Jackson Bay wharf to load timber for the North Island from the sawmill at Carters, two miles south of Okuru. Mr Greaney, as sole permanent inhabitant of the bay, is both harbourmaster and wharf manager. Road Unwelcome Mr Greaney says that he does not really welcome the new road link north of Haast, which will mean that motorists can now drive straight down the West Coast via Paringa and the Haast to Jackson Bay —the end of the road. “I remember when the road link over the Haast Pass was opened in 1960, and the first cars came down here,” he said. “When the people stepped out of their cars, in their city clothes, they looked really out of place. We're used to seeing people in working togs down here.

“I know what the new road means to the country,” he said. “But as soon as cars come through here, they’re loaded up with ferns, and such samples, on the bonnet —and then there is all their litter and bottles. People go mad when they get into remote country like this. They tend to rip it to pieces—they think it doesn’t matter—and the bird life suffers.” Mr Greaney has been birdwatching at Jackson Bay for 25 years—and feeding the small bush birds in winter. Birds such as the saddleback, the kakapo, and the South Island crow he considers extinct in the Jackson Bay area. “I’ve been looking for them for 25 years, but never found a sign of them,” he said “The wekas and the bush robin have also gone.” This could largely be attributed to infestations of rats and stoats. “The bush is alive with them,” said Mr Greaney. “You see them scavenging on the shore for what might be washed up. But their main food is birds.” The native pigeon, which nests high up in trees, seems to be one species holding its own, according to Mr Greaney’s descriptions. He mentioned the sight of a flock of about 150 feeding on the nectar in the flowers of the introduced broom—which with gorse has invaded the Jackson Bay country, and provides a splash of bright colour against the sombre green of the bush on the roadside down from Haast. Mr Greaney may be seen sitting outside his hut in the sunshine, with a bird perched on his shoulder, and taking tit-bits from his hand. The waxeyes which he feeds in winter become exceedingly tame in this remote spot. “Sometimes they become too

darm tame, and perch all over my plate when I’m trying to eat, and I have to shut the door on them,” he said. Coasters regard Mr Greaney as an expert on the history of things at Jackson Bay. Most folk on the coast refer to -it as “Jacksons Bay.” Whait name did he call it? Mr Greaney was asked. “Jackson Bay,” replied Mr Greaney. “That is the correct name, as laid down by the New Zealand Geographic Board. I use that name, and have always used it on letters.”

Mr Greaney quoted Berries Beattie’s “Far-Famed Fiordland” on the origin of the name—Jackson was an oldtime whaling captain on the coast.

A tangible link with past days at Jackson Bay is provided by a lonely grave on the foreshore. It is the grave of Claude Morton Ollivier, a young Christchurch man, who died there on August 27, 1862. He and his brother had chartered a schooner, the Ada, in a search for new land on the West Coast, and landed at Jackson Bay. Ollivier caught pneumonia as a result of an arduous mid-winter exploration to the Cascade valley, and died aboard the schooner before it left the bay. His body was taken ashore, and buried there. His family had a headplate mounted on a substantial iron fence erected round the grave, still standing after 100 years. Mr Greaney says that the lilies growing on the grave were planted by the late Alice McKenzie, of Martins Bay, when she made a visit to Jackson Bay in 1892, as a girl of 19. Her brother, Malcolm Jackson McKenzie, had been the first white child born at Jackson Bay during the settlement there in 1875. Mr Greaney can tell many a story about life at Jackson Bay during the road-building era 25 years ago—when bulk supplies were brought in by ship every few months, and the only' means of regular mail was by aircraft, which used to land on Neil’s beach, near the mouth of the Arawata river. Glad To Return There were 100 or so men working on the Jackson BayHaast road then. "They cut down all the bush along the road line with axes and crosscut saws,” Mr Greaney said. “Only once was there a serious accident, when a man half-severed his foot —but he was a new chum, not an experienced bushman.” Such an accident was a serious matter in those days, when a man might bleed to death before he could be got to a doctor. Those times are now past with the impending double road link with the outside world—via the Haast Pass to Wanaka, and via Paringa to the Fox and Hokitika. Although Mr Greaney has lived so long alone at Jackson Bay, he likes an occasional holiday trip to civilisation—often to Wellington, where his son, Mr A. L. Greaney, is chief officer at the Wellington South Fire Station. “But I’m always glad to return to Jackson Bay.”