The remoteness of mountain huts

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34119, 3 April 1976, Page 12

The remoteness of mountain huts

EDGAR WILLIAMS, octogenarian cyclist, photographer, and mountaineer, writes of an area he loves. The picture shows McKenzie Hut. on the Homer branch of the Hollyford.

Two particularly interesting remote huts were in the valleys of the Homer and the Esperance, on the GraveTalbot track to Milford Sound. In the mid-1920s the foot track over the route was completed. This enabled the more energetic of trampers to reach Milford Sound by way of Grave Pass, the Tourist Department’s route from Lake Wakatipu via either the Routeburn or the Greenstone. The idea was then to

carry on by the Milford Track, thus avoiding a retracing of steps or the need to traverse either track twice. Travellers were then assured of fresh scenery all the way on a seven-day trek from Queenstown to Te Anau. The Grave-Talbot route was first traversed in January, 1910, by W. G. Grave and Arthur Talbot. The track was subsequently constructed by medical students from Otago University — toiling in their summer vacation. Work began before the war but was held up till 1919. The track branched from the Martins Bay track near Howden Hut. Owing to the great distance from the nearest mechanical transport the usual method of hut construction and transport — timber, tin, and limber. I

call it — was impracticable. The huts had therefore to be made of what material was on the spot, and that was trees. But they had to be something better than the good old slab construction with shingle roof and earth floor. The hut builders were two clever old bushmen — Dan McKenzie, of the well-known Martins Bay family, and his colleague, William McPherson. Trees (mountain beech) were selected, felled, transported, and pit-sawn. The timber thus produced provided two splendid two-room buildings, each with windows, wooden floor, two fireplaces and galvanised iron roof. Work was completed in 1925 and the huts were named after their builders — the McKenzie Hut in

the Homer, and the McPherson hut in the Esperance. Harking back to the roofs, it would have been well nigh impossible to carry in sheets of corrugated roofing iron. The roofs were therefore of flat iron, made from strips some 70cm wide. This, I understand, was rolled like building paper for convenience in packing and carrying. The roofs, unfortunately, were not altogether a success. It has always been said that in Fiordland nothing is rainproof other than corrugated iron. There were, of course, two saw pits. Timber had to be cut for everything, including interior work, bunks, tables and seats. Likely as not this was the last pit-sawing done in the country.