Coast-to-coast marathon recalls exploration in the gold-rush days

Press, 3 February 1984, Page 18

Coast-to-coast marathon recalls exploration in the gold-rush days

By

ROBERT LOGAN

Tomorrow, 88 of the 122 contestants in this year’s Lion Brown Coast-to-Coast multi-discipline endurance event will abandon their bicycles at the junction of the Otira and Deception rivers and begin jog-trotting over a main divide pass to Canterbury. These are the participants who are doing the whole course, from the Tasman Sea at Kumara to the Pacific Ocean at Sumner. Three sections of this marathon effort are traversed on bicycles — from Kumara township to the Otira River valley, from Klondyke Corner to the Mount White Bridge in the Waimakariri valley, and from Waimakariri Gorge Bridge to Sumner. In between contestants have to travel 25km on foot up the Deception River, a tributary of the Otira, over Goat Pass (1076 m and down the Mingha River to Klondyke at

the junction of the Waimakariri and Bealey Rivers. Next day, their journey features a 55km kayak section down the Waimakariri which includes the fearsome 24km gorge where shooting the rapids will keep their adrenalin pumping. Jt is a gruelling test of fitness, determination, and endurance, especially the Goat Pass section. It is not easy to imagine any of the contestants having the time or inclination during a breather on the pass to reflect on who, ahead of them, was first across this high and unlikely saddle, and the circumstances that led to the exploit. It was in fact George Dobson, with his friend Matt Russell, both in their twenties, who discovered the pass and made the first cross-

ing in 1865, 119 years ago. They were there because the great gold rush to the West Coast (then called “West Canterbury”) was gaining momentum.

The gold rush saw excitement in Christchurch rise to fever pitch. Residents felt that here at last was the chance for Canterbury to match Otago’s golden prosperity. Thousands of diggers from worked out southern goldfields marched through the city, along Papanui Road and away to the north, where distant Harper Pass (then Hurunui Saddle) offered the only land route to the west.

The cry arose on all sides for a shorter track over the main divide, one which would directly connect east and west Canterbury, and, more importantly, bring the precious gold to Christchurch. Bowing to public pressure, the Provincial Government dug among its filed reports and found one written by its youngest surveyor, Arthur Dobson, describing the pass he had discovered a year earlier at the head of the Bealey River. There were difficulties on the western side of the pass, in the Otira Gorge, he wrote, but these could be easily avoided by cutting a track down the hillside above the river.

To cut this track without delay, and thus keep the public happy, Arthur’s elder brother George was dispatched forthwith. He rode away to the west with two companions, Russell and Anderson, and a man named O’Brien, from one of the top stations, who looked after the horses while they were exploring. They cut some tracks in the Otira Gorge, but the going was so tough that George Dobson decided the difficulties were too formidable for this route to have any future. Conscious of the possibilites always inherent in the unknown, he sought a better pass elsewhere. About eight kilometres down the Otira River he found a likely tributary coming in from the right compass bearing. Here, in 1865, where tomorrow the marathoners will drop their cycles, and hurry on foot to cross the alps, an argument arose among the three young explorers. Anderson refused to go on, declaring he would rather continue down river and seek his fortune on the gold-

fields. No amount of persuasion would change his mind, so George Dobson, “Knowing the uselessness of arguing with a man touched with the yellow fever,” gave him a share of the provisions and let him

goWith faithful Matt Russell now his sole companion, George started up the Deception, hopeful that this would be the easy route he was seeking. And so it promised, for as mile after mile of the valley was put behind them it became clear that the travelling was incomparably better than in the Otira Gorge. But as so often happens in the mountains, disappointment lay ahead. As they rounded the last bend and the pass came into view, their hopes were dealt a cruel blow. The final climb to the top of the saddle was so steep and loose in parts that they had to scramble up on their hands and knees. As they gained altitude it became obvious from the vegetation that the pass was much higher than Arthur’s. It was also plain that any road built there would require heavy maintenance to keep it open. Disappointed at being led so easily into the mountains only to have their hopes dashed, and finding next day that the valley they had to traverse on the eastern side seemed almost as difficult as the rejected Otira Gorge, Dobson chose a set of names designed to express his feelings. The western river he named the Deception, the saddle he called The Goat’s Pass, and the river on the Canterbury side became Hoaxing Creek (since renamed the Mingha).

The fastest 1984 marathoners will jog this section tomorrow in less than four hours compared with Dobson and Russell’s two days. They will, of course, be aided by tracks to get them past the gorge of the Mingha River. When they reach Sumner at the end of their second day they will doubtless be greeted with the accolades due to successful “iron men.”

George Dobson returned to Christchurch to a different welcome, one of hostility and criticism. The whole population was waiting impatiently to hear that the bridle track they had been promised was formed and ready for use. Plans were afoot to send a gold escort to the coast immediately the way was clear. Sorry, said George bravely, the route was too difficult and he could not recommend his brother

Arthur’s pass for either track or road.

And that, incidentally, was how and when Arthur’s Pass got its name.

George Dobson was murdered on May 28, 1866, while walking the Arnold track on the West Coast, mistaken for a gold buyer and brutally struck down by the infamous Sullivan gang. The town-

ship of Dobson, near Greymouth, is named after him, and his monument stands there. He was the eldest of the several sons of Edward Dobson, Canterbury’s first provincial engineer, whose responsibility it was to see the road built over Arthur’s Pass. Had Goat Pass been lower and easier to reach, the road would surely have gone that way.