Will the real Sharplin Falls please stand up?

Press, 23 October 1984, Page 13

Will the real Sharplin Falls please stand up?

One of Mid-Canterbury’s bestknown scenic spots is expected to get a "new look” soon — or to put it another way, residents of the Mt Somers and Stavely districts hope that the public will get the new look, at what is probably Canterbury’s least-seen tourist attraction. The natural feature in question is the Sharplin Falls on Bowyers Stream, a small river which runs out of the deep gully beneath the fault scarp separating Mt Somers from Mt Winterslow, near the Stavely settlement. A scenic reserve named after the falls attracts many visitors, especially in summer, to enjoy a halfhour walk along a bush-fringed track which terminates at the spot where, according to the map, the falls may be seen. The trouble with the falls is that they are not where they are supposed to be. All that can be seen at the end of the track is a tumble of boulders where the river cascades through the debris of a giant landslip, and nearly all the visitors to the reserve go away believing that the falls are non-existent. They are wrong. The falls are alive and well — and about 300 metres upstream. It’s not that the falls have done a hop, skip and jump up the gorge; just that the mapmakers, over the last 70-odd years, haven’t been able to make up their minds where to put them. Three different sites have been shown on Lands and Survey Department maps for the falls, and the track made by departmental staff through the reserve terminates at the site shown on the latest map — at the junction of Bowyers - Stream and Tinstone Creek. The origin of the confusion over the falls is not known, says Mr Charles Clark, of Springburn, organiser of Foothills Federated Farmers seminar, held during the winter, at which representatives of various Government departments and agencies, the Aorangi Parks Board, and recreational interests discussed with local people the future of the area. But it seems likely that the late Professor Robert Speight, a noted Canterbury geologist in the 19305, was at least partly to blame for it. At one time there was, apparently, a small fall where Tinstone Creek cascaded into the Goldsmith Rapids over a huge boulder — since toppled on its side by a landslip which occurred probably about 1952. Speight apparently assumed this to be the “falls” named after the pioneer settler and sawmiller, Henry Sharplin, who was the first occupier of the block which is now the scenic reserve. The maps drawn up by the original surveyors in the district showed Sharplm’s Falls in the right place, but when Professor Speight made his definitive geological survey of the district in 1938 he published a map showing the faljs at the confluence of the two streams. The provisional one-mile topographic ihap, published in 1943, showed the falls correctly in Bowyers Stream, above Tinstone Creek. The second edition of the map (1970) showed the falls on Tinstone Creek; the latest edition (1983) puts them at the junction with Bowyers Stream. The Official Gazetteer of Place Names puts them in Tinstone Creek. In fact, says Mr Clark, the falls haven’t moved for at least 60

years, even if the Goldsmith Rapids (and “Speight’s Falls”) were remodelled in the 1952 flood. S To find the elusive Sharplin Falls, says Mr Clark, go to the Goldsmith Rapids, then continue up the right-hand side of Bowyers Stream, rdckhopping and bushwhacking where necessary, until you have seen all three falls, the largest of which drops about 10 metres. “You will know you have seen all of them when you have negotiated the fixed rope installed by Mr Warren Jowett, of Christchurch, and gone down the other side to the third set,” he says. The reason why the existing track terminates at the Goldsmith Rapids is a mystery, because early maps in Mr Clark’s possession

show a track leading right to the falls, then looping back above the bluffs. One possible explanation, which Mr Clark has been unable to confirm, is that the track was closed in the 1940 s after a member of a group on a Christmas outing for Post Office staff fell over a bluff and was killed. The abundant growth of the bush would have concealed all traces of a track within a few years. Extension of the present track so that visitors can once again see the Sharplin Falls is just one of a number of proposals that the foothills group is plugging for the area. Another is the replacement of the present suspension bridge, near the car-park, with a more stable, if less thrilling structure. Many

By

DERRICK ROONEY

elderly people are unable to face the wobbly passage across the suspension bridge, Mr Clark says. More important are the proposals to extend the reserve from its present 226 ha to create a huge recreational area of more than 5000 ha, including the adjoining former Alford State Forest and a large area of the Mt Somers grazing run which is to be retired from grazing and surrendered back to the Crown in 1988. Development of this part of the Mt Somers-Stavely foothills area — after the model of Mt Peel — was

first taken up by a local committee in 1972 as a centennial project, but little progress was made, largely, according to local sources, because of conflict between the two Government departments concerned — the Lands and Survey Department and the Forest Service. However, according to Mr Clark, one of the stumbling blocks was removed last year when control of the Alford State Forest passed from the Forest Service to the Lands and Survey Department, which should have been the administering body all along, according

tb an opinion from the Crowd Law' Office. The land was gazetted in 1881 as a “reserve for the preservation and growth of timber,” not as a State forest, and in the Solicitor-general’s opinion it should be administered under the Reserves Act, not the Forests Act. The area involved is some 2505 ha. Since the seminar the local member of Parliament, Mr R. L. Talbot, has been lobbying for the district in Wellington, and he recently passed on to Mr Clark a letter from the Minister of Forests (Mr Wetere), promising that three smaller areas of State Forest land in the district, totalling 353 ha, would also be released by the Forest Service later this year. These are areas which were added to Alford forest after 1881.

With the 226 ha Sharplins Fall Reserve and the 2301 ha to be surrendered from Mt Somers Station, this makes a total of 5385 ha available for development as a scenic or recreational reserve. Proposals for this enlarged area include walkways, a two-day tramping route “round the back” of Mt Somers from Woolshed Creek to emerge at the car-park-at Stavely, tracks to significant geological and historic features, camping sites, the provision of toilet and cooking facilities at the Sharplins Falls reserve, and the setting aside of an area for recreational hunting. Spectacular natural features in the area include a canyon, several hundred metres deep, on Woolshed Creek. The locals want the department to provide a full-time ranger, who

would live in Mt Somers or Stavely. They also want to see plenty of local input to the planning for the area. The locals describe Mt Somers as “the gateway to the Ashburton Gorge, offering lakes, boating, fishing, ski-ing, tramping, and scenic reserves.” They envisage a big future for the area, which could attract a large number of visitors from Christchurch and Ashburton, and might also be an alternative attraction for overseas visitors from the Mt Hutt ski-field on non-ski-ing days. To date development has been slow, but since the seminar, says Mr Clark, the local people have been receiving encouraging signals from Wellington. “The clash between the two departments has been probably the main reason why this area has never been properly developed — the Forest Service controlled most of the area as Alford State Forest while Lands controlled the focus as the Sharplins Falls Scenic Reserve,” says Mr Clark. “We local residents can be excused for having considerable sympathy with Jonathan Elworthy’s attempt to merge the two departments and bang a few heads together. I note that the Solicitor-General also considers the rivalry a waste of time and energy.” (Mr Elworthy was Minister of Lands and Forests in the National Government). A shortage of planning staff in the Lands and Survey Department was advanced to the seminar as a major stumbling block to the early development of the district’s scenic attractions, but Mr Clark says that subsequent correspondence with the Director-General of Lands and with Mr Wetere has been encouraging. “The tone is positive, though clearly there were no concrete commitments,” Mr Clark says. “At long last the whole area is to be under the control of one department and perhaps we shall see development of the Sharplin Falls before too long. We have waited 12 years — surely we won’t have to wait another 12.” One of the significant aspects of the Stavely seminar which prompted the latest burst’ of activity is that it was organised by Federated Farmers. ’ Established conservation groups had little to contribute to what was quite an important issue, Mr Clark says. ; “Federated Farmers are often painted, rather too easily and unfairly, as capitalistic, landgrabbing exploiters most recently over the Rakaia and Land Settlement Board'debates. “There are almost as many members of the Aorangi Parks Board with farming or rural-based backgrounds as on the Land Settlement Board. And we,, as local residents, have every bit as much interest in what goes on in parks and reserves, because not only are we part of the general public, we live and work right alongside the reserve.” Mr Clark and his committee hope that when the Aorangi Parks Board meets at the end of this month those rural members will keep up the pressure on the department for progress on what appears to be the most ambitious, most unusual, and most promising new reserve proposal in Canterbury for many years.