Map names history trove

Press, 20 February 1988, Page 24

Map names history trove

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Mark Pickering

People not only want to visit places — they like to leave some tangible mark, or else take a memento home like a seashell or stone (or photo). Today, our marks in the hills are restricted to log books in huts, but easily within living memory people had the pleasure and power to put a bit of themselves quite literally on the map. They took to the task with relish.

It’s not entirely a fanciful notion that the history of the hills is better told on maps than in any formally written account. It’s a memoir of both the prosaic and the profound, the life-decid-ing and the inconsequential — in fact, a very human account. We have the names of people who first went into the hills, and what they saw and experienced. There was a good deal of backslapping, honouring well-known dignitaries of the time who gave some patronage to exploration and couldn’t, with any sense of politic, be decently left out. People named their tastes in food, their feelings at the time, their wives, their children, their mates, and sometimes even the local pub. We can understand some of their philosophy and poetry, and get to know some of their heroes. Just one map would serve as an example of the richness of history and information to be found — the Arthur’s Pass National Park map N.Z.M.S. 273/ Tile pass was discovered by

“Arthur” — Arthur Dudley Dobson. “Bealey” was a local big-wig in Canterbury, and Dobson must have thought highly of him because there are six Bealeys on the map. “Rolleston” and “Cass” were also townies. “Minchin,” “Goldney” and “Hawdon” were named after local settlers who arrived hot on the heels of the Dobsons, anxious for unclaimed grassland. “McGrath” was a reading contractor, “Cassidy” a mail contractor, “Casey” a shepherd.

For personal expression, we have “Blimit” (bloody limit), “Mount Damfool,” “Mount Horrible,” “Mount Misery” and the “Mounds of Misery,” which can only leave us to guess at what incidents took place that left those places’with such damning

names. There are useful geographical hints in “Trudge Col,” “Fallen Mountain” (which really did collapse, the debris still strewn over Taruahuna Pass), and “Sudden Valley,” which has a waterfall blocking its lower valley, so the breakthrough to the upper stream is indeed a surprise. You would have few illusions about tackling streams such as “Tumbledown Creek” or “Twin Fall Stream,” and you would be right. “Easy Creek” is a cruisy way into the Avoca River, and if you pondered beforehand the name “White River,” you might guess that this is a glacial river turned a milky colour by flecks of glacial “flour.” Christian names are scattered all over the place. Names like “Anna,” “Sally,” “Sarah,” “Mary” are as popular today as then, but what about “Florence,” or “Mavis,” or “Dexter”? And why are the female names usually associated with lakes? The Polar Range has peaks “Scott,” “Bowers,” “Wilson” and “Oates,” who were the obvious heroes of the age. Was it an oversight that the fifth member of the polar party, Evans, who was the first to die, was omitted? Or is this a hazy reminder that he was considered to have “failed” the others, and was not cast in quite the same heroic mould?

Incidentally, John Pascoe, in his book “Unclimbed New Zealand,” was critical of the use of English personal names

on peaks, though making a graceful exception of the polar party. Can you imagine, he asked, the feelings of a party “dying of exposure and accident on Mount Percy Smith?” The Maori names in Arthur’s Pass are usually revealing and apt once a translation is made. “Otira” (the place of a company of travellers), “Waimakariri” (cold water), and “Taipo” (loosely translated as “devil,” possibly because it was a notoriously difficult river to cross in the early days). Natural history names are present, but in no great numbers. “Red Beech Stream,” “Kea Creek,” “Whio Stream” inform us that once there was a beech forest, a kea and a blue duck in the vicinity. There must have been something special in “Specimen Creek” to excite a prospector’s eye, or was he trying to throw his rivals off the scent? Nearly every name has a story behind it. Sometimes it is possible just by simple patience over a map to tease out the name’s meaning. And on longish dark nights in a hut, it is well worthwhile to pull up a candle and consider the names on a map. Information The new Arthur’s Pass National Park handbook has a good glossary of the names to be found within the park. Pascoe’s chapter, “A Digression: Alpine Names,” strongly favours classical and Maori names. {