Croesus Track-rich in memories

Press, 27 September 1988, Page 13

Croesus Track-rich in memories

NANCY CAWLEY

makes a sentimental journey on the West Coast, to

where the personality of a departed environmental ranger lingers endearingly.

I’ve always enjoyed being by myself in the hills, especially in Westland. But this time there are sad overtones. Call it a Paparoa pilgrimage. A trip to meet a friend who won’t be there. Clouds sag over the mountains as I drive towards Blackball at the foot of the Paparoa Range, but there are patches of blue. The Greymouth petrol attendant has assured me the clouds will clear. Even if they don’t, you can’t help admiring his total traditional optimism. In Blackball, it is too early for much action. Here and there chimney-smoke is going straight up. A good sign. Cottages are snugly battened against winter. I drive around a dog lying in the middle of the road waiting for the sun, and get a wave from a kid on a bike. Of course it was summer when all of us used to meet outside the post office for those guided walks. Ces Clark was the Forest Service environmental ranger and lived in Blackball with Joan

and the kids, born and bred here, so he didn’t have far to come. In 1985-86, I was helping out for a couple of seasons and drove up from Hokitika — khaki shorts and shirt, Forest Service flash on the sleeve. We never did get Ces into any sort of uniform.

None of the walks Ces planned was ever just a doddle. They ranged from a vigorous scramble through bush to view two giant brick-ventilating chimneys left over from the defunct Blackball coal mine, to an eight-hour Blackball-to-Barrytown crossing of the Paparoas. But whatever the activity, the group always loved it. Ces had the knack of cheering the most footsore tramper and interesting the most blase visitor. I used to tease him about his favourite encouraging exhortation: “From here on, it’s downhill all the way.” Though, to be fair, sometimes it was true.

It must have been a great feeling for him. Like having this

wild but perfectly landscaped garden he could always show off to visitors. He knew all the local gold and coal-mining history of course, and for nearly 10 years he and his staff cleared the tracks, constructed bridges and track signs, safeguarded and restored relics of the old days like the Garden Gully stamper, and every so often — certainly every summer — he could guide groups through an area they were discovering for the first time.

Blackball is full of Ces and Joan’s relations. His father came from a family of 13, so there were a lot of big family gatherings, weddings and birthdays, when Ces was much in demand as a singer of Scottish songs. “Doing his party piece,” his wife called it.

He left school in 1948, when he was 16, and worked with his dad in sawmills, then in the Blackball, Dobson and Roa coalmines. Perhaps he was the sort of guy who just enjoys whatever life

dishes up, because he always said that working in coalmines was great. There was a close-knit companionship you didn’t get anywhere else in working with your partner at the coal-face, or thrashing out a problem at a union meeting in the bathhouse.

Then, one by one, the mines began to close. When Dobson closed in 1968, Ces applied for a job with the New Zealand Forest Service (now the Department of Conservation) attached to the Totara Flat office.

The job was perfect for him. Ces had grown up in the bush, and really related to being responsible for its preservation. Sometimes he’d go back up into the hills to finish a job at weekends, with or without pay. He loved his job and took a pride in doing it well. The paperwork was something else, and attending Forest Service meetings at Hokitika was not his favourite thing either. But he would arrive back home and

say to Joan, “I wasn’t happy about that decision, so I got up and told them.” The union meetings in the bath-house were paying off. Ces Clark had a lot of talents. His name is still well known in rugby league ( circles. He represented the South Island in 1955, and was recalled to play again 10 . years later. He was a South Island coach and a national selector. It seems strange this morning to drive through Blackball without stopping. Trips often began, and certainly always finished, sitting around Ces and Joan’s kitchen table, taking in the tea and gossip. Catching up with the children — Karen overseas, Linda doing a post-graduate journalism course, and young Pete grappling with School Cert. Once they tried to fit 50 visiting Girl Guides into that kitchen. A bumby 15-minute drive on a bush road takes me to Smoke Ho carpark. Two other vehicles, but no sign of life. I fill in the

intentions book, “To Top Hut, back tomorrow...” swing on my pack and head off where the sign points — “Croesus Track.” The broad-benched track curves away through the bush. Pleasant to walk at my own pace without a group in tow. On a one-person-at-a-time suspension bridge, I look down at the swift water and huge boulders and wonder again at the tenacity of the goldminers, fighting their way into these quartz-bearing hills, a hundred years ago. In the middle of the grassy clearing, the site of a hotel built in 1898, there is the twisted remains of an ornate iron bedstead. It looks as though whoever slept on it had a few rough nights. The sun has burnt away the mist. Up-valley, I can almost see the bush-line hut where I’ll spend the night. Over three hours from the car-park. In his 1981 book, “The Paparoas Guide,” Andy Dennis writes of the Croesus area, after “... several decades of

neglect... the Forest Service has done a fine job in reopening these tracks, bridging the more boisterous streams, and producing informative pamphlets, to make these walks much more accessible to a wide cross-section of visitors.” The biggest project for Ces and his team came in 1985, when the Forest Service decided to build a new top hut near the ancient four-bunk one. On walks over to Barrytown, we used to either lunch outside the little tin hut in the sun, or enjoy its shelter and big fire if it was raining. But the new hut has accommodation for 25 — ideal for groups and families wanting to break the trip. That’s where I am heading now — my first visit. At last the track emerges from the bush on to open snow grass slopes dotted with silver ghost trees — the remains of a longburnt forest. The track is littered with large bread-like crumbs of quartz, as though a witch is luring me to the hut. I don’t need

any luring. I’m sweaty and tired. I can see both huts now, the old and the new, backed with sweeping views of the Grey Valley and the mountains beyond, lit by the last of the winter sun. Ces might have been superfit, but, in 1976, a routine check-up resulted in a valve-replacement operation on his heart. Afterwards he said to Joan with a laugh, “Well, when I go, I want to be on the hill with my boots on.” And he went on to lead a vigorous normal life. I dump my pack outside the door of the handsome new hut and look at the plaque on the door. It says the hut was named after Ces Clark, who, “opened up the Croesus Track” at an official ceremony in August, 1986, by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange. On July 15, 1986, while working with his mates on the nearly completed hut, Ces died from a sudden heart attack. He was the sort of friend you always miss. Thanks for the memories, Ces.