BEAUTIES OF LAKE, VALLEY AND MOUNTAIN

Southland Times, Issue 23816, 13 May 1939, Page 13

BEAUTIES OF LAKE, VALLEY AND MOUNTAIN

Journey Down The Hollyford

By

DAVID R. JENNINGS

'With two companions, Messrs Gus Tapper and Charles Bridgeman, Dr Jennings recently made a trip down the Hollyford Valley and visited Martin’s Bay, the Kaipo Valley, Big Bay, the Upper Pyke river and the Barrier. This is the second of two illustrated articles describing the trip.

*T’HE second part of our journey . > began as we set off from Davey’s with heavy packs, bound for Big Bay. We led a pup shaped like a terrier but coloured otherwise. He wanted always to go on the other side of a bush. His ancestry may have been clouded but his spirit was not. The track led us through some bush on to the bank of the river and our eyes were free to roam over the pleasant sunlit surroundings. Black swans, about 36 in number, were hugging the opposite sand-covered shore. The river was enlarged and lazily gathering force before pushing its way into the ocean. We found a penguin which had just finished moulting. They moult in dozens along this shore. The tracks led along the shore and the view widened as we approached the northern headland. This headland is a continuation of the Sarah Hills. Southwards the May Hills, bordering the shore of Lake McKerrow, peter out in the south headland of Martin’s Bay. Sarah and May were, by the way, the two daughters of Chief Tutoko. Knowing this we were happier about the naming of these hills.

The view was now one of the most pleasant we had looked upon. Here was the sweep of Martin’s Bay. On our left lay the Hollyford Valley with its bushclad ramparts fading into the distance. Before us was the mighty river hurrying now to meet the blue water of the ocean. Its force was so great that the waves were forced apart in the merging of the waters. Ahead surf splashed restlessly against the rocks and boulders which lined the shore. At Big Bay TTpE waved farewell to Dave Gunn and VV Martin’s Bay and entered the muddy track round the headland. We came out on a shingle beach strewn with debris. And there across the way was the northern headland of Big Bay and the provincial boundary. Stones and rests and sandflies, stones and rests and sandflies. The dog got loose and went chasing rabbits. There are rabbits here at Martin’s and in the Kaipo. The bay was better going. We marched in line on fine solid gravel: There is something stimulating and helpful in a common rythm. But where was the fine surface of Big Bay? Surely not this steep gravel. However the beach improved and in its latter quarter the sandy surface was so perfect that it rivalled our own Oreti Sands. In the golden glory of the setting sun we climbed over the sandhills and reached the hut. After a meal we felt in need of a wash so we lit a kerosene Rolls Royce car lamp and explored the river. We undressed and washed. Comedy can occur in funny places, and not once but three times we had to get the lamp in order to find the soap. As the tide was running out this was no easy matter, and we eventually returned to the hut with one-sixth part of the soap we started with. But we were clean.

Big Bay has possibilities and may yet be well known. I would hate to see bungalows behind the sandhills and the white pine grove despoiled and killed. The beauties of nature are all the finer if they are hard to find, and they are all the sweeter when far from the “madding crowd.” A long bush trail leads inland to the Upper Pike. The way was long and sunless. When we stopped for lunch I tried to get the pup to follow a weasel I saw disappearing over the creek bank. We had not seen a weka or even heard one in all the country we had passed through. This sight of this weasel was too much for me. I felt a sudden surge of anger. The pup failed to find the scent or would not. Bird Mortality THE Hollyford Valley was at one time plentifully populated with wekas, kakapos and even kiwis. Two or three years ago the wekas disappeared suddenly. The kakapos have vanished and no kiwis are heard. In 1921 Malcolm McKenzie told me of the first wave of weasels going down the track. He said he had seen a dead kakapo every 100 yirds or so. If this was so on the track, what was it like in the bush? The kakapo is a harmless ground nocturnal parrot. He would be an easy prey, but the weka is built in a sturdier mould, and they do say that a weka can and has beaten a weasel in mortal combat in the open. Disease must be taken into account in considering the sudden disappearance of the birds, but the weka’s eggs are few and irregular. Ever since the day when as a boy I disturbed a weasel rolling an egg across a road I have been suspicious of weasels and native birds’ eggs. In this case the egg happened to be a crockery one, but they would be real eggs in the Hollyford. Yes, I think that most can be put down to that thrice-cursed furry bolt and its ferocious tenacity. In 1922 I saw a weasel swimming westward in the middle of Te Anau. Who says that the

weasel is not tenacious? The beast is even starting on our pigeons. We were told an eye-witness’s account of a weasel which stalked a pigeon up a tree. Pigeons return quite often to the same branch or tree and the weasel eventually sprang at the pigeon and both crashed to earth. The witness made short work of that weasel, but the pigeon was dead. Pigeon’s eggs are also vulnerable. Our native birds are doomed, and the annoying thing is that in unbroken bush it would be impossible to eradicate the pest. He will be starved out, but at what a price! I am reminded of my friend the weka pile-driving a bar of soap outside Howden Hut. I can see my friend stealing fat out of the frying-pan while the cook stirred the porridge. I have seen a battle for possession of a camp between two wekas. I have awakened with weka chicks walking over me. Yes, I shall miss my friend. Difficult Fords THE Pyke Valley is a reasonably open valley which runs southwards through Lake Wilmot into Lake Alabaster and so into the Hollyford River. We forded the cold, clear river and reached the hut which is a modem slab-built place without a window. Enough daylight filters through between the slabs, and the smoke keeps out the sandflies. The hut is remote enough to justify the absence of a window. The “old man” flood of the previous week had affected the Pyke Valley. Part of the track had been washed away and for over one mile we waded through water knee deep except where there was a hole. The pup had a miserable time. This was the beginning of our water travelling that day. We crossed and recrossed the river many times. Some of the fords were easy, but others were of moderate difficulty. Once I was hard put to keep my watch-case dry, and had to hold my belt up as high as it would go. The pup was usually washed down stream at the fords. At one ford his two attempts failed, because of a steep bank. We left him whining piteously on the other side. In five minutes he followed us, wet but happy. We forded the river finally just above where it enters Lake Wilmot; I have crossed better fords. Lake Wilmot is a very considerable body of water surrounded by bushclad mountains. We followed its eastern shore, wading often.

The first large stream to enter the Pyke after Lake Wilmot is the Barrier. This is a turbid glacial stream from a gorge on the eastern side. We intended to pentrate the gorge on the morrow and spend the night at the Barrier Hut. Arawata Bill had blazed a trail through this gorge originally,, and Dame Rumour had it that he loved the head of this valley so much that he would have liked to leave his bones there. Two parties had followed Bill’s blaze into the head, and on the morrow we were the third. The Red Hills IT is a slow climb to begin with, but mounts steeply over a bluff. The river foams and roars through the gorge below. We had difficulties in finding the blaze in places, and the passage of that gorge took us a whole 10 hours. We were out at last in a place of beauty on the edge of a mountain flat, covered with snow grass. Ahead of us was Little Red Hill, the tail end of the Red Hills. These hills are curious and unique—of a dull red or flower-pot colour. No vegetation clothes their sides. Where recent rock has slid from the sides, the colour tends to the normal greybrown of ordinary rock. Perhaps the red is due to oxidization. To the right of the Little Red Hill stretched the snow peaks of the Olivine Plateau. They sparkled brightly in the evening light. We saw plenty of deer tracks in this valley but no deer. They come over here from the Dart headwaters. We camped and slept. I am reminded of the story in J. D. Pascoe’s book of the professor who did not take milk in his tea. One day, in the Upper Rakaia, somebody handed him his tea. He complained bitterly of the milk in it, till he was told that it was only Rakaia water. Our water from the carrier was such—turbid with schist dust. We reblazed the trail on our return so as to make the way easier for others. A poor trail well blazed is better than no track at all.

We walked and walked on the long trail to Lake Alabaster. In places the track was overgrown with fern and maple saplings. We passed the Diorite Gorge on our left and then the Cascade Gorge. The water from this valley is so clear where it joins the Pyke that in a deep pool near the junction we were able to see four man-sized trout.

The Pyke Valley is flat and sandy and contains large open areas. The walls are steep and the rush of water is ever in the air from falls and gorges. The river had been in flood and great trees

in places lay across the bed. It was a sad sight to see this devastation, but rivers denude to build, and where they build the new trees grow. We surprised a pair of grey ducks—and in the distance saw four' “parries.” Later on we saw a single black swan. Apart from this the river bank was often silent. There is a grass which grows on these tracks about knee high, the seed of which is dark and hooked. It delights in catching onto anything it can. Hairy knees and woollen stockings are a disadvantage. There is another grass with a seed like small barley which works down into the boots. We called the hooked sort “come to me Charlies,” and scraped them off at every stop. The pup was low and missed them for the most part. Lake Alabaster

LAKE Alabaster has been a name with me for years. At last, here it was before me. But where lay its fascination? It is not its difficulty of access. It is not so much the beauty of its waters or of its heavy bush-clad hills. No, it is the mountains. Why is it that mountains at the end of a lake give it fame? Do the mountains beautify the lake or does the lake lend beauty to the mountains? I venture to say lhat the view of Mount Madeline and Tutoko from across the waters of Alabaster, framed between bush-clad sides will be admired by many and will ultimately become famous. We scrambled round the eastern shore on a rough hewn track of loose rock. Every new turn of the shore gave us a different view of the mountains. We dawdled where the sun streamed down upon a river bed pushed out into the lake. Pigeons dived and pirouetted behind us. We stripped and swam and dallied in the sun. The Maoris knew this lake. They called it Lake WawSihuika. They used to come here to lay in a stock of eels before continuing on up the Hollyford. Later the lake received its present name after a whaling captain. I rather like the old one. The Maoris used to make their way into the greenstone or down the Eglinton to Te Anau. It was Roto Te Anau then—“ The Lake of the fair haired people.” In those far-off days Lake McKerrow was called Lake Kakapo and Tutoko’s ancestors ruled the Ngatimamoe. First European SIR James Hector called in at Martin’s Bay in 1863. He it was who met Tutoko and Sarah and May, the last of the tribe. We owe Sir James our thanks for his perpetuation of their memory. Hector was the first European to cross from the coast to Wakatipu. He followed where the Maori had gone before. Twenty years passed and we find the Jamestown settlement in being. About 1882 Hugh McKenzie’s father settled behind the sandhills of the bay. The original settlers had ben given 50 acres free along the river and beside the lake. McKenzie paid £1 an acre for his land. Hugh McKenzie, who came after the Maoris had died out, remembers a Maori clearing near the present home. Here the kohi stumps had been cut in a long slope as if with stone axes. There were several food-store posts sticking in the ground. They were polished and had raised girdles to stop rats climbing up. Two of these posts were put by Hugh into the fence line, as he thought that the best way to preserve them. These posts are now in the Southland museum. Many Maori axes and stone tools have been picked up on the camp area in the years gone by. Someone had stolen the best of Hugh’s collection. Professor Park, of Dunedin, was an early visitor to the Pyke, but Wilmot was earlier and left his name to the lake in the Upper Pyke. Lakes Wilmot and Alabaster are both large areas of water, and on looking at the map it seems to me that Lake Wilmot is larger and Alabaster smaller than they were at the original survey. The sun still warmed us and the swim had made me drowsy. My thoughts slipped back to the long and distant past. The sea came up to the river and tidal waves surged on the shore by McKerrow hut and deposited shells on the shore. Go and look today and you will find some of those sea shells. They are there still as scientific proof. But the slips came down from the mountains and the westerlies added sea-borne sand to the stones. The sound was a sound no longer and today the lake contains fresh water. Homeward PERHAPS in earlier days still the sea extended into Alabaster and Wilmot The rock walls are smooth and ice worn, falls descend from hanging valleys, and the valley floor is silt and sand hurried there by busy streams from the tops. Nature builds rapidly in country such as this. But the sun was getting cooler. We said goodbye to murmuring Lake Alabaster as we left the last bend of its shore. Along the river the ground was flat and sandy. The stream was idle, slow and turbid and it remained thus for a mile or two until it poured down to a lower level a short distance above Chair Creek. We waved a familiar hand to the Pyke Chair and were thankful that we did not have to use it again. The track came out into the open, (Continued at foot of next Column)

and there was the hut in the evening shadows. But hold one minute. The ridges, face and summit of Mount Madeline smiled down at us from above. The setting sun bathed her in a flood of golden glory. Every nook and cranny, every snow-capped rock was thrown into perfect relief. Though times and seasons change, though storms and tempests beat upon you, yours is the beauty that outlives them. Live on Mt. Madeline and show your beauty to such as seek you. May you give them pleasure. A pair of sparrow hawks made the evening noisy as we retired to sleep. The homeward turn at last. The packs were light and the mud had dried. Hidden falls thundered at us as we lunched in the hut. The surveyors produced real meat and real bread at their camp. We crossed the swaying bridge to Deadman’s and enticed the pup over. We shaved, and as we shaved we remembered the views of the John o’ Groat’s from the treetops, the Hollyford pouring out to the sea, Tutoko and Madeline from Lake Alabaster.

We were the richer in mind and body for a good holiday. But go—go and see them for yourself. Such beauties are yours for the seeing. (Concluded) /