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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 3 (July 1, 1929)

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By a coincidence, this article was written and set in type just before the great earthquake of 17th June, which damaged a section of the famous highway in the Buller Gorge and affected Murchison and other places in the Nelson and West Coast districts. The road here described is blocked at present, but repairs have already been begun, and the restoration of the areas is a task in which Government and settlers are joining hands. The splendid spirit of the West Coast pioneers is exhibited again in the courage and resolution with which the people along the Buller have attacked the problems of reconstruction of their homes. As for the route, it will be a highway of greater scenic and historic interest than ever when communications are restored.

Some day, when the West Coasters get all their hearts' desire, the traveller will speed smoothly down the grand valley of the Buller River in a luxurious railway carriage, and glancing up now and again from his detective novel will remark on the beauty of the bush and the fern-tapestried cliffs, and before he realises it he will find himself out on the levels at Westport or that other coalopolis of the land of many minerals, Greymouth.

For the present he must be content to make the journey from the South Nelson railhead to the western mountains by motor car; and an excellent service it is that links up the two ends of the iron rails.

A few years ago he would have had to travel by the mail coach, which took exactly twice the time that the motor does. But even the horse-coach was lightning-speed travel by comparison with the journeyings of one whose pioneer tramps through this tremendously broken region will be recalled in this article.

I never can travel through such country without mentally contrasting the conditions to-day with those which confronted the old-timers, the surveyors, explorers, bush scouts, the men who carried everything on their backs, who kept themselves in food as they went along if the country offered any, who starved for days, camped when there was plenty, who almost daily risked their lives by river, cliff and mountain. Their pains were many, their rewards few. Here and there their names are on the maps, but to most travellers, these days, they are but names. Few know just why those places were named Rochfort, Mackay, Brunner, Fox, and so on. The most strenuous pathfinder of all was Thomas Brunner, who explored the Buller from end to end just over eighty years ago.