Over the Range.

“There was another sailor chap, a mate I'd picked up—I've quite forgotten his name—and he, too, had had all the gold-digging he wanted. So we decided to go together and walk across the Southern Alps by the Otira Road and Arthur's Pass and across the Canterbury Plains to Lyttelton.

“Off we started with our blankets and gear and tucker for the big walk. On the way to the Taramakau River (the one that Tom Bracken used to call the ‘Terry McKow') we came up with a Scotsman who was driving two pack-horses. He packed supplies to the road camps along the track— they were finishing the road from Canterbury then. I remember we lived page 18 page 19 on wekas on that tramp to the mountains—knocked them over with sticks—wekas and damper. Scotty saw that I knew something about packing horses, and remarked on it. I ought to have known a bit about it considering that I'd been in the old Transport Corps up the Waikato in 1864.