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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 10 (January 1, 1940)

[section]

Sunset at the Mokihinui.

Sunset at the Mokihinui.

Clematis has come again to the Mokihinui Valley. White as foam on summer seas, white as winter moonlight, it shines from the dark embrace of the trees.

Leave Westport on a blue September morning and take the road to the north. If your choice is made with care, you will be rewarded with that flawless gem, a perfect West Coast day. The way runs along the coastal flat between the sapphire blue of the mountains and the dark blue sea. Far ahead on the curving coast where distance steals the height from the mountains, Kowahaihai and the Heaphy beckon.

Along this coast, almost a hundred years ago, the intrepid surveyors, Heaphy and Mackay, made their first exploratory surveys of this remote district. Accompanied by a Maori guide they made their way along the one practicable route—the seashore; supplementing their inadequate provisions with pipis, mussels and Maori cabbage; climbing by precarious improvised ladders of raupo flax leaves the precipitous headlands which occasionally obstructed their passage; crossing the frequent swift streams on frail rafts fashioned out of flax stems and capable of bearing their weight for only a measured period before inevitably becoming waterlogged; thus slowly and painfully they travelled the 190 miles that lie between the Heaphy and the Okarito.

Thirty miles north of Westport the road turns away from the Coast to follow the Mokihinui.

And now the clematis flashes like a sudden waterfall among the trees. The Mokihinui is a friendly little river with shallow sunlit reaches and quiet green depths which faithfully reflect the infinite variety of the bush-clad banks. Standing on a little shelf above the shining water where the road and railway run side by side, you can look downstream to the river mouth and see the morning sunlight fill the curling Tasman rollers with green light. Years ago there was a railway station on this spot and many years before the railway was built, a wharf stood at this point on the river. If you peer through the bush which clothes the high, steep bank, you can see all that remains of it now —a few posts black with mussel shells sticking out of the water thirty feet below.

An aerial picture of the Mokihinui River, showing Seddonville in the background and the railroad and highway joining to run parallel at the site of the old station.

An aerial picture of the Mokihinui River, showing Seddonville in the background and the railroad and highway joining to run parallel at the site of the old station.

Fifty years ago coal was loaded into the little steamers which lay at this wharf. The coal was brought from the mines upstream, in drays by road, or in flat-bottom boats by river. Passengers and goods were unloaded here for the township at the mouth of the river and for Seddonville two miles upstream. Of any road or path which must once have given access to the wharf, there is now no trace. Only the blackened posts remain to show that the Mokihinui——like most places on the coast—has a past.

From 1867 when gold was first found here stout little coasting steamers—the Murray, the Nelson, the Bruce, on their way from Nelson to Westport and Hokitika, used to call in here with passengers and cargo. The last steamship to enter the Mokihinui was the Lawrence. She was leaving at noon in April, 1891, when she grounded on the bar. The vessel managed to get off, but having lost her propeller blades, was driven inshore and stranded on the south side of the river entrance. On page 38 page 39 the following day a heavy sea came up and the steamer was so heavily pounded that she broke her back and became a total wreck. Her memory was recently revived when a bell, inscribed with the name of the steamer and the date of her launching, was found on the beach near Westport. As the railroad to Westport was almost completed in 1891 the steamship trade was allowed to lapse and the busy little wharf abandoned to the bush and the tides.

Approaching the river, the road forks. One way leads on up river through St. Helen's to Seddonville. The other follows the river down to a little hamlet (Kynnersley) at the river mouth. It is a pretty place with the charm of serenity and remoteness. A few cottages, tree shaded and flower bedecked, cluster round a green and empty space. Over yonder, on the Point, at the edge of the river stands an ancient hotel, the last of six. A gaudy petrol pump waits in front of a creeper-draped house which receives and distributes H.M. mails. And that is all. Not even a school. We passed that at the junction of the roads a mile away. The sea is not visible from here. A small forest of stunted rata separates the further edge of the empty green from the steep shingly shore, and the trees with their wind-bent twisted stems and flattened foliage shelter the village from the tormenting westerlies which blow for three-quarters of the year.

Once this green sunlit space was laid out in streets; there were shops, a Bank of New Zealand, and busy stables from which smart coaches set out three times a week for Westport. Two thousand people worked and loved and played here fifty or sixty years ago. Tall bearded men in moleskins and flannel shirts sought for gold by day and drank and gambled and fought in the six hotels by night. Ladies in old-fashioned finery, starched and ironed their voluminous white petticoats, or gossiped in the shops while choosing the flounced and trained gowns which they would proudly trail across the dancehall floor at night; gathering up the rustling frills with a graceful twist of the wrist to dance the Lancers and the Quadrilles to the music of concertina and violin.

Not a sign of this former pulsing life is to be seen to-day. No grassgrown streets, no sagging doorways or cold and empty hearths remain to tell the casual visitor that life, joyous and vigorous, once surged through this quiet backwater. Over most deserted townships of the goldrush days there broods an air, half tragic, half forlorn, as of one who mourns remembered glories. Kynnersley does not share this mood of desolation shot with triumph. The past seems quite obliterated by the wholesome peace of the present.

Twice a year even now the village comes to life. Shrill voices of children, impatient voices of motor horns, strident voices of portable radios, ripple the surface of the sunny tranquillity for a week or two at Christmas and Easter. Just before we reached the village we passed a delicious sandy bay of bright water. Twice a day the river flows in till it laps the low grassy bank where white daisies grow in these spring days.
Looking back from the famous Karamea Bluff towards the Mokihimi River. The photograph gives some idea of the density of the bush and tall forest trees.

Looking back from the famous Karamea Bluff towards the Mokihimi River. The photograph gives some idea of the density of the bush and tall forest trees.

It is a perfect place for bathing, warm, safe, sheltered. At a little distance among the lupins, to which the flax bush has given place, are a few modest baches. Their owners, who live in the mining towns on the mountains, cut off from the sea by six or seven miles of hairpin bends and devil elbows, come here for holiday delights of bathing and fishing.

On the way back to the crossroads and our riverside ledge we pass a little graveyard set in a garden of white arum lilies and yellow daffodils. Most of the inscriptions belong to the last century. They lived dangerously in those days: “Drowned on the Mokihinui bar”; “Killed by a fall of earth”; “Swept away while crossing the rocks.” They should sleep well here with the song of the river and the tui for company, while the kowhai slowly drops its gold and the clematis spills white loveliness from the enfolding trees.

page 40

page 41
Conveyer system at Slippers Ltd., Lower Hutt.

Conveyer system at Slippers Ltd., Lower Hutt.