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Franz Joseph to Wanaka

We were distinguishable, even if we did not look distinguished as we boarded the "Wahine" last Christmas Eve. Packed though the boat was there was no overlooking the eleven of us as we marched up the gangway, with huge packs bulging on our shoulders. The "Wahine" was to take us on the first stage of our journey to the Franz Josef, and down the coast and over the lowest pass in the Southern Alps to Otago.

The service car met us next day at Otira, and we set out on the beautiful drive to Franz Josef, through mile after mile of bush past wonderful lakes and rivers, and little deserted mining townships. Just as daylight faded we saw the dim white shape of the glacier between the dark hills, and then the lights of the big hotel blazed out from a clearing to welcome us.

Boxing Day we spent at the glacier, hiring guides to take us up on the ice. The scenery was glorious; great bluffs, threaded with waterfalls swept up from the glacier; rata-slashed bush clothed the lower slopes of the mountains down which it crept; beyond, the snowfields of the upper peaks swept up to the sky.

In fact there were many good points about that expedition on the glacier. The orange and blue berets of the Maori guides looked well against the green-tinted whiteness of the ice. So did the great Byrd-expedition dog which followed us up. Nevertheless . . . "the worst two hours I've ever spent, dentist not excluded," declared one of the girls. The razor-back ridges and bottomless crevasses were on such an alarming scale, though the men of course, who went right up to the Defiance Hut, swore that it had been a "great day."

Early next morning we shouldered our packs and set off along the bush-edged road to Weheka. There at the Fox Glacier Hotel, which stands among pleasant farm-lands, with the snow-streaked mountains towering behind, we found our supplies awaiting us. We left with our ears ringing with warnings about the rivers which were before us. "Not to be played with, these West Coast rivers. All bad and big and treacherous." As for the Haast! We began to wonder if any of us would get across the Haast alive. "Many a man has been lost in the Haast and his body never been seen again," one of the girls would quote with relish.

There were some hundred miles to be tramped before the Haast river mouth should be reached, and from there another sixty up the Valley and over the Pass to Lake Wanaka in Otago. The greater part of the way was through wonderful bush in which the big timber was mainly rata and white pine. Always the sound of falling water was in our ears; tuis and bell-birds sang from the fern-trees day-long and fat irridescent pigeons would fly leisurely across our path in their creaking flight.

The whole route was intersected by creeks and unbridged rivers which race from the mountains to the nearby sea. There were five rivers, including the Haast, which were particularly big and treacherous and had to be forded on horseback or crossed by ferry. According to the settlers down there, the three girls of the party were the first of their sex to cross the Haast Pass on foot from the West Coast to Otago.

A road passable by car in winter, the dry season of the West Coast, runs through the bush as far south as the station at the Mahitahi. For the remaining hundred odd miles to the Haast and over the Pass to Otago, there is at best a bridle track. North of the Haast the going is flat, until the track leaves the Blue River (Moeraki) when it winds up over the Mataketake range and down through the Copper Creek flats, haunt of the mosquito, to the Haast mouth. From the Mahitahi onwards there are a number of quite good huts, at intervals of roughly a day's tramp, so that with these and a barn or two we had to pitch the tents only twice on the whole journey.

We must have looked a weird troupe as we streamed along the forest track. In front there was usually Jack—"not a horse in Westland to trot him"—his owner had assured us—stepping neatly along to excerpts from "The Vagabond King" and grand opera, his packs swaying from side to side in rhythm, his driver at the other end of the home-made rope reins. Jack was no pack-horse bred but with reins and music he went well. Behind would be strung out some sketchily attired youths and maidens with tops of packs bulging above their shoulders. Usually some such favourite topic as the page 22 prevalence of goitre on the West Coast would be under earnest discussion by the more rabid scientists of the party. The girls always had streamers of gaily-coloured washing pinned out to dry on the backs of their packs.

Last of the procession would come Daisy Bell, mountainous packs balancing on her gaunt shoulders, piled high with gear and food. Her driver kept strictly beyond reach of her mighty heels. For our Daisy—bought and our own—was of a fantastic size and build and had a red-veined menace in her eye. Often an unexpected movement would startle her and cause her to send everyone within kicking distance cowering into the surrounding bush

The first two big rivers, the Cooke and the Fox, we crossed, some by cage and some on horseback. A dray took most of us across the next big one, the mile wide Karangarua. Twenty-two miles through bush and open country, and for a little way along the bleak coastline of Bruce's Bay, brought us to the Mahitahi, the last station we would find for fifty miles. At this homestead, where we were treated with wonderful hospitality, we had a fellow traveller with us for the night.

Tramping along the bush road one day with no other life about us but the fat bush pigeons which flew about the track with their heaving flight, or the singing tuis and darting fantails, we had been startled to hear a 'ping-ping." Looking round we saw a little bearded man come pedalling along over the ruts and bumps on a push bicycle. In front of his handle bars was a small parcel containing a pair of trousers and some bread and cheese. He was on his way to cross the Haast Pass to Otago on bicycle. I'd like to get over, you know," he confided to us in the homestead kitchen that night, "on account of everyone saying I wouldn't." And get over he did. After travelling with us for a while the next day he pushed on and got across a day ahead of us. Map or compass he did not carry, but good luck and good weather went with him. Every day or so we would suddenly come across the imprint of a tyre on a muddy patch of ground. Most of us think of him as we last saw him, crossing the swift Paringa River. He was so short that the water swirled round his waist, but he waded determinedly on with his bicycle held high above his head. Many an adventure he had with his bicycle—lowering it sometimes over steep banks by a rope while he swung himself down by a vine, pitching headfirst occasionally at an occasional bump or hole. At the homesteads he visited he always talked far into the night, having, as he put it, the gift of the gab.

We were forded across the Mahitahi river the next morning on horseback. A few miles further on was the Paringa, which we forded ourselves. The Paringa is a most lovely river. Blue and wide it sparkled in the sunshine and the bushclad hills from whose confines it flowed and which ran down to its wide stony bed, rose shimmering in the heat haze. Here and there a splash of rata dyed the green of their thickly wooded sides. When the rata is in full bloom, we were told, all the hills down there are red. Further on, deep in the glorious bush in Lake Paringa, it lies glimmering between the trees which crowd to its edge, like a lost gem from the string of forest lakes we had left farther up the coast.

New Year's Eve we spent in the little iron hut on top of the Mataketake range, hemmed in by virgin bush that exhoed with the sound of waterfalls. We were all tired out after an afternoon's solid tramping, and it was raining. A fireplace occupied almost one whole side of the tiny hut. There were a few bunks and the walls were partly papered with pictures from the Auckland Weekly. We ate, slept and were thankful. Half of us slept in the bunks, the other half on the floor, under the bunks, across the fireplace, or draped in semi-circles round the mountains of food which had been emptied out on the floor to be tallied up. Outside was the dripping rain and the heavy bush—inside was the firelight and utter drowsy contentment. Thus we saw the end of 1931, though few were awake to watch it go.

We ate grossly of course, when we did eat. We knew that the hour of the next meal was indefinite and that in no time we would be feeling as hungry as ever again. Such a heartfelt remark as "God! I'm full!" from a prostrate form would cause little or no comment.

There were some tragedies of course. One perfect evening, the horses escaped and two of the men had to run for miles back through the dark bush before they recaptured them. Then on our first day in the Haast valley the alleged twenty-five miles

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to the Clarke Hut stretched out so far that we had to camp for the night in the rain on the very edge of the Haast with its dreary breadth of waters swirling and suckling just a few feet below.

The day before, the track had brought us down from the Mataketake to the wild coast where the Haast Rows out to the sea. The river broadens tremendously and multiplies into numerous smaller streams besides the large main one as it draws near the sea, and flows out across a wide desolate bar on which the long rollers break. Further up the bush and the mountains close in upon it. We were ferried across the swift deep main stream in a rowing boat, while the horses swam behind.

The whole narrow valley of the Haast is really one great riverbed, honeycombed with narrower streams that feed the large main one. Snow-capped peaks rise up, range on range, on either side. Here and there are grassy islands among the boulders into which an occasional deer would go bounding at our approach. Paradise ducks were numerous and their harsh desolate cries seemed to fit the loneliness of the valley.

Our last night in the valley we spent at the Burke Hut where a solitary prospector entertained us on the venison he had shot. Nearby the Landsbrough, another tremendous river, flows out from its valley, paradise of deer-stalkers, to join the Haast.

From the Burke, the track gradually led up to the Pass itself. This winds up through a gorge which narrows almost to a canyon. Fat below the track, between its rocky walls, the river rages amongst the mountainous boulders, tossing against its restricting walls and swirling into pools of green. Above us towering into the distance were huge peaks, their snowy heads lost in the mists. All the way as a background of noise we could hear the fighting river and uncounted waterfalls.

From its highest point the Pass runs easily down through the bush to the Otago side and the beautiful Fish River and Makarora River flats. Here the wooded hills sloping gently down to the flats are bordered with ranks of gay foxgloves. There were deer grazing on the edge of the bush and rabbits went scurrying away from almost under our feet.

A few miles down Lake Wanaka the service car picked us up next day. It had been a wonderful tramp bur none of us felt sorry to throw our packs into the back of the car. After a glorious drive along Lakes Wanaka and Hawea, through Pembroke Cardrona and Arrowtown, and over the Crown range, we arrived at Queenstown. Here we camped for the last time. Early next morning we boarded the little lake steamer on the first stage of our return to Wellington.