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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 4 (September 1, 1931.)

The Waiho in Flood

page 37

The Waiho in Flood

Where The Waiho River Issues. The foot of Franz Josef Glacier.

Where The Waiho River Issues.
The foot of Franz Josef Glacier
.

When it rains in South Westland it does rain! But a rainy day in this land of rivers, forests, and glaciers, is a very different thing from a wet day in Wellington or Auckland. It is an experience that more than compensates for any slight upsetting of itineraries, and if you are anywhere near Franz Josef Glacier, and lucky enough to see the Waiho in flood, then you are being treated gratis to a spectacle money couldn't buy. (The photographs accompanying this article were taken by the writer.)

In Sydney, the other day, they had twelve inches of rain in forty-eight hours, and on the other side of the world, people were dying like flies in a heat wave. In March last, Auckland was under the spell of drought; patient gardeners stood to the very last minute of the very last half-hour of daylight-saving hosing their perishing gardens, while down in Westland the rain gauge recorded ten inches inside twenty-four hours, and we guests at Franz Josef Glacier Hotel were marching in bathing suits and oilskins down to the Waiho River, through pouring rain, to see the flood.

It was well worth seeing—those one-day trippers, held up by road slips and flood, were luckier than they knew. Any day one may cross the Waiho Bridge and see nothing but a shingle riverbed and a few swift streamlets threading their way between the bush-clad banks; seldom has the visitor the good fortune to watch the swift rise of one of the swiftest and most dangerous of all those beautiful, menacing rivers of South Westland. All night the rain had come down in torrents; all next morning we watched the steady, pitiless downpour from the windows of the hotel, watched the white mist-clouds come sweeping down over the Mummy Hill, over Canavan's Knob and lofty, snow-capped McFettrick. The mists cleared, then swept down again, and soon the river mists came sweeping up from the Waiho River bed to meet them.

When the Waiho is low, the river bed is nearly a mile wide, and sheep are driven up it to the Main South Road from grazing country down by the ocean. Its low banks are fringed with tawny tussock and plumy toi grass; starry wild flowers and page 38 beautiful berries grow close to the moss clumps between the patches of shingle, and the children love to paddle in the little streams that go meandering far and wide from the main channel of the river.

The Angry Waters.

But the Waiho in flood! No wonder the natives called it—and this is the correct spelling—“Waiau,” or “Smoking Waters.” In flood time, you see a phenomenon
“Praise the bridge that carries you over.” Where the Main South Road (Westland) crosses the Waiho River. (The famous Franz Josef Glacier may be seen in the background.)

Praise the bridge that carries you over.
Where the Main South Road (Westland) crosses the Waiho River. (The famous Franz Josef Glacier may be seen in the background.)

peculiar to this swift, turbulent mass of water that comes hurtling down from the Franz Josef glacier. From the tearing, boiling flood, rise clouds of white smoke, so that as you gaze up and down from the Main South Road bridge, the entire surface of the river is hidden from view.

In March, after those ten inches of rain, the Waiho was running a banker. More than a banker, in fact, for the treacherous flood was soon eating out the banks on the southern side, and before nightfall several chains of metalled road had been swept away. Late in the afternoon we trooped out to see the damage. A telegraph post had just crashed down into the flood, taking with it some more of the road and a tangle of wire. As we approached, another piece of the overhanging bank fell in with a thunder-clap that sounded above the roar of the river. Half-a-dozen men were busy clearing away the tangle of telegraph wire and undergrowth, fixing barriers at either end of the danger zone, chopping down trees for a deviation. Standing there, a little closer to the edge of the bank than safety permitted, I looked out over the grey, swirling flood that reached now from bank to bank. Swift and terrible as the Aratiatia Rapids roared the river beneath the crumbling banks; foam crested waves came racing in from the main current, swirling high against the banks, taking ever fresh toll of rocks and soil. Soon came another crash, and the cry “Stand back!” For a moment the mists lifted, and we saw the tossing flood in all its sullen grandeur; then the white clouds swept up again, and all was hidden.

In the grey twilight we made our way back to the hotel, dim shapes of men and page 39 women moving in the misty darkness of the forest road. On the bridge we paused; the river was now past the height of the flood—these Westland rivers rise and fall very quickly—and a curious phenomenon was taking place. Two sets of current seemed to meet in mid-stream, sending up high-crested waves that reached as far back as one could see. In the gathering darkness they looked like a long row of haycocks tossing and swirling down the bed of the river. Above the tumult of the water sounded the grinding and crashing of great blocks of ice from the terminal face of the glacier—there must have been Titan sport going on up there beneath the ice-precipices of Franz Josef that day! ….

“Delayed by flood” ran a sheaf of telegrams sent from Waiho Gorge that evening. “And the best bit of sight-seeing in the whole trip!” would have been an adequate tribute to the privilege of that magnificent spectacle, the Waiho in flood.

“In one diffusive band They drive the troubled flock.”—James Thomson Driving sheep up the bed of the Waiho River, Westland, New Zealand.

In one diffusive band They drive the troubled flock.”—James Thomson
Driving sheep up the bed of the Waiho River, Westland, New Zealand.

The Railways and Road Transport
(From our London Correspondent.)

The Great Western Railway operates 831 road vehicles in connection with its freight cartage arrangements. During 1929 these vehicles ran over five million miles with nearly two million tons of traffic. The Great Western road motors play a conspicuous part in the handling of “container” business. Despite trade depression, the tonnage collected and delivered by the Great Western rail-road “container” plan continues to expand.

Concerning the cartage of goods traffic in city areas, the Home railways have been giving consideration to the possibilities attending the replacement of horse haulage by mechanical transport. The first practical result of this investigation is the introduction by the London, Midland and Scottish Railways, of a special form of tractor, known as the “mechanical horse,” into cartage services at London, Birmingham and Manchester.