Easter 1980

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Easter 1980 Simon Field Standing in the roadside rain with a wet to Flora Saddle. From the adventures pack and wetter shoes, when a van pulls going up road it appears it may almost up to offer a lift it's going the right be as easy to carry a pack up hills as way - which is any way out of the rain. it is to put a pack in a van and push I climb in, with a thin mattress underthe van up the hills. But we all neath, a wet parka on top, and still know tramping is not meant to be easy these big wet feet thinking maybe they'll anyway. Soon enough we are walking. be useful one day. The other dripping hitch-hiker already installed in the van A quick yarn with Jim at the first hut with his neck bent beneath the roof is who tells the story of Chaffey, the an old friend heading the same way. old character who lived in these parts It sounds like the opening scenario to of the hills for forty years early more Kerouac, maybe a poor folk song or this century with Annie. In the forty a bad dream, but no, this was the beginyears Annie came out once and Chaffey ning of nine days serious and totally only rarely. He sounded like the purposeful wandering about North West sort of subject who would keep fire- Nelson. side yarns going long after the last wood. He apparently had quite an A brief dip into the hard boiling pot of acquaintance with Newman, Freud, and Friday night Motueka which must be one a diversity of other late nineteenth of the more invigorating social experienand early twentieth century prose ces available in New Zealand, Thursday writers, as well as an acquaintance night at the Trades Hall aside of course. with the Keepers of the local grog shop. Hot pies, cold stout, no raspberry, and we were on up Highway 61. It's getting Coming straight from town everyone was on, still raining in the street lights, keen to rush on so we left Jim to his so Gerry decides the time is ripe to Chaffey stories and his fire. Zooming break open the sealed instructions: - on around the horse track we came descriptions of old houses, barns, a across many adaptions that made it look woolshed, and the map with a dot and a as if someone at least was home on the large circle on it baffle us and even range. Lunch in the middle of the the local truck drivers. Another icebig red beech forest on a double bed cream and we zoom to strolling of the and a swinging chair? Yes, and I have prescribed barn. "We've made it" we to admit this furniture, a goodly way grin at each other over hunks of Motueka into the hills, did have a perverse sally lunn, even 11 hours to spare. appeal. Sleep floats along on top of a fresh hay smell and the soothing sound of rain The flat expanse of the Tableland was on the iron roof. a surprise to us as it probably is to all travellers when they first come It's two o'clock in the morning when across it. Night came on over the some person starts showing a Monty last gentians and tussock with cold Python movie in the rain right outside wisps of cloud. We found somewhere our hitherto dozing barn - a little steep to sleep in the bush, with water white van pulls up and out jump people ten minutes away through spaniards. in sporty shoes and tee shirts running Had a fire and slept. Cloud, still madly to and from the van and barn. damp, obscured views and pushed us down Clark Titman, where are you now? into the Cobb Valley. It felt like A decision of where to sleep escapes another world with sun coming through them while lost in the black rain, but the ferns and the lichens glowing on a chap called Brian is going to chase the beech trees. A pool of sunlight the starlings from the barn so that availed itself for our lunch and drying Tony, Dennis and Owen can squeeze in. of gear, which was not to be an unusual How many starlings are there in these event for the remainder of the journey. Graham Valley barns? On, sidling up the valley feeling like Pete is not here with them tonight a donkey with a load on a tortuous path. because he put his back out chasing a Around the pretty little Cobb lake we cat under his house. Anyway this Brian found a camp spot then decided to move chap rams Gerry down a crack between to another which afforded an even better two bales, pushes the other body aside, view. The price paid for any aesthetic rolls out and crashes into his pit. appreciation is often high and this night The morning dawns drier, Gerry is still all that happened was that most of us down the crack, and this Brian fellow got wet sleeping bags and some had to is lying on the hay with a big smile move their tent at two in the morning slipping out the end of his sleeping back to the original camp site. Even bag. The "time to get moving chinas" without the customary 'team talk' the hints that perhaps it wasn't a midnight troops leapt at the idea of a retreat movie at all. A brew and a sniff of to the modern comfort of Fenella hut in the peanut butter pot and we're off. the Cobb. Was it a retreat, or, as Off our heads for sure as it is only Owen suggested, just a tactical reseven thirty, and up the bulldozed road deployment of resources. I don't know, but it was good when the fire was going. wrong place at the wrong time was The rest of the day and the following inevitable after getting wasps down were spent playing cocooned caterpillars, our shirts. We also thought the impatient patience, even some reading Karamea-Beautiful confluence was still and talking. The impatience and brews light years away. dominated so on the third day, with no sleet on the windows and our reluctance The stings faded and the little Forest well hidden, we were off back to Lake Service hut appeared. It's grubbiness Cobb. Past the campsite with good was obvious, but whether it smelt like views, through drifts of snow, past a an Indian bazaar or a public toilet we mysterious rock wall built by miners in just couldn't decide. Some slept outa world now far away, and on into the side where the stars smelt much better. worsening weather we travelled. We ran Games of putting the landscape back in fact, in nylon shorts = some even together up the Karamea River were even with stripes on, down the ridge and into harder than a jigsaw with lots of pieces the catchment of the Beautiful River. missing. Lakes, huge landslips, forests Quick but pensive glances back up to the of dead trees, diverted creeks, and even windy tops and down to the lake in the a buried bivy were evidence of how unsnow - 'be quite a pleasant spot in fine stable the landscape is, obviously weather, eh?' tortured by earthquakes and floods. The Karamea Bend area is popular with Wind bit through the tortured mountain commercial meat, skin, and eel recovery beech scrub and our fingers, no time for operators as well as trampers which gloves, as we headed downwards to the perhaps explains the absence of the deer Beautiful River. Slowly the trees and blue mountain ducks that we saw up became bigger and even permitted people the Beautiful. The Bend hut did not to walk through them without having to impress us much more than the Beautiful, climb over or crawl under them. Big still if Brian started a fish and chip dracophyllums, tussled heads propped up shop he may not lack customers. on broomstick bodies, smiled wryly at our folly to be walking through them on The promise of good weather evaporated such a day, not letting on at all that as we bounced up the Baton track onto their name was maybe traversi. The now the Mt Arthur Range. Owen and Tony red and silver beeches were dripping were appalled at the lack of enthusiasm so though the roar of the flooded river to walk along to Flora Saddle via the wasn't unexpected it still sounded cold range itself; their resolute approach and powerful. Down a bank we poured shamed the rest of the group into comand onto the riverside - had a few mitting ourselves to the tops. When we shouted brief conversations, and futile were picking our way through the bluffs attempts to cross, then in the gloom on the east side of the Twins with no that only rain brings we headed back view, no water, and little direction up the bank again. Who went down the homewards, the journeying was not so East Waitewaewae in flood? The things pleasant. On the ridge itself the we do for fun. views, when the cloud parted, of this extensive country made it worthwhile. Brian thinks about spending next Easter at the Oriental band rotunda, sandwiches We camped in the tussock beside a numand lemon tea in a thermos any takers? bered cave, glad, glad to have somewhere Wet biscuits and some primus tea fuelled flat, some water, some shelter from the us up for the easy walking down river - rain, and glad also that no-one had ideas of going up river and onto the been claimed by a black hole. tops were dampened a long way back. Our spirits were truly delighted by Owen The final day came with rain just to who surely must have had some divine break the monotony. Following some assistance with his fire lighting. For clever route finding, we passed over the there in the centre of the North West bump next to Mt Arthur and down into the mountains blackened with rain and night bush that was a friendly sanctuary from blazed the most welcome fire. With the the wind on the tops. Looking into light of the sparks going up to replace the cloud back down the Mt Arthur Range the stars Gerry was sure he saw all the the entire trip came into a perspective elves from far and near in a big grinin which it was hard to deny that all ning circle around the edge of the of us hadn't enjoyed some of ourselves light, warming their insides too. some of the time. People start to talk about baths in Wellington and when Another day and the fire was grey and the Picton ferry leaves so perhaps the just another warm memory. We trucked trip is over. Back at the same barn I on down the river, walking, talking, wave to a little white van as it zooms dreaming and thinking. With a break in away with wet packs but surely satisfied the drizzle the old sun came out just hearts, back off to town. Those on to let us know he was still around, the trip with Brian Hunt were Tony even tried to dry some gear for us but Gazley, Dennis Gazley, Owen Cox, Simon the drizzle won, again. That afternoon Field and Gerry Kennedy. saw some high sidling and us watching a harrier hawk watch fantails watch sandflies who were just playing in the sun and getting eaten like everyone else. However a feeling that we were in the