Looking Back

Not long after the Mokau trip, seeing a chance to start on my own account, I took up a bush section of some 200 acres up the Akatarawa Valley, a valley branching off the Hutt Valley, and giving access from this to the west coast by Waikanae. Some time prior to my arrival, the Government had contemplated making a railroad up this valley to connect the two coasts, with the view of subsequently running the railway to Palmerston North on the Manawatu River. But, owing to strained finances, and the fact of a private company having undertaken the formation of the connecting line by way of Porirua and Paekakariki, in a different direction, the project had been abandoned; and so in parts of the Akatarawa, almost as far as the saddle, from which you can now see for miles up and down the coast; was to be found formations for the railway. These of course were all overgrown with 'second growth", - principally - fuschias, wineberry trees, ,five fingers, and tree ferns.

A short distance (about three or four miles) after leaving the Hutt Valley, was a sawmill, run by a man called McHattie, and up to there the road was a cart track, formed and metalled. Beyond this, was a mere saddle track, barely wide enough in places, to allow of the passing of a pack-horse and always liable to be blocked by slips or a fallen tree. One of the peculiarities of this part was that up to a certain point, marked by a dry gully, the land was of clay formation, as on the east side of the Hutt Valley, and covered with the same kind of bush, indicative of a poor quality soil, ie. beech, or birch as it was then called, with here and there, in hollows, a few cabbage trees or tree ferns. But once past this dry gully, the hills were of a different geological formation, of evidently much older origin, and were clad with a totally different species of bush, rata, rimus, kahikiteas, tawas, puketaas, matai, hinaus, honeysuckles (or rewa-rewa), totaras, titokis, miros, with here and there nikaus, large tree ferns, ponga-pongas, cabbage palms, whitewoods, etc... under which when going through the bush, you would sink halfway to your knees in places in rich soil, made by the decayed vegetation of ages, while in this part of the bush birds were plentiful in direct contrast to the beech forest, where they were very few. But here were tuis, pigeons, parakeets, kakas, robins, 'silver-eyes', huias, fantails, and wekas or wood hens everywhere, while in the creeks were blue and grey ducks, and eels galore. I was then the only settler beyond the sawmill, who resided permanently on the land. There were one or two Whares further up the valley, but they were only occupied for a week or so, when bush felling on that particular section was being done, and all the rest of the year they were deserted.

Have you ever been quite alone for days together in the heart of the bush? Have you ever slept by yourself in a sack hammock slung to the wall plates of a small slab whare, in the winter, and listened to the roaring of the gale, as it comes over the distant hills, and batters against your frail shelter as if it would level it to the earth? You can hear it raging far off and every now and then a crash in the distance, as some great uprooted tree falls to the ground, smashing in its descent numerous other smaller trees, until with a thud that resounds far and wide it crashes to the ground, from which centuries ago it had its beginning.

ln the intervals between the gusts you hear the cry of the Weka, sounding like a lost soul, or the morepork's weird creech, and as the dawn slowly steals over the bush, the cry of the kaka disturbed by the wild wind.

After Winter, Spring comes at last in all its beauty! Long are dawn a song such as you can hear nowhere else in this world bursts in a deafening chorus from every feathered chorister around, from far and wide, from valley and dell. Then the first ambient breath of the gently breeze laden with the scent of the rangiora blooms and the flowering blossems of the wineberry or fuschias.

The screeching of the kakas flying around their roosting place in the huge rata tree before they depart in a body over the hills to seek their favourite feeding grounds. Then as you go down to the river to draw your bucket of water for the morning’s use, you see the pigeons in the tawas picking off the damson like berries as they hop from branch to branch, and over there on the old rimu are a couple of huias searching for the white 'huhu" grubs so loved by them; while perhaps a weka with her young chicks comes along in the low ground on the opposite bank, and swimming up stream is a blue duck with her little ones busily employed among the river grasses under the shelter of the overhanging tree fern. There on the topmost branch of a dead matai sits a bush hawk surveying the scene, while here and there you can see a white breasted kingfisher perched. Overhead in the blue sky white clouds are sailing, while through the tasselled brunches of the rimu tree on the far hill top bright shafts of sunshine every now and again dart down to the clear waters of the murmuring river! ls there anything in a city life to compare with this.

Often I would wander far up the valley on a sunny Spring day. Birds swarmed in every direction. Where the young fuschias offered their succulent berries I have counted as many as twenty or more parakeets busily engaged. In one tawa tree alone on one occasion l saw no less than thirty pigeons. Huias called to each other in the thick bush on the hillsides, and the guttural 'cluck'of the tui arose everywhere. Spreading fronds of glorious tree ferns waved in the balmy breeze in every hollow, or hug over the crystal stream where in their loveliness was reflected. Huge age old ratas with their crimson blossoms crowned the hill tops, while on the river flats tall majestic rimus reared their splendid branches, among which the pigeons nested, and round which you could see the white wings of the male bird on guard, flashing in the bright rays of the morning sun, all was joy and life and beauty.

Many years after l motored through the Akatarawa Valley to Waikanae, on the west coast. a good motor road having been meanwhile made throughout. What a change! Gone was the bush with its birds! Vanished forever! ln their place a desolate sterile waste, with slips on the hill sides, a meagre almost worthless rough herbage in places, and a few goat like sheep' for the most part bare save for a tuft of coarse wool on their rumps! A river, choked with debris from the denuded hills, was meandering here and there. The only bird in place of all the former lovely songsters one solitary Australian magpie! This until about three parts of the way to the saddle, we came to the city reserve. Here the bush was more or less in evidence, but the only bird seen or heard was one lonely tui, right on the saddle!

Well has the poet written 'Man marks the earth with ruin'! I have seen near Karere, on the Foxton line, encroachments made by the Manawatu River, through debris from the denuded hillsides blocking its proper channel, by which hundreds of acres of rich river flats that have taken countless centuries to form, have been swept away forever, and their place taken by unsightly heaps of stones. I have stood on the margin of these eroded bands during flood, and seen the pitiable height of the overflowing waters of the Oraua River pouring in cascades into the flooded Manawatu River, thus affecting a two fold erosion, from above as well as below! Could there possibly be a more striking illustration of man's insensate folly than this destruction in a few years of what Dame Nature has taken centuries to create? All this rich fertile soil is swept by the floods into the ocean depths, there to be lost for ever.

On the hill slopes above the Akatarawa, in my wanderings through the bush, I would often sink up to my knees in rich black loamy soil, the accumulation of centuries of decayed vegetation. ln times of heavy rains this soil acted like a sponge, soaking up the water, and only giving out a slow and steady trickle into the river. lt used to take, l believe, three days of heavy and continuous rain before the effects are shown by the rivers in flood and thus they gradually rose, and when the rain ceased, as slowly subsided. Thus little if any damage was done. Now the water pours off the bare hills as from a roof, causing slips and landslides, choking the over channels with debris, eroding the rich river flats or covering them with stones etc., and so ruining them.