They came for the gold but stayed for the coal. It’s a familiar refrain that echoed throughout my spring swing through Buller, writes Mike Yardley.
After shadowing the seductively foreboding forest-fringed curves of the pounamu-coloured Buller Gorge, I arrived in Westport, where the i-Site also plays host to the beautifully presented CoalTown Museum.
A clutch of pupils from Gloriavale were perusing the museum at the same time as me, providing an unexpected frisson of intrigue. But the museum artfully traces the rise and rise of Buller's booming coal industry, from the pioneering glory days to the tragedies that have pockmarked the industry.
Highlights include the rusty mining artefacts, vintage photographic displays, an operational steam dredge and an interactive walk-through of a replica mine.
I took a short drive north of Westport to Waimangaroa, where the road is pressed against the rocky shoreline by thickly forested hills. I fondly recall my first family holiday to the West Coast when I was 7. We stayed at Waimangaroa and visited the Denniston coal-mine, where a worker gave me an old blue miner's helmet. I still have it.
Following the signposts, I drove up to the top of the 700m plateau, where only a few scratchings remain of what was once a bustling mountain village, a coal-mining community living in the clouds. At its peak, Denniston was home to 1500 residents, just over a century ago.
The starring attraction is the Denniston Incline, one of New Zealand's greatest engineering feats, which opened in 1879. This fantastically steep rail track system, which tilts at 45 degrees, was built to carry coal from the Rochfort Plateau down to Conn's Creek, 518m below. Empty coal wagons were hauled back up the slope by the weight of the descending loaded wagons. It was a counter-balancing triumph and the only way in and out of Denniston until the road was built in 1900.
Not only did it transport coal, but people, furniture and all manner of goods. An old family friend who grew up in the area recalls riding the wagons as a weekend pastime, as a child. The clipboard police from Worksafe would have a fit, in this day and age.
The Denniston Incline finally closed in 1967, but many vestiges of its guts and glory remain in situ, including the huge brake drum and some of the wagons at the top of the incline. In addition to taking in the ghost-town wistfulness of Denniston, the far-reaching views across the region and coast, from the lofty plateau are incomparable.
Tapping even deeper into the heart and soul of Buller, you won't find a more impressive local tour operator than Out West Tours. The company runs a variety of off-road tours in superbly reconditioned Unimog trucks, to the likes of the Denniston Plateau, Warren Stratford's astonishing John Deere Museum and deep into the heartland.
Owned and operated by Mickey and Doreen Ryan, they've been sharing the riches of the Buller region with visitors for 16 years. Their passionate command of local history and the natural environment is vast, compellingly imparted with superb storytelling finesse.
And those Unimogs boast the benefit of elevated seating, for superior wraparound views. Their newest offering is a six-hour tour, called Johnny's Journey, mixing an assortment of coastal gems with the wilderness.
Mickey Ryan is the quintessential nuggety Coaster, who regaled me with an unfurling spool of vivid stories and unvarnished insights, in disarmingly honest fashion. He's tried his hand at a multitude of exploits, including successfully establishing the region's first deep-sea fishing school.
By Virgin Flat Rd, he pointed out a local eccentric living in his house-bus who is busy building a circular stone castle, ringed by a moat. We admired lancewood trees growing on the roadside, which as Mickey explained, evolved so that their leaves were protected against the roaming moa.
I also became acquainted with the "bushman's friend'', the Rangiora plant, whose leaf can be used as writing paper. Many early explorers did exactly that.
We popped into Charleston, named after Charley Bonner, which, during the 1860s gold rush, groaned with 80 hotels, quenching the thirst of the hordes of gold-diggers labouring along the Nile River.
New Zealand's first toll bridge was erected across the river by Constant Bay, just one gem in a necklace of stunning little bays off the tourist trail.
A paddle steamer formerly plied the river and Constant Bay was once used as a harbour, with ships squeezing through a narrow gap between the bay's rocky headlands.
Todd Heller has a gorgeous holiday home, overlooking Constant Bay.
"There's clearly money in sausages,'' remarked Mickey.
I marvelled over the quaint old harbourmaster's house at Joyce Bay, and collected smooth quartz stones, like readymade jewellery, from the shoreline of Ladies Bay.
Then we headed inland into Madman's Valley, where Mickey led me to the most dramatic limestone cliff gushing with a water spout, which has been nicknamed Cowpiddle Bluff. It's very self-explanatory. Mickey recently built a magnificent flight of wooden steps to reach this striking formation.
Heading even deeper into the heartland, we forded some streams and headed over a saddle into the gob-smacking bucolic splendour of Awakari Valley, a sprawling rainforest valley neighbouring Paparoa National Park.
The panoramic ridgeline lookout is mouthwatering, like casting your eyes over a frozen-in-time lost world. It's the world's biggest privately owned rimu forest, under the purview of a true living West Coast legend, Johnny Currie. He's 76, as fit as a buck rat with the mind of a steel trap, and a bit like a cross between the Wizard of Christchurch and Barry Crump.
He's done it all. Farming, logging, deerstalking, mining, caving and tour guiding. He's the bushman's bushman. And the 1800ha of this valley is his realm - an immense Garden of Eden, four and a-half times the size of Hagley Park. Previously owned by Hardie & Thomson, the Christchurch timber company, it was sold to Johnny in 1980, for $26,000.
Johnny's family connection with the Awakari Valley reaches back more than a century to the settler years. As a child, Johnny would hunt wild goats with a dog and a flick knife. By the 1960s, he was leading bush gangs logging rimu.
But since the '80s, Johnny has lived here, in a 50-year-old bush hut not dissimilar to what his forebears sheltered in, when surveying the bush for its timber and minerals, a century ago.
His son, Curtis, still lives in the valley in a separate hut. Some years ago, Doc offered him more than a million dollars for the valley, but he told them they were dreaming. It's the sort of place you'd hate to see fall into foreign hands.
Before descending into the base of the valley, Mickey pinpointed some of the scores of wild red deer, free-roaming across the terrain. They originate from Scotland, introduced to New Zealand in the 1920s. Thirty years ago, Johnny prohibited deer hunting in the valley, dedicating his kingdom of regenerating native forest and tinkling gin-clear streams as a wild deer reserve.
It's another unique aspect of the valley, where you can ogle these beautiful creatures nonchalantly grazing on the river flat and frequently duelling for leadership rights.
Another startling discovery is that Johnny lives completely off the grid. It's absolutely back to basics. No power. No running water, although the pristine Awakari River runs right outside his tin hut. I chatted to Johnny alongside his cracking wood fireplace, about his poacher-turned-game-keeper conversion from clear-felling logger to forest protector: the surprises kept coming.
I was taken on a stroll through radiant green valley glades, to admire an ancient Maori cave bordering the river. The cave was used by moa hunters, centuries ago, where they set up camp for their food gathering. Moa bones were found in the area's caves and given its deep history, Johnny gave his cave to Doc, to safeguard it in perpetuity.
But there was still one more huge revelation to come. Did you know that there are Pancake Rocks beyond the feted formations at Punakaiki? I certainly didn't. Johnny's got a towering chain of Pancake Rock formations, rising up from the valley bed. He's cleaned a lot of them, so they shimmer like vast ivory-coloured stacks of limestone.
The only way you can access the Awakari Valley, meet Johnny and marvel over his bewitching paradise is with Out West Tours. It is the sole operator and Mickey's team is gearing up for its first summer sharing the Awakari with the world.
It's an irresistibly unique celebration of Kiwi heritage and culture, swathed in paradise.
Sampling Johnny's world is like savouring a spectacular, larger-than-life version of Country Calendar in 3-D. It's an incomparable encounter.
For more
For more information go to www.outwest.co.nz.
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Comments
Beautiful. I lived in Westport for a couple of years in my late teens. I haven t seen (or even heard) of Awakari Valley though. A good excuse to get over that way for a holiday in the near future.