MACKENZIE COUNTRY

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18418, 26 June 1925, Page 11

MACKENZIE COUNTRY

THE COMING OF THE RUN-SEEKERS. (srretit.t.T vtrittSx ros ''mr. rrcss.'.' (By T. P. Burnett, M.F.V . It will be remembered that sidehoitom, in his letter (of March Oih, IS-'-Vi to the Rhodes???, telling of Mackenzie's capture r:nd. escape at the Mackenrie Pass, mentions having seen "a fine plain just at the back of the Snowy Range." Two months later, coming up to Ohiistehurch to give evidence at Mackenzie's trial, Sidebottom applied (May Ist, 1535) for 75.000 acres, with a situation and boundaries described as ''near the sources of the Waitangi (the truename of the Waitaki\ bounded on tire north by the Snowy Mountains, on the. east by the Snowy Mountains, on the south by a branch of the Waitangi river, on Hie west by the Snowy Mouutaius." It is signed by William Guise Brittnii, Commissioner of Crown Lands, and it is styled "Pastoral License Xo. 5;i." On the face of it Sidebottom applied for a stretch of country as seen from the.inner mouth of Mackenzie's Pass, and including Gray's Hills flat, rWdon fiat, and flats at the foot of the Dalgety.

Sidebottom never stocked this tract. and the license was apparently cancelled, for -pre find iu 1557 and ISSS runs taken up which include pieces of Sidebottoui 's original lease. Apparently, this application of Khodes's manager went unnoticed by the general public for closy on twelve months, and it was not till May 10th following that there appeared the following in a newspaper: — "Discovery of Additional Sheep Country.—At the time. Mackenzie was captured, a report was current thai an extensive plain existed beyond the gorge of the Snowy Mountains through which Mackenzie was travelling when taken by Mr Sidebottoui. We understand that further search has confirmed the truth of this report, and that a plain of immense extent has been discovered capable of depasturing sheep.. We hope to be enabled to give further particulars shortlv."

Of course, it was .Mackenzie's raid and capture that focused the attention of people on South Canterbury, and various parties of one and' two men secretly slipped away in the year '56 to explore the great new sheep country t in the south. The first to leave must i have been William MacHutcheson and his nephew Frank Sinclair, from the coterie ! of Scottish settlers at the Bays of Banks Peninsula,, They journeyed south as far as Moerald looking for land, and on coming back Prank. Sinclair decided to explore up the Waitaki. The result was that they resolved to select on the shores of .Lake Pukaki. and applied for 1 and took up' between 20,000..a.hd a.0,000 acres of ground that,is how. -part of the Wolds Station. • ' ' " ■ , Dawn of Romance. Every country has -its , heroic and romantic, periods. It is during these times that men dare things, are their conscious selves,' a.nd whose lives and conduct are not spoilt by an aping imitation of others. . No ddubt romance began in .'"the- Mackenzie away back during the Maori hunting expeditions, but. so far as wo pakehas are concerned it dawned only, with Yorkshiremen and. Highlanders coming to; grips in' the portals of Maunahouna. The'second scene begins ■with tho MacHutchcson-Sinclair-Glad-stonc- party leaving the Bays for the new homo at the foot of Lake Pukaki. Mr MacHutcheson was married but a month or so when tho party left for the Mackenzie Country and Mrs MacHutcheson,' brave woman that she was, decided.to face the dangers and privations of that journey of .the.years ago. Jt would rie a strange wedding trip that: three months' stores piled' on a large wooden sledge, with ,a 16-foot Maori canoo lashed on top, the whole hauled by four bullocks. Mr Gladstone, who subsequently took up Khoborough .Downs Station, accompanied tho party, as well as two half-castes from Pigeon Bay, one of whom is immortalised- by having given his name to Simon's Hill and Simon's' Pass. The party took seventeen clays'coming down the coast to Tima.ru, where they stayed a few days at Khodes's Station, and' then pushed on for their new home. One night was spent in Mackenzie's Pass and the nest at the Takapo river.

First White Woman Through Mackenzie Pass. Mrs MaeHutchoson has the great; honour of being the first white woman to enter .the Mackenzie .-'Country, and the first.to.come in by the Mackenzie- Puss. She has given her name to two prominent features—Mary's Range and the Mary burn. Allowing close on the MacHutchcsOns came another party, also from Pigeon Bay. It, too, was Scottish, and was the most romantic of all, for it, was the first, honeymoou trip to t.ho Mackenzie on record. John Hay came south seeking sheep country in J856. Finding, as lie said, "the Rhodes's everywhere,-" he decided.to push on through the mountains and explore the Mackenzie, with the result that, Takapo ■ Station was taken up in 1857 by his Uncle Ebenezer, while he ■'himself- applied for J.i.000 acres across the Tak'ajK) on what is'now Glcnmore flat (Mt. John Station,).

A Remarkable Honeymoon. It was Mr and Mrs Hay's wedding trip —surely one of tl«e most remarkable honeymoons which has ever occurrtd in s,'ew Zealand. They journeyed from Christchurch in a bullock dray, stopping whenever possible at the ' stations on the way, but otherwise camping for the night under the dray. It took them four weeks to reach Takapo, and they had.with them besides the bullock team three horses and twenty head of cattle. On reaching the station there was only a cob hut to receive ihem, and in this they stayed until a better home was provided, their first - winter's experience consisting of a fall of snow that; lay for three mouths. Mrs John Hay has the honour of being the first white woman to come through Burke's Pass.

Lake Takapo Station was applied tor by Ebone.zer'Hay, of Pigeon Bay., while his nephew John, later or' "Barbarafield." Kakahu, managed for him. anil also selected on his own account 1-5,000 acres f.cross the river. Takapo ovation homestead was selected on the Peninsula for the shelter afforded by a flue clump of big tumatakauri scrub (wild Irishman). John Hay and his uncle were honoured by their names being given to two peaks in the neighbourhood, Mt. John across the lake, and Mt. Hay at the uprier end of tb.o Takapo run.

But Mrs Hay is honoured still more by "her memory being cherished and revered by the surviving pioneers and their descendants. Here was a house set down in the Mackenzie wilderness, a wilderness some eighty miles by forty, and in those late 'fifties all the women

in that tract of coin fry certainly did not exceed three, or at the must four. Small people go. under in adverse rirI'UmttaKi'i's, while people of poi.-wiality thrive and grow. -And Mr? Hay's personality, made up of a great, kind heart and extreme tact fulness, allied to :i charming' wit and quick repartee, had ample opportunities; of growing. The Hay.-;, of course, kept up their connexion with the older settlement at the Pay>, so Tpkapo imperceptibly, and without an effort on "the part of its people, be« ame a distributing centre i'ov station necessaries to less fortunately placed mnholders. So, too, as regards the mail that came in at. rare intervals, the Hay's homestead became an unofficial post office to the northern and ucstern perl ions of the basin. And somehow one never got to the bottom of Takapo .hospitality, and never could take it at a disadvantage. Nor did Mrs Hay neglect higher, more sacred duties. A poor fellow lay dying at Eichmic.id Station cloven miles up the lake, and Mrs Hay must needs be driven up in a bullock dray over ihe downs to sooth him in his last hours. John Hay lias been described by a contemporary as "ou,e of the earliest settlers in the Mackenzie, a man respected by all and loved by those fortunate enough to be his friends." The Mncliutcheson-Sinelair-Gladstono party took up and occupied Mary's Eauge in 15~.6. They led the tide: in 'SS and '•"!'> it was at its flood, by '6O it was ebbing, and in IS6S it had -lean gone out.

Tie Moa, the Totara, and the Maori. When did the moa die out in the Mackenzie Country? No one know?, but one finds his remains everywhere there. From swamp 1o mountain top, from gully side to lofty tableland, bones and gizzard stones are found in plenty. Jr is curious'.that. it ia always big bones one sees, and it is still more curious that they are found near the surface in glacial silt, and uot in moraine rubble. So far as my experience goes, no remains have been found within five miles of the present terminal face of the Tasman moraine, and the inference is that the huge bird became extinct be* fore the Tasman. glacier had shrunk back those five miles. The whole basin must have been the hunting ground of thousands of these birds before a change of climate killed them oft'. The lake dams of Pukaki and Taka.j>o, the sandhills of Edward's Creek, the plains ami gorges all bear, on inspection, a rich harvest of moa remains. And that his choice of feeding grounds was wide and varied is proved by the discovery of gizzard stones at a height of 6000 feet on the Liebig Range, by Mr J. C. Andersen, in November, 1009.

The moa's day was co-eval with that of the ancient totara, whose remains littered, in the pioneer days, the tablelands and gorges of the back country. Shells of totara-have been found at an altitude of 4000 feet, and it makes one gasp at its age and the time that must have elapsed since sap departed from its old veins to find ancient logs of wood lying among tho patches of living trees 2 feet 6 inches through. Fifty years ago a totara seedling was transplanted in the Geraldine district: to-day that seedling's height is not more than 20 feet! The moa and ancient totara were mates;, what killed one killed both. The present-day totara is but a miserable second growth compared to the magnificent forests that formerly clothed the gorges. In 1856 John MaeHutclieson saw so many remains of the moa in the Mackenzie Country that he came to the conclusion that the bird had but recently died out. Did the Maori See the Moa? T still think the moa, and the cause of its extinction, one of the most interesting of subjects. I do not believe that a, Maori ever saw or hunted the moa; I do not believe that the Maori over saw the primeval forest which clothed South Canterbury from the foot of the Alps well nigh to the coast. J believe that such forests and such huge bird life were grown and environed in a climate much milder than we now experience, and that it was a sudden, if only temporary recrudcsccns of a glacial age which. killed off both. We have complete evidence of such forest having existed. The Cave-Albury agricultural district was littered with the remains of huge totara logs lying, among the groves of tall cabbage trees; the slopes of Mi. Misery, The Brothers Range, The Hunter's* 11 ills, the Albury lt-ange and tho Two-Thumb Rango were likewise littered, and in the gorges' I I have found Jogs at 4000 ft altitude, ' where the country, even since it lias been known by man, has only been capable of supporting a miserable form of stunted spear grass. JN'o one can imagine the immense number of moas which the country at one time supported. Here is -something which may convey some faint idea. Twelve mor.ihs ago forty acres of virgin, land, on Cox's Downs (Tasmau Valley) wero ploughed for a turnip crop, anr. on cultivating the ground, moa bones were found in large numbers just under the surface—leg'and pelvis bones, but never any skulls, ribs, or smaller bones, while it is quite safe to say that buckets of white quartz gizzard stones could be picked up." I believe, (speaking merely as a layman) that we. have evidence of a spasmodic, advance of the glaciers in comparatively recent years, and that, such glacial period while it lasted was so severe that to a large extent it destroyed most forms of bird and vegetable life. There is evidence, too, that a. much earlier forest existed, for in many places in the Tasman Valley three to five feet deep in the glacial silt clay (somewhat similar to tha Tinir.ru clay) there is a rough'layer of charcoal.

Tourists a Hundred Years Ago. And the Maori, what use was the Mackenzie to him? He, too, used it, as a hunting ground in the summer and autumn .months. The lakes and creeks had eels for the catching, the swamps and ■ riverbeds -swarmed with ducks and pukekos, the scrub-covered flats teemed with wekas, the birch-clad gorges of Lake Oban and Glentanner were the home of kakas and pigeons. Mr Hare Kokoro, of Temuka, told me that the natives iii the pre-pakeha, days made autumn hunting expeditions into the Mackenzie, either up the Wnitaki or through the passes. The chief object of these trips was to lay in stores of eels and woodhens, which were cleaned, dried in the sun or smoked, and were then conveyed down country for winter use. These would be halcyon days for the Maori, lovely autumn weather, plenty to- eat, and secure from enemies. It,, is almost laughable to think of it, but- who now dares deny that there were tourists to the Mount Cook regions a hundred years and more ago. Yet it is perhaps not too safe, to say that these Maori hunters of the long years ago were safe from pursuing enemies, for in a hollow of the Black Forest hills the early runholdcrs found a cluster of skeletons, and it was pathetic to note that the big skeletons encircled the lesser ones.

An Eye for Country. The Maori had a wonderful eye for country; it was bred in him for very existence sake. So it came about that he knew the warm fancy spots of the Mackenzie equally as well as the latercoming pakeha. We know this b\* traces of his encampments, and curiously enough his ideas of good camps coincide entirely with those of good sheep-men. Greenstone implements have been found at Halcion and at Jack's creek, also at Simon's Hill, while at the latter place traces of umus or Maori ovens can still be seen. And in the sixties at the mouth of Boulton's gully at the nor'-east end of Lake Pukaki. Andrew Burnett found old Maori ovens

ami rusty knives similar to those carried by sailors. Yes, the Maori had a good e% c for country, and he had all the topographical feature names. .For .saving these names to us we have to thank 1- J. Broderick, at one time Lndcr-Sceictarj for Lands, who certainly deserves credit for saving- this link between he Maori and the pakeha occupation ofht Mackenzie. Country Mr Brodcr a obtained the names trom an old Vraihao native (Rawiri te Maire), who at that time—lß9S—was ninety years ot age. The list is not by any means complete. but notwithstanding several notable omissions it is intensely Burke's Pass was named then dj the Maoris. Te Kopi Opihi: Pass, -Manahouna: the ibland in Lai « Taka'po, Motuariki; Lake Alexand , , Tiltimaiia: Fork river, Hakateie, Mar y"s Bange, Otupaka; .Irishman creek, Te Vaiabohc; Jollie nvcr. Te \waure: Simon's Hill, Te Kohai; Macaulay river, Maukakukutav Cass river, Te Awaatakatannra; Uouley river. Whimiahoa. Lake Tekapo is spelt wrongly, and has been so spelt since von Hiiastand the old runholders have moved awa>. U ii "Takapo." which Hare'Tvokpro m■torprctod\o the writer as "a fall.m the