"A scarred and pitted desert"

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 4, Issue 33, 3 February 1987, Page 10

"A scarred and pitted desert"

NOEL SHEPHERD continues his trek across the centre of the North Island, following the trail of the fictitious character "Johnson" from John Mulgan's hook, "Man Alone." Noel operates a guiding service in the Tongariro National Park.

In Johnson 's day there was no track leading east, but now a section of the round-the-mountain track follows near the upper bush limit (about 1500m), east to Mangaheuheu Hut and then northeast to the Whangaehu Hut above the Rangipo Desert. Let Mulgan describe the desert. "What he saw was a waste of scarred and pitted desert. bare of all growth for long stretches, loose scoria and pumice powdered to sand by years of weathering, and lifting now as the gale came violently, so that it rose in swirling clouds that wrapped him round and blinded him."

"Here and there stunted shrubs clung desperately in the shelter of breaks and hummocks in the sand and the ground was strewn with the charred fragments of old forests wasted by volcanic fire ... he came at length to what he knew must be the heart of it all. Onetapu, the place of the shivering sands "The quiet and silence of the mountainside was gone and in its place came a sighing and moaning of wind and sand as it stirred in the corridors of the desert, more

mournful and more frightening than anything human that he had known." And the next day: "About midday he came to the coach road that crossed the plains. It was a lonely road and little used I left the round-the-mountain track in the vicinity of Rangipo (or Whangaehu) Hut and followed the sulphurous Whangaehu River toward the Desert Road. Pinus contorta has spread from Karioi State Forest and is encroaching on the southern side of the desert. but at its heart it is much as Mulgan described. The Desert Road, however, is something else. Cars and trucks hurry by constantly and three sets of high tension lines march parallel. "He crossed the road and went eastward over the plain ... It was difficult enough by daylight covering this tussock country. where the appearance of flatness was deceptive and hid great hollows and billowing undulations." It took Johnson three davs to cross the desert and tussock country in foul weather. With the help of map. compass and fine weather 1 took just eight hours to reach the bush line from Mangaeheuheu Hut.

Just as 1 had been convinced that the author Mulgan visited Blyth Hut, 1 am now convinced that he visited the Rangipo Desert and the tussock country of the Desert Road. 1 reached the bush in the vicinity of the Waikato Stream and hoped to reach its junction with the Waipakihi before dark. However I was caught by darkness in the Waikato, and by a downpour, and had to crawl into my tent wet and cold and hungry. I couldn't even light a fire to boil the billy. Next morning I donned wet clothes and worked my way down to Waikato Stream to the Waipakihi

which 1 planned to follow up into the Kaimanawas. The rain, which was still falling steadily, had lessened my resolve to carry on with my journey. It would be easy to walk back to the Desert Road and hitch-hike home. As I stood at the confluence of the two streams and tried to decide, the rain stopped and the sun broke through the low overcast. 1 set off upstream. Heavy machinery had been working in the riverbed. The MoawhangoTongariro Hydro Tunnel passes under the Waipakahi here. Air vents can be seen at one point. "Following the creek bed

was difficult and exhausting," we read in "Man Alone", "but gave some hopes of progress with its occasional short stretches clear of overgrowing trees. As he followed it in, going for five days laboriously forward, making at best not more than eight or ten miles each day, the hills seemed to close round and over him until he felt himself to be further than anyone could ever follow him." Five days? 1 hoped to be out of this river system before lunch tomorrow. Now, however, the river is well used by hunters and fishermen, and often a foot track can be found alongside the river bed. Still. over one hundred river crossings

must be made. In the afternoon of this third day 1 shot a deer near the stream. Johnson had been carrying a .22 rifle, but, of course, rimfire rifles are not allowed in the parks now. 1 was carrying a .270 hunting rifle and the necessary hunting permits from the Tongariro National Park and the two Forest Parks I travelled through. The deer was a young red hind, and 1 took as much meat with me as 1 could comfortably carry, a welcome supplement to my dried rations. Already I was leaving the beech forest of the valley floors and walking into tussock and sub-alpine scrub country, and was beginning to suspect that Mulgan, though a keen tramper, had never travelled this far into the Kaimanawas.