ADVENTURE IN CANOE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1939, Page 3

ADVENTURE IN CANOE

TRIP DOWN THE HAAST RIVER. SPOUTING RAPIDS & WHIRLPOOLS. An adventurous voyage in a log canoe down the Haast, one of the biggest rivers on the West Coast, was undertaken by a young South Westland man, Mr Alan Cron, of the Haast Settlement, recently. It was the first trip of its kind for many years. The 35mile trip'was made while the river was still in fresh, with long runs of rapids and some passages through dangerous whirlpools. Mr Cron, who was supervising work on the landing ground on Lanclsborough Flats, far up the Haast river, found it necessary to get down to a homestead near the coast. There had been such bad weather that he felt it would be unlikely tbrt any aeroplane would make the trip up me gorge. No horse was available, so he set sail in the early morning in a log canoe which he had hollowed out of a huge log some months ago. He attached an outrigger to‘the canoe to secure greater stability, and set out on the long journey home. In the meantime Mr J. C. Mercer, of Air Travel (N.Z.), Ltd., piloting two reporters who were making an air tour of the far south, landed at the aerodrome on Mr Cron’s homestead block, and was asked by his father to make a trip up to Landsborough to bring the young man out. Mr Mercer was making the trip in any case, as part of the tour, and after an interesting flight up the Haast and Landsborough rivers along the route which the Haast Pass highway will soon take, he landed on Landsborough Flats. There he was told that Mr Cron had set out in the canoe.

SIGHTED FROM THE AIR. Since Mr Cron had not been sighted on the way up, although the route was always along the riverbed which is a mile wide in places, it was considered that there was just a possibility that some mishap might have occurred, and on the return journey the pilot and passengers kept a close look-out for signs of the canoe of Mr Cron. He was sighted only five miles from his home, and he landed on the river-bank there half an hour afterwards, with a big load of deerskins and a heavy pack. Mr Cron thus repeated the adventurous trips that were made in the early days by diggers and woodsmen There is on record a trip made many years ago which ended in disaster. Several gold-miners, who were unemployed in the old days of the Ross goldfield, were sent up the Haast to cut a track along rocky cliff*. Coming down in a canoe the men got into difficulties in a whirlpool. Their canoe was split in two and they lost nearly all their belongings. Mr Cron’s journey is typical of the hardihood and resource of the mer who live in these isolated areas in the far south, where roads are not yet built and rivers, instead of being crossed by bridges, are crossed in boats and or horseback. Mr Cron will make the return journey by air, taking half an hour at the .most for the trip which, coming down, took several hours.