BIRD THOU NEVER WERT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 387, 22 November 1946, Page 8

BIRD THOU NEVER WERT

: Being an Account of a Flight to Molesworth Station for the Annual Round-up

Written for "The Listener"

by

ISOBEL

ANDREWS

HE pilot and the cameraman were in front. I was in the back with the camera geat. The men had work to do. I was being taken for a ride. This was my first flight. The others were veterans. % "Poff," the pilot, ex-R.A.F., had been flying long before the war, had played a major part in evacuating civilians from Singapore, and knows all the Pacific bases as well as he now knows Blenheim. The cameraman was a member of the National Film Unit, working on a story which needed some shots of the Awatere Valley. We left Rongotai on a cold, clear, almost windless morning. If at the outset I was inclined to treat the expedition as adventure, the all-in-the-day’s-work attitude, the polite showing-me-the-sights -"That’s Kapiti,’ "There’s the entrance to the -Sounds"-brought everything down to the level of a conducted tour, and the strangeness and unreality of the

first airborne moments soon gave way to at least a semblance of mnonchalance. Nonchalance had a hard time of it though when, 5,000 feet above the sea, the door at my left elbow blew open, giving a very clear glimpse of a wing span and the deep, deep blue beneath. The opening of the door and the grabbing it shut were almost simultaneous. I gibbered slightly. The cameraman raised an eyebrow. The pilot laughed merrily-haha-and said, "That’s nothing. You should have been in some of the crates I’ve known." 3 Feeling thankful I hadn’t been near | any of them, I took a deep breath and looking down saw that we were crossing the shoreline of the South Island. A

moment more and the cameraman turned, looked at me, held his nose and pointed downwards. He would, it seemed, prefer it if I threw myself out of the plane. I didn’t want to do this, so tried to look dignified instead. Then he said, "We're going to land. Hold your nose and blow out your eardrums." At least | that’s what I think he said, so I held my. nose and blew until I must have looked like what I think a puff adder must look like when it puffs, a bog 2k T wasn’t long before the patchwork quilt tidiness which is Blenheim was behind us as we sailed on towards the Kaikouras where snow "had fallen the night before. We looked down on treeless gullies where the witch fingers of erosion had scarred and defaced the landscape by tearing into the hillsides and clawing at the cliffs and saddles. Erosion was part of the story the cameraman was after, so we lingered, hovering over jagged grey-brown bleaknesses, dipping into desolate valleys, and then climbing up against the unwelcoming slopes. "Poff’s" steady hand, his unpretentious concentration on the job in hand, the clarity of the sky and the eerie feeling of being part of space itself was sending the mind along paths of cliché-ridden philosophy which saw men like gods taking mountain peaks, winds, time, and space within the

narrow boundaries of their hands, and conquering them all by the power of their will. 3 We sailed down a gully. and up again. A slight inward disturbance took the mind off higher things and presented it with the fearful thought that there was such a state as airsickness. Since I was

desperately determined to show that wimmin can take it, the ensuing battle of mind over matter was memorable and fewcly prolonged. At the right moment the cameraman once more turned and held his nose. "Poff" landed the plane on a tussock-covered river flat near a lorry which was waiting to take us on down the valley to "Molesworth" station. Molesworth was the main theme of the story which the cameraman was working on. * *

OLESWORTH is Crown Land, first leased as far back as 1850. The old homestead, a small house of mud walls, is still in use as a tabbiter’s hut and further down the valley the "new" house stands. Sixty-five years old, built also of mud, it is a picturesque, low-lying building, verandah sided, with a long straight ‘passage leading from front to back, lined with spacious, pleasant rooms which Bill and Mrs. Chisholm, the present station manager and his wife, have in their four or five years of residence converted into a more than comfortable home. Fifty ydars ago Molesworth flourished, carrying more than 50,000 sheep on its windswept quarter-of-a-million acres.

Eight years ago the last lessees walked off, saying that nothing more could be got out of the land. The hills were barren, there was little vegetation, shingle slides had swallowed up whole faces, the rabbits had moved in, and deer had devastated the uplands. The native tussocks and grasses which for thousands of years had been built up by the interaction of climate, soil, and vegetation had almost disappeared in less than 80 years of burning and overgrazing The gradual rehabilitation of these vast stretches of neglected territory is now in the hands of the Lands and Survey Department. Already, under scientific and patient nursing, the tussock is again showing signs of life, blue grass is flourishing, in the damper areas cocksfoot and white clover have started to take hold. The rabbits and the deer are being dealt with, and the 3,000 head of cattle which have replaced the sheep are showing a profit even at this early stage of the game. * * x ° NE of the most spectacular innovations now being tried out at Molesworth is the use of the aeroplane. Hitherto, anyone wanting to go from the station to Blenheim had to contemplate an 80-mile journey in a lorry over a bumpy road which crossed the river about 27 times and which in wet weather was a chancy business at best, owing to

floods and mud holes. Now, a flight of an hour will get people and packages to Blenheim. Then, at round-up time, when every head of cattle has to be accounted for, and) when men go out into the mountains for periods of a fortnight to three weeks in search of them, it is considerably easier to round up the strays after an aeroplane has first reconnoitred, has spotted a herd, and has dropped a note telling the seekers where to look. o * %

E had lunch in the hospitable farm kitchen with Bill and Mrs. Chisholm and Bruce, aged two, but looking three. The homestead, even to-day and with an aeroplane thrown in, seems still, to a town dweller, a very isolated and lonely spot. It must have been mofe so in 1850 when the first settlers made their claim and built their little mud hut. A woman’s work now, in the bigger house. with its larger rooms and airy kitchen, its organisation which brings flour and soap and candles and sugar at regular intervals by lorry and by plane, its once-a-week mail service, its radio, its telephone, its fairly frequent visitors, is still heavier than that of a woman who lives near shops and tramlines. And although life in 1850 must huve been simpler in essentials, there was always the threat of sudden illness with no lorry, no plane, no telephone, no direct contact with the outside. What did they have, the men and women of 1850, which made them go to any given spot on any isolated and potentially unfriendly piece of land, and say, "This is where we will build our house. This is where we will live for the rest of our lives"? There must have been an acceptance of the future which is now lost to us.

% xe Bs HILE Mrs. Chisholm was preparing lunch and I was firing questions at her, which she answered with the maximum of patience and good humour, the men had once more gone in the plane in an endeavour to locate some of the 400 head of cattle which were still at large. They discovered some in an out-of-the-way gully, and when it was time for us to return we were asked to drop a note to the men who were out on the ranges looking for them. So, once up in the air again, instead of heading nofth, we headed south, sailing over gaunt snow-trimmed peaks, looking down into deep ridged valleys, where rocks, landslides, and a few stunted indistinguishable bushes were the only relief. The air was:much colder now. The plane every so often went down an odd 500 feet. or so, very suddenly, like being in a lift when someone presses the button and you're not looking. * * ‘ALL at once, for me, interest changed ‘to a feeling of tension. We seemed to be making nowhere fast and a particularly jagged mountain peak appeared to have been in the same place for a long time. These crags were no longer picturesque, but menacing. They could so easily be something to crash into rather than to fly over. The men in front were calm enough and "Poff"

seemed to be doing the same things to his gadgets as he had been doing, but they weren’t talking much. There was nothing to tell the novice that anything was wrong, but all she wanted now was for the plane to turn round and scuttle back to Blenheim as fast as maybe. One thought of Amy Johnson, Amelia. Earheart, Jean Batten, flying through worse than this on their own. But that didn’t help very much. The plane was going down in another lift. One had to try reason in order to squelch the rising tide of what one had to admit was a bad attack of the jitters. But reason didn’t flatten those peaks or soften the harsh lines of the gullies. Philosophy then-if this is the hour its the hour-but that didn’t help either. If this was the hour I didn’t like it. Those mountain peaks looked so darned sharp. Man was no longer a god, vying with the birds, but an inquisitive little runt, poking his nose into matters which did not concern him and which were far beyond the scope of his limited understanding. Mountain peaks, time, space were not his playthings but his masters, who let him run a little way on his own and then show him just how inadequate he really was. Then the plane dipped into a valley, climbed out of it, turned and at last we were on the way back, "Poff" dropped his note, opening the window inch by inch, manoeuvering the plane all the while. As he threw the paper out, down we went in the lift again and just to help things along, at about 9,000 feet up, the door at my left elbow flew open again. I shut it again and made gibbering noises again. The cameraman turned and raised his other eyebrow. "Poff" didn’t laugh this time, but discoursed learnedly on wind curfents and the force which had been needed to turn the handle and open the door. I wasn’t interested. All I wanted was to see something soft underneath us, A feather-bed for preference. I didn’t even know if the feeling of fear which had possessed me for these few brief moments-or was it hours?--was justified or not. But apparently, up to a point at least, it had been. When we were well on the way towards Blenheim, the cameraman turned to the pilot and said, "Phew!" which, being interpreted, means, I should say, "Thank heaven that’s over." As far as I could make out, the trouble was that we had been flying at 90 miles an hour and the wind had been blowing at more than 100, so that instead of making headway. we were gently going backwards. The wind was too strong for us and had the plane been in the hands of a less skilled pilot, anything just might have happened. Bg Bs ‘THE rest of the trip was in the nature of an anti-climax. We reached Blenheim. and refuelled. Some luggage was put in the undercarriage. I noticed some printing on the door and saw that it was marked First Aid, but this seemed superfluous somehow. On our way back to Rongotai the door flew open again. But I didn’t mind at all. In fact I laughed merrily-ha ha. The sea looked so soft. It would have been a pleasure. One more thought I had-that going there I had been too sick to be frightened. Coming back I had been too frightened to be sick. But as a cure for airsickness, next time, I prefer to try chewing gum. "at