HARD-WON GLORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 448, 23 January 1948, Page 10

HARD-WON GLORY

| Exploration a Century Ago

days celebrating the discovery of the Brunner coalfield and the 'HIS week the Brunner Old Boys’ Association will spend three achievements of the man who first made it known. In the

| article that follows,

DR.

G. H.

SCHOLEFIELD

asks what it was

that induced men a hundred years ago to endure such hardships as Brunner faced on that famous journey.

ments just a century ago of men like Thomas Brunner |and William Colenso one might | speculate what has been the in- | centive to the best exploration in | New Zealand. Has it been chiefly the | fruit of organised planning, of private enterprise, or of the zeal of the scientist or the fortune-seeker? The map of New Zealand in 1830 was a. wavering coastline, with wide empty spaces, conjectural lakes and mountains. Who filled these lacunae and made the picture to burgeon and flourish? European naval. explorers, from Tasman (1642) to the American Commodore Wilkes (1839-41) paid attention solely to the coastline. Sealers and whalers from 1795 had footholds ashore but their outlook was seaward. The first inland explorer was the hard-headed missionary Samuel Marsden. He received as a Christmas gift Governor Macquarie’s injunction to explore both coast and interior as widely as he could. Early in 1815 he walked acrpss to Hokianga harbour, the longest land journey yet made by a European. In 1820 he took His Majesty’s storeships to the kauri forests for spars. He travelled 600 miles in five weeks, discovered Manukau harbour and sounded Hokianga and Kaipara. From the bloodstained Hongi he heard of high plateaux in the interior, boiling lakes, volcanoes and great rivers. Hongi’s wars halted till 1831 the onward march of missionary explorers. Missionary High-water Mark In the later twenties scientists and artists from New South Wales made interesting records of nature, life, and customs in New Zealand. When Missionary ardour again burst forth from Bay of Islands members of the C.M.S. reached Kaitaia in the north (1832) and Waiapu in the east (1834). In 1834 Atfred N. Brown and Hamlin, five months afoot, visited Waikato and Kawhia and were the first to see Tongariro. They were forestalled in Waikato by the Wesleyan William White, who reached Ngaruawahia in 1825, and by Captain Kent, already well established as a trader. And they met their intrepid brother John Morgan, who had travelled 1500 miles in 13 months and slept in a tent more than 100 nights. There was another lull, and then the fever of 1839. The New Zealand Company was threatening to colonise PortNicholson and Henry Williams hastened ~ to Otaki to instal Octavius Hadfield. He returned overland on foot, 300 miles to Tauranga, a very long jqurney, and yet not so long as that of James Buller, a Wesleyan, whom he met at Taupo. "To make sucha journey once," Buller wrote, "was a sin of ignorance and must be forgiven; to attempt it a seoond time was a sin of presumption." During this high-water of enterprise Thomas Chapman found his way to Taupo: in the whole of the North Island only two -portions were unknown. In 1839 also, J. C. Bidwill, an- adventurous scientist, found his way to Taupo and, ) the achieve-

with a temerity which even Sir George Grey forbore to emulate, climbed Ngauruhoe against the wishes of the Maori chiefs, _ The Fever of 1839 The imminence of the New Zealand Company and British sovereignty, induced a flood. of adventurers from Australia anxious to acquire land in the colony. With their blank feoffments in parchment they were not concerned with exploration or surveys. At the end of 1839 the company’s ship Tory brought surveyors, a scientist or two and artists. Exploration had now a definite object, to find land for the Company’s immigrants. Robert Park in a few weeks covered 650 miles. William Deans walked with Te Puni round the coast to Cape Palliser. William Mein Smith crossed the Rimutaka into the WairaTapa and heard of the Manawatu gorge giving access to Hawke’s Bay. Using this route in 1842 Charles Kettle and Alfred Wills in 32 days achieved a great feat of exploration. On. the Manawatu River the Maori canoe owners demanded 10 shirts and two pairs of trousers. The explorers had to surrender their own to make up the price. After exhausting clitmbs up river-beds they "gained an exit into the valley of the Hutt. There was feverish activity everywhere. Daniell and party in the South Island saw from the Port hills an immense plain of rich soil. There the Nelson colony would have been placed if Hobson had not objected. Claustrophobia in Nelson Frederick Tuckett, the ‘Quaker surveyor sent to explore Nelson, saw there was not enough space. At Massacre Bay he found coal. In the Waimea he contended there was only 6000 acres. The more optimistic Charles Heaphy estimated 600,000 in Motueka and Riwaka. The harbour turned the scale in favour of Nelson, Tuckett objecting. For two decades Nelson people were constantly searching for land and for easier routes to adjoining regions. The push to the WaiTau was encouraging, but. the outcome fatal (1843): Tuckett escaped alive but ids the leader, Captain Arthur Wakeel For the moment attention was diverted to the south-west. In August, 1843, Thomas Brunner (1822-74), lured by a native story of plains where large birds killed their dogs, made a trial stab. Weather rebuffed him. Heaphy went | down the Buller without seeing flat land. A few weeks later he got farther but was distracted by rumours of a route to Canterbury. Everywhere they went ‘they starved. Nelson was reduced to straits and the Resident Agent (F. D. Bell) promised to make a fresh effort. In February, 1846, Brunner, with Fox, Heaphy and Kehu, discovered Lake Rotoroa but were stopped 20 miles from the sea. Natives said the land at the Buller mouth was as good as Taranaki and that the greenstone route was along the coast. (continued on next page)

(continued trom previous page) In March Brunner and Heaphy started again: in August they were back in Nelson. They had fed mainly on potatoes, whitebait and dogfish, palm tree stems and an occasional woodhen. Brunner’s Heroic Struggle That same year (December, 1846), Brunner started on his epic journey with Kehu and Pikiwati and their wives. At the mouth of the Grey Brunner had to eat his dog. Sealers had robbed the potato fields. On past Arahura and Hokitika to Wanganui (October, 1847), then to Okarito (where they ate eels) and past the Franz Joseph without being aware of it. Brunner was now the primitive man-barefoot or with feet wrapped in flax sandals; able to live on fernroot; paralysed on one side by "constant drenching; hearing no English except the gibberish words of Kehu. At Tititira Point he sprained his ankle and had to turn back. He had explored all Westland, traced the Grey, and discovered coal. On June 15, 1848, after 560 days in the wilderness, he regained the sheep station at Motueka from which he started. "The greatest piece of exploration in the history of New Zealand," W. G. McClymont says. And it cost Nelson £33/9/4.