Fiordland Journey

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 952, 8 November 1957, Page 5

Fiordland Journey

FEW days before Christmas in the year 1904, a party of four men left the steamer at the head of New Zealand’s second largest lake, Te Anau, and set off up the Worsley River on what was to be one of the most miserable trips in the history of New Zealand exploration. Early this year their trip was re-peated--with variations-by two wellknown South Island wapiti hunters, Ray Bevin and Jack McKenzie, of Leithen Downs, Southland: and it is this trip which produced Exploring in Fiordland, a documentary to be heard from YAs and 4YZ at 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, November 17, The Worsley River drains into Te Anau on the western shore at the head of the lake; across from Glade House, where hundreds of tourists start off on the Milford Track each year. But the Worsley and beyond knows no tracks, or huts, only dense and dripping rain forest, precipitous bluffs, miles of huge boulders left by the long-vanished glaciers, lakes that are rarely seen, except from the air. It was from one of these lakes that Jack McKenzie and Ray Bevin started their trip: Lake Grave, named after W. G. Grave, the leader of the 1904 exploratory party. Grave and his companions reached this lake after fifteen days’ exhausting travel; this year’s party Se

took thirty minutes to get there-by amphibious aircraft. Once their plane was gone, however, the modern explorers were on the same footing as their predecessors, their only way back being to set off and walk. The late Sir Thomas Hunter, who was one of Grave’s companions, has remarked that the photos they took on their early trips were a joy for life, even though it entailed the swagging of the usual heavy quarter plate camera of those days. The McKenzie version of the quarter-plate was a ciné camera plus, of all things, a tape recorder to get natural sound effects for his films. It is the tape run off on the way out that will be heard in Exploring in Fiordland, After some days spent exploring around the lake, and Sutherland Sound far below, the two-man party set off to the east on the thirty-mile journey to Te Anau. Behind them they left their base tent, and a rubber boat that they had used to shorten the day Grave and company took to travel landwise around the lake. ("I hope to go back and pick them up," says Jack McKenzie.) They were soon into places where, to quote him, "I can’t imagine anyone but a chump carrying a_ recorder." What took thirty minutes by air was to take the same number of hours in solid. tramping and climbing. "We did not follow the same route as Grave and his companions," Jack McKenzie adds. "They went out to a point near the head of the Dark River, then over Starvation Col or Hunter Pass, as it is variously known, then down Prdspect Creek into the Worsley Valley." In the sketch-map on this page the Dark River is the river running into Lake Grave (1), Starvation Col is (2), Prospect Creek the creek with two little mountain lakes on it (4). "We wanted to find a more practicable pass than the one they used, a more direct pass if pdéssible, They found Starvation Col hard going. On the return trip they spent three days waiting to get over, existing on a spoonful of food per man each day. And this spoonful was of dried milk or cocoa, That's how the place got its name." Flying into Lake Grave on the amphibian, they had seen from the air what looked like an alternative route, and this was the one they eventually followed. This entailed leaving the Dark River at a point below its head, going up through a hanging valley on to a narrow ridge, along the ridge for half a mile, and down into another hanging valley that drains into the North Branch of the Worsley River, marked (3) on the diagram. Once down into the Worsley the worst of their difficulties were over, but it was still a fair step to Te Anau, As seen on a map distances always appear negligible, it is hard to realise that the thin threaded lines of Terminus and Castle Valleys (5) anJ (6), that only carry tributaries of the Worsley, took days to explore when Grave originally named them. It was at the mouth of the latter creek that Jack McKenzie and Ray Bevin took their last obstacle, the fording of the Worsley; then care Te Anau beach and the last in of the trip (7). "Compared with trips made in the early days into this country, ours was just a Sunday afternoon picnic," says Jack McKenzie, "though I will admit we thought it was pretty tough."