Through South Westland/Part 1/Chapter 3

by A. Maud Moreland

CHAPTER III.

OKARITO.

Watch the cloud and shadow sailing o’er the forest’s sombre breast;
Misty capes and snow-cliffs glimmer on the ranges to the west.
Hear the distant thunder rolling; surely ’tis the making tide,
Swinging all the blue Pacific on the harbour’s iron side . . . . .
Now the day grows grey and chill, but see on yonder wooded fold,
Between the clouds a ray of sunshine slips, and writes a word in gold.

Anne Glenny Wilson.

The very name had an odd charm about it—something suggestive and musical. I looked curiously at the line of weather-beaten little grey houses straggling along a stretch of green above the beach—a grey beach of stones and shingle with hardly any sign of life, except a few children and one or two cows and horses straying about. Whatever its future, Okarito belongs to the past—to the day when busy mushroom-towns sprang up in the track of the gold-seekers; when the eager, shifting throng rushed from place to place as reports spread of fabulous finds of gold. I doubt if there were, when I saw it, fifteen inhabited houses, counting the two hotels; yet they told me once it had boasted twenty-five hotels and three theatres, and a population of several thousands! One wonders where they all are to-day. A great and abiding peace possesses it, and it was hard to realize the tales I heard of the days of the gold fever, when those grey sands of the beach yielded a wondrous golden harvest; when, on many a moonlight night every man, woman, and even child, might have been seen digging frantically on the tide-line at some low ebb, when certain bands of black sand were exposed; running the sand up in barrows, carrying it in baskets, heaping up the precious harvest above high-water mark, working with mad haste till the tide turned and covered these gold-bearing sands until the next low tide. Then the days following would be spent “washing,” and many a one would carry his billy full of good yellow gold to sell it to the rude little bank, and find he was the richer by a few hundreds after a lucky spell. But it was “lightly come, lightly go,” with most of them, and few, it seemed to me, kept their riches to any useful purpose. ^[1] They were ever on the move—the fever for ever driving them to try new diggings, where, as often as not, they found nothing. There seems to have been a strong code of honour among them—that respected each other’s gains: was there not an equal chance for every man? Where there was no regular police, public opinion safeguarded the digger.

The road comes to Okarito winding by tree-clad promontories and broad bays of the wide lagoon, which stretches its silvery fingers far among the hills. It is partly tidal; at low water there are pearly-coloured tide-flats where busy

waders run to and fro or stand sentinel at the water’s edge. Everywhere it is fringed with bush and tall tree-ferns, except to seaward. There it is shut in by flax-swamp and grey sand-dunes, on the other side of which the long rollers thunder night and day. I don’t believe the Pacific knows how to ripple in gently over ribbed sea sand. There is always that dull roar sounding far inland—less at times, but always there.

The road led past the wharf with its goods shed, and beyond this is the entrance to the lagoon—a narrow opening through which the tides surge in and out. Like all West Coast harbours, the bar is the great drawback, and the small coasting steamer, the “Jane Douglas,” is the largest craft that can enter. Just outside the houses, on a fence, we found the town Crane. For some years he has attached himself to town life, and stalks about unconcernedly; and woe be to any one who would interfere with him! There are only a few pairs of these birds left, but they are closely protected, and it is hoped they may increase—anyway Okarito public opinion allows no shooting at them! They are very beautiful birds, with a graceful dorsal egret-plume, and pure white. We were met by our acquaintance, Mr. Thompson the harbour-master, who had quite a programme arranged for our benefit. We were to be taken on the lagoon and, if possible, shown the nesting-places of the cranes; to be shown the view from the headland beyond the town, and introduced generally to Okarito. Later in the day he came for us as the tide was pouring in like a mill-race; and our boat was carried swiftly along a channel between silvery mud-flats, where red-footed oyster-catchers and long-legged stilts were running about. You can row for miles at high tide—one view after another unfolding of wooded bays, of towering snow peaks mirrored in still waters, of forest rolling away into blue distance with great patches of scarlet on its outer fringe, and overhead soft skies with clouds for ever sliding from the sea to the mountains. There are islands where the tree-ferns droop their long fronds above their reflections in the quiet waters; channels of still, brown water winding far into the heart of the forest. Down one of them we rowed into the mystery of its cool green depths, beneath a canopy of crimson ratas, and almost tropical growth along its edge. It seemed to wander endlessly among the trees, but eventually came out again on the lagoon. Here there is a swannery of the wild black swans, and innumerable wild duck. We were told of boat-loads of swans’ eggs taken every year, but the birds are too numerous to be much affected.

Of the white cranes we saw but three—nor did we see a nest, and had to be contented with the harbour-master’s description of how he found one with the mother-bird on the eggs, sitting in the heart of a tree-fern. The families of ducks were greatly disturbed by our presence, the old birds flying up and down with distressed cries, or flapping along with apparently wounded wing in front of our bows. It is curious how these birds, especially the large Paradise-duck, all have the habit, even in the most unfrequented solitudes, and will act decoy to get one away from the little ones.

But the tide was turning, and unless we meant to sit six hours on a tide-flat, it was necessary to row across to the harbour.

We were very comfortable in our hotel, and the horses were in a good paddock, and it seemed a pity to hurry away; so we spent three very lazy pleasant days. We explored the foot of the Bluff beyond the signal-station, where the iron-black cliffs overhang a beach strewn with the tumbled fragments of the hills—where even in this calm weather the Pacific chafed and surged relentlessly. Fifty years ago this was the only possible road, and many a life was lost as man and horse struggled to round those Bluffs before the tide came up. Tired out, they stumbled along that inhospitable shore after a hopeless struggle with the equally inhospitable bush, only to find themselves cut off at the Bluff. No escape then from the rushing tide that sent up its long arms and picked off man and beast, and carried them to destruction in the irresistible back-rush.

When we, too, came to beach-riding later on, I always thought of the tales I had heard. Swamps were bad, and rivers were dangerous, but the Pacific was a worse foe than any. Over the Bluff I went one afternoon with the harbour-master’s daughter, and from its summit gazed southward. Blue headland beyond blue headland, wide beaches faintly violet stretching between them; mountains and clouds lying behind the sea haze—all mysterious, all unknown. Far down beyond that farthest headland, where perhaps the great Haast river ran, we meant to go.

Flowers grew along this track, fringing it delicately with mauve and purple. Dainty butterworts nodded their heads from their hair-like stems, and other flowers grew in sprays of blue with pink buds, which I took to be orchids—Thelymitra, perhaps.

Then we turned and looked back at Okarito. There it lay by its lagoon: a forgotten corner, once so full of life. Far away stretched reaches of grey and opal water, edged by violet hills; now and again a couple of black swans winged their way across the placid surface—they, and the tiny curls of smoke ascending into the still air, were the only signs of life.

My companion begged me to come to tea, saying her mother was from home, and she was in charge of the family. There were six younger than herself and she was but sixteen—thus do girls on the Coast learn to be women. As we sat over our tea, a visitor and her baby arrived, and I heard of the great disappointment the town had just sustained.

It seems the “Jane Douglas,” on her coasting trips, is sometimes delayed by the harbour bar, and has been shut in as long as two months at a time,

and occasionally she cannot enter at all. This time she could not get out, and after a fortnight’s waiting the Captain sent for his wife; one of the crew did the same, and they prepared to spend Christmas there. Okarito likewise prepared. There were to be pic-nics, to which everyone would go old and young; races on the sands, and a ball. Alas! the night before the festivities were to have commenced, a change of wind set the tide scouring out the bar; the ladies were hastily taken on board, and at daybreak the “Jane Douglas” steamed away, leaving the town lamenting over its unfulfilled social engagements, and one promising romance at least unfinished!

I don’t know why one gets so interested in all the events on the Coast. I think it must be because all the people know each other, and are mostly related. Every place we stopped at we brought messages from relatives further north—no such formalities as letters of introduction, except in one instance—and we were thus handed on by a kind of post, being ourselves both mail-bag and letters. And these messages served as so many links in a long chain that stretched from Hokitika to Okuru.

As we stood outside the house on the signalling platform, I was shown a lagoon in the sand beneath, left by a high tide a month before, and in it they said was a ten-foot shark. When I strolled back I found Transome sitting contentedly smoking on a bench before the hotel. He remarked: “At last I found a decent bathing-place in a jolly little lagoon,” and I found he must have bathed with the shark!

Strange visitors do come to these shores at times, and some months after this a whale, eighty-seven feet long, was washed ashore. The monster was as high as a cottage—the flukes alone being fifteen feet long. Eventually it was bought by public subscription, the soft parts dug away, and the skeleton dispatched to the Christchurch museum. The accounts of that whale’s adventures would make a story in itself. Next day we started for the Waiho gorge, I being driven in the harbourmaster’s trap, his lad riding Tom, and the blacksmith’s daughter, mounted on a handsome little chestnut, joining the party. We stopped at her father’s some ten miles further on, where we left the horses to be shod, I driving on in front to the accommodation-house, known as Batson’s, at the entrance to the Waiho gorge.

1. Note.—The prohibitive cost of the barest necessities of life ruined many a gold-seeker in the early days—the forests around produced only birds, and all stores were carried on pack-horses from place to place and sold at ruinous prices.