More Clutha River wanderings

When the sun looked like dissipating the inversion cloud this morning I packed a lunch and Dougal and I headed off for a walk, heading yet again on further personal exploration of the Clutha River near home.

Looking west towards Black Peak and Treble Cone, while we walked in hope of the cloud letting the sun shine on us...


Further downstream past Reko's Point, and looking south to the end of the Pisa and Criffel Ranges...


It had been bothering me - just who was Reko? I knew the name and then I recalled he was the guide of Surveyor J.T. Thomson:

He persuaded Reko of Tuturau to guide him from Otago to Canterbury by an inland route. In September 1853, he, Reko and another Maori companion set off up the Mataura and the Nokomai valleys and over the hills to the Nevis and Kawarau valleys. They crossed the Kawarau River on the natural rock bridge and went downriver to the flats above Cromwell. They made their way to Wanaka and Hawea, before Chalmers, who was exhausted, gave up any idea of going further, and the group returned by raft down the Clutha River (McClymont 1959: 70). More on the New Zealand Dept of Conservation website

Thomson was an accomplished artist and I found a picture he made of a spooky crossing of the Mataura River with Reko on the teara.govt.nz web site

As we walked I asked Dougal to consider that there are people that want to dam this amazing river and drown the landscape. I think he had trouble grasping this and I guess age 16 has not given him enough time yet to ponder the losses I've seen...


I've paddled this river in a past life, camping on the way and that was adventure enough. It must have been something else for Reko, Thomson and Chalmers to build their own raft and head off, bobbing along at speed as the craft became water-logged, and not have much of a clue as to what lay ahead. On many stretches of the river it's really hard to get into the edge as boil ups keeping pushing upwards denying access...


Locally so many of us have concerns about ill conceived ideas to mess up this planet, rivers and all that we live on - and everyone is a local relevant to where they live, so in a wider and more global context take some time please to check out the movie "home"on youtube by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It has beautiful imagery of our mother earth and commentary of our evolution into where we have brought our planet to today. It's free on the web for a few more days [and is a 1.4 Gb download so it is not a short one].

Last week I found some stellar GPS software for my iPhone for about $NZ7 so we tried it out alongside my old GPS and found it remarkably good - nothing like a good day to play with new toys!

Dougal thought it was funny that the map is courtesy of the US Navy - us being inland and all that. This screen shot is of Reko's Point - I wonder if this is where they built the raft, as it's too close to Lake Wanaka to be the first night's camping spot. The green "init" maker is a way-point the phone generates each time it's turned on...


And this week's head's up is to cousin Deirdre's Tininn Lodge site where she has posted photos of her grand daughter Aleisha doing some part time modeling.

The Nevis - just like the Clutha, another wild river at risk

In my last two posts I've written about the threat of four new dams, and published landscape photos of the Clutha River. While I gather steam on this one I'd like to draw your attention to yet another proposed travesty of our wild rivers and places. The nearby Nevis Valley - one of my favourite haunts.

Looking across to the backside of the Remarkables Mountains from the Duffers Saddle - the spectacular mountain range that Queenstown sits underneath of...

The first use of the Nevis Valley was as a trail route for the Maori. When the gold rush arrived in the 1860s, two small settlements appeared in the lower Nevis. Now only the family at Ben Nevis Station occupies the valley.

Due to the remoteness of the valley, miners' workings have been left largely untouched and now provide an excellent representation of an original goldfield. These remains include everything from the cemetery and settlement buildings through to a woolshed and the first ski hut.... more>>

Apart from outstanding and unique landscapes, remoteness verging on wilderness, and historic examples of the gold era, the river itself is cherished by trout fisherman...


The river valley is subject of New Zealand's Tenure Review process and in this instance it seems to be flawed... more>>

It becomes even more remote in winter...


Gold dredges left modest pools of water behind...


And the landscape was compromised years ago - back when it was thought OK to plunder the resources leaving a mess behind...


In our quest for energy we're not alone. It'll become the currency of this world we live in, but it seems pathetic to flood our heritage and landscapes for what in the case of the Nevis is a very small generating capacity. Instead we have to embrace technology and think in new ways e.g. Auckland has to be the place in New Zealand that has one of the highest energy needs so it seems it is time to harness the energy in the tidal differences between east and west coasts on-site, so power is not lost through transmission line loss.

The old miners in the Nevis knew about wind energy [vexing as it is these days of huge examples also cluttering up unique landscapes] - these are 40 gal. drums cut in half and arranged on a shaft to capture the wind. This example still turns squeakily...

The local newspaper the Otago Daily Times has published two articles if you wish to read further. Article 1, Article 2

Those of us who have the foresight to see beyond the dead water of artificial lakes need to spread awareness!