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copyright 2006, by Victoria University of Wellington
Second (popular) Edition
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Lakes Waikopiro and Tutira
To
Major-General William Smith,
Late R.A.
So vast and so rapid have been the alterations which have occurred in New Zealand during the past forty years, that even those who, like myself, have noted them day by day, find it difficult to connect past and present—the pleasant past so completely obliterated, the changeful present so full of possibility. These alterations are not traceable merely in the fauna, avifauna, and flora of the Dominion, nor are they only to be noted on the physical surface of the countryside: more profound, they permeate the whole outlook in regard to agriculture, stock-raising, and land tenure.
The story of Tutira is the record of such change noted on one sheep-station in one province. Should its pages be found to contain matter of any permanent interest, it will be owing to the fact that the life portrayed has for ever vanished, the conditions sketched passed away beyond recall. A virgin countryside cannot be restocked; the vicissitudes of its pioneers cannot be re-enacted; its invasion by alien plants, animals, and birds cannot be repeated; its ancient vegetation cannot be resuscitated,—the words “terra incognita” have been expunged from the map of little New Zealand.
In regard to the construction of the volume, when the writer first found himself in the family way—as authors wish to be who love their books,—his intention was only to have attempted the natural history of the run. As, however, he proceeded, chapters on physiography, native life, pioneer work, and surface alterations have been added, and the volume thus increased to its present bulk. Every subject
homo sapiens on Tutira, his ultimate acclimatisation, has been noted, as far as may be, in terms of the weasel or rabbit; he has been treated without fear or favour as a beast of the field. First and last, then, ‘Tutira’ is a record of minute alterations noted on one patch of land: for the author's purpose, indeed, New Zealand is bounded on the west by the Mohaka river, on the east by the Arapawanui run, on the south by the Waikoau, on the north by the Waikari.
Every man has his idiosyncrasy: it has been that of the writer for half a lifetime to note small things; it has interested him. Perhaps, therefore, there may be found, if not a hundred, then haply ten righteous men to share that interest—to read, mark, learn, and inwardly to digest the subcutaneous erosion of a countryside, the ancient way of the Maori, the fortunes of pioneer man and beast, the acclimatisation of an alien flora and fauna, the disappearance of the squatter, the rise of the bold yeoman in his stead.
Readers of ‘Tutira’ who have interested themselves in the fauna and flora of the pleasant countryside therein described will regret to hear of ever-altering conditions, antagonistic to the welfare of its native birds and native plants.
Yet so the matter stands, the particular hardship in this case being that the writer himself has been compelled to side against what he would fain cherish and protect. There is no escape for a man from his environment, from his own era, he is drawn like dust into the draught, like water into the whirlpool. To save Tutira from the devouring plague of blackberry its owner has been forced to chastise it not with whips but with scorpions, to stock it not as heretofore with sheep only, but with cattle and goats. It is the lesser evil of two immedicable calamities.
The conditions that have necessitated this treatment have already been adumbrated in Chap. XXX. There the potentialities for evil of Rubus fruticosus have been foreshadowed.
This alien plant has always since '82 been with us, and always until 1914 has been kept in check. During the war, however, when labour was unprocurable, it obtained a strangle-hold on two out-lying portions of the run.
In addition, moreover, to these local insurrections this woeful weed is advancing northwards on a ten-mile front. Because of the vast increase of sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, and thrushes, every tree, almost every shrub, offers possible perching space for seed-gorged birds.
As already stated special diseases generate special remedies, a new practitioner, the goat, has been called in. Beneficent, providential, however, as is the nature of this beast—much might be written on the teleological aspect of the case—in preferring prickly leaves and thorny runners to grass and clover, it does not confine itself to one plant alone.
The establishment of the goat means, in fact, that, except on actual cliffs and precipices, all herbaceous growth on the station is doomed: not a seedling tree escapes, no covert remains for native birds, not a sapling but is ringed, clipped, or barked as bare as ivory.
Nor, speaking from the field naturalist's point of view—personally I would devastate a shire to save a species, but know I am in advance of my times in relative values set on man and beast,—are goats the only scourge let loose upon the countryside.
The number of cattle, too, has been hugely multiplied. Nowadays, owing to the contraction of acreage on modern Tutira, only ewes and ewe hoggets are depastured, stock, that is, requiring extra care and extra feed. No longer is it possible during a rainy season to gather in from the lighter lands of the large original run sufficient hardy wethers to keep in hand the too great growth of grass. Nor is this the sole reason why the help of cattle has had to be invoked. After half a century of stocking with sheep, the ground is growing foul. In the good old days these long-suffering animals died as described—a “natural death” of starvation or entrapment in marsh and swamp. Now certainly there are diseases of minor sorts in every flock throughout the Province. Wherefore I say that, stern necessity demanding such a course, the procedure of Rehoboam is destined to prevail over the milder mode of Solomon.
Nor—once again from the naturalist's outlook—do even goats and cattle include the whole harm done; for if these unwelcome animals are thus used to keep the paddocks bare, it follows logically that axe and slasher are not spared.
An almost naked countryside, at any rate as a counsel of perfection,
It remains now only to give since 1920 a list of new alien animals, new local discoveries of native plants—and certainly not of less interest to the writer,—of new alien weeds, these “landless resolutes” from an older world.
A stoat, the first of his race on Tutira, was noted on the main road in March 1921. In this connection readers will recollect what has been said about human highways as lines of least resistance to beast as to man.
The Hedge-sparrow (Accentor modularis) appeared under conditions strangely resembling those of the first minah—one specimen, wild and scared-looking, living solitary in the neighbourhood of a certain hedge, disappearing after eight days, and reappearing—if indeed the same individual—a year later within a few yards of the original spot. Allowing for the early nesting habits of the species, this first Hedge-sparrow may be said to have arrived in very, very early spring—July of 1922. For long I had been expecting the advent of the breed; for more than twenty seasons it had been plentiful in the gardens of Wellington. Thence, from homestead to homestead, from garden to garden, it has spread northwards on a broad line between ocean and mountain range. Still passing forward up the east coast, its numbers are likely nowhere greatly to increase until the migratory fever flags and declines.
Three additional native plants, two of them ferns—Nothochlœna distans and Nephrodium Thelypteris, var. squamulosum—have been discovered since 1920. An orchid, Pterostylis graminea, makes up the twentieth member of that order noted on Tutira. It and Nephrodium Thelypteris were got within a few feet of one another near to a small patch of sphagnum moss, also the only one known on Tutira.
Readers may recollect what has been said regarding a new alien self-established flora consequent on each new phase in the station's development. On page 247 these sentences have been penned: “I verily believe that were a menagerie to be established or a musical festival ordained, plants corresponding to these forms of human activity would be forthcoming.” Well, a menagerie has not yet been established on Tutira, nor yet a musical festival ordained.
This, however, has happened: a rock garden, albeit as yet perhaps somewhat of the Dog's Grave order, has been made, and once more, as I had anticipated, a new self-sown, self-introduced, self-shipped flora has marked a new phase of pastoral industry. On my rockeries it has been extraordinarily interesting to note in the wake of the specialised alpine flora the furtive, unobtrusive, unostentatious settlement of an equally specialised tribe of camp followers, hangers-on, and parasites.
Thus have arrived a dwarf Pink (Dianthus cinnabarinus) and a homely Draba amongst seeds ordered from Geneva, Switzerland; seed of Aaron's Beard (Saxifraga sarmentosa), possibly in soil adhering to Campanula isophylla, the parent plants of the two maybe having been housed together in some cottage window under similar domestic conditions. Two dwarf species of Linaria have appeared, one in the soil of a local gift plant, Œnothera (sp.); the other in the niche dedicated to Sanguinaria canadensis, purchased from a New Zealand nursery firm. Valerianella olitoria came up for the first time near-by imported Tulipa Kaufmanniana. The small nettle (Urtica urens), though already known to me in several Hawke's Bay gardens, did as a matter of fact also appear first on Tutira in the rock garden. I give the credit of its arrival to a generous horticultural friend in Havelock North. Malva moschata and an uninteresting Sisymbrium are also to be credited to the rock garden; so, too, are seedlings of the Birch (Betula alba), blown, I suppose, from trees some hundred yards distant. Of an Hypericum—name unknown—I cannot even guess the likely origin. As a rule, keeping careful watch always, for
Other weeds naturalised since 1920 are: Glyceria fluitans, Ottelia ovalifolia, Carduus pycnocephalus, Linum gallicum, Galium palustre, Brassica adpressa, Lagurus ovatus, Cryptostemma calendulaceum, Caucalis arvensis, Amaryllis Belladonna.
Of these, Glyceria fluitans and Ottelia ovalifolia have in all probability been carried by wild fowl. Carduus pycnocephalus and yellow Linum (Linum gallicum) certainly may be included amongst the Pedestrians of Chap. XXX. Brassica adpressa is also a wayfarer, a very leisurely and loitering traveller. Galium palustre, too, has reached Tutira by road. Lagurus ovatus, Cryptostemma calendulaceum, and Caucalis arvensis equally surely are to be included with other stowaways in Chap. XXV., the first having probably arrived in seed packet, or adhering to soil of some bundle of rose or fruit-trees or parcel of garden stuff; the second, without a shadow of doubt, in old sacking, straw of packing-cases, or in tent wrappings. It was flourishing on the deserted site of a considerable encampment and nowhere else. Caucalis arvensis has in all probability smuggled itself into Tutira in grain or grass seed. The beautiful pink Bella Donna (Amaryllis Belladonna) has on two occasions and in two separate sites managed to bloom by the lake edge. It is, of course, a garden escape, and equally, of course, the seeds must have been floated out of the garden during the flood of 1917, when over twenty inches of rain fell uninterruptedly on the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th of June. Washed ashore with silt piled high on the edges of the lake, it has germinated, and in five seasons managed actually to blossom in two spots a few yards distant the one from the other.
The bathymetrical survey of Lakes Tutira, Waikopiro, and Orakai is the long - postponed outcome of a suggestion of the
In the latter rôle, by him were the five hundred odd soundings registered and the map made, whilst to the writer was relegated the humble necessary task of oaring.
The work was done in 1925, and will serve to show future generations the rate at which the lakes are being filled with slips from the surrounding hills. I have to thank him, too, for his Polynesian cursings. Imprinted on stonework it is to be hoped they will stave off meddlement of the level upon which our soundings are based.
Lastly, I must take this opportunity of again thanking the many friends who have from England and the United States approved of ‘Tutira.’ I may say now—speaking strictly, of course, in confidence—that the success of this work has been prodigious. Perhaps, indeed, there has been little like it in literature, though often, too, I think of the triumph of Nicholas Nickleby's first play: “At half-past five there was a rush of four people to the gallery door, at a quarter to six there were at least a dozen, and when the elder Master Crummles opened the door he was obliged to run behind it for his life. Fifteen shillings were taken by Mrs Grudden in the first ten minutes.” I don't want to boast, but I believe the revenues from ‘Tutira,’ capitalised and carefully invested, should quite easily keep me in tooth paste.
Hoping that readers will agree that this little luxury has been honestly earned, I bid them for a second time God-speed.
My thanks are due to Miss Beatrix Dobie for her physiographical sketches, and for her careful and accurate restorations of the old-time pas of the station. I consider myself most fortunate in having secured her services. I should like here also to acknowledge indebtedness to Mr
Tutira Station is situated in the Hawke's Bay province of the North Island of New Zealand. The homestead itself lies a few miles inland midway between the ports of Napier and Wairoa. Tutira proper extends over 20,000 acres—about one-third of the size of the lands to be described; lands which have at one time or another been occupied by the writer. The larger area is bounded by three considerable rivers. The largest, rising in the interior of the North Island, flows along the base of the Maungaharuru range, eventually reaching the sea twenty miles north of the run. There may be here and there a crossing to this deep, swift, and dangerous river. I know of none. Another river, running from source to sea between cliffs, is impassable except where crossings have been constructed in modern times. The third, rising on the high lands of inland Tutira, is crossable at the old pack-horse ford, where in the 'nineties a “cage” on wires was slung for the convenience of degenerate modern wayfarers, and where in still more recent times, for still more degenerate travellers, a bridge has been thrown across the river. There is another ford nearer the sea where the ancient Maori foot-trail passed inland, otherwise this stream also was practically uncrossable until beyond the Tutira boundary.
To account for the external configuration of the run and for the material of which it is built, vast general changes over the whole east coast of the North Island—over the whole of New Zealand indeed—would have to be considered. For such a review the writer lacks both
In regard to local geology there has been no special inducement for detailed study of the Hawke's Bay district. It is the land of the Golden Fleece, rich only in flocks and herds. There exist in the province neither oil, coal, iron, nor gold to stimulate minute research.
Sections of original plateaux.
Tutira and the adjoining lands have, I imagine, risen from the ocean as plateaux of different heights. It is probable that during the subsidence of what is now the bay of the province this formation was altered. At its termination sections of the original plateaux lay on their edges inclining to the east: the countryside had changed from an agglomeration of elevated plains to a series of tilted terraces. Consentaneously the hill chains of the run must have been created. In sympathy with the tilting process there must have taken place an increase in the height of each of them; as the one edge sank, the other rose, until the run assumed approximately its present outlines.
Plateaux tilted.
Situated between two parallel chains of hills, and containing a centre of low-lying lands, the station may in shape be compared to an elongated trough. The western edge of this trough is the Maungaharuru range, reaching the height of 3200 feet, and containing minor eminences of over 2000 feet; the eastern edge, the Newton range, is considerably lower in elevation, its highest top not rising above 1400 or 1500 feet. The physical appearance of Tutira is in the main that of the adjacent regions north and south, but the general geological features noticeable on them are on Tutira marked in a peculiarly definite manner. One pattern only, sometimes sharp and sometimes
Total Acreage Leasehold and Freehold Farmed by Writer.
The native name of one of these ranges, Heru-o-Tureia, the comb of Tureia, Tureia was sixth in descent from Tamatea, who reached New Zealand in the Takitimu, one of the fastest of the canoes of the great heke or migration from Hawaiki.
These are the features of the comb system broadly outlined to let the reader visualise its strange cleavage pattern. A modification must now, however, be noted; it is this, that although the fissures start at right angles to the main range, their sides do not remain parallel. These gaps, their shape at base more or less that of an inverted horse-shoe, widen as their distances from the back of the comb increase. Another minor modification of the parallel hill chain system is the presence here and there of narrow linking spurs that jut forth east and west as if wedding the ranges to one another. Running at right angles to the general north and south trend of the ranges, though infrequent, they are well-marked features in the landscape.
The breadth of the run can be traversed and its surface viewed if, in imagination, the reader will take up his position on the western-most rim of the trough to which the whole station has been compared, and proceed thence eastwards towards the ocean. The Heru-o-Tureia range marks the limit of limestone and divides the sandstones, conglomerates, and marls of the coastward belt from the more ancient slates and ryolites of the interior. Moving from it eastwards we shall
Everywhere, therefore, on Tutira we discover one pattern, one principle, one type of formation dominant; we find furthermore throughout the run narrow “tooth” valleys enclosed by perpendicular walls—valleys which may deepen but which never can expand, and out of which over the bulk of the run no water whatsoever visibly flows. The precipices containing them form what may be called, for convenience' sake, the dry cliff system of the run.
Blue Duck on Waikoau river.
(This and other sketches from photographs taken by H. G. -S.)
Strongly contrasting with it exists another which may be equally well termed the wet cliff system. Unlike the former, its sculpturing offers no difficulty to the imagination. It has been cut out by processes which are still at work. Its streams still chiselling out their beds flow far beneath the surface. Its cliffs, saturated with moisture percolating through the pervious soils above, are from top to bottom feathered with ferns and delicate greenery. There are in fact two conspicuously distinct series of cliff—the rock walls of the one dry, bare, and prominent; the rock walls of the other damp, densely overgrown, and, until closely approached, invisible.
Besides the boundary rivers named, there are within the compass of the station several streams of lesser volume, also flowing between narrow perpendicular walls; the only stream, indeed, not imprisoned by precipices during its whole length is the Papakiri, which ends its career in Tutira lake. Every upland lake is a sea to the rivers that feed it; to the Papakiri the lake is the ocean of its extinction. For the same reason also that the Waikoau curbs the speed of its current and deposits its silt upon approach to the Pacific, the Papakiri
Other prominent natural features of the station are its water surfaces. Of these the largest is Tutira lake, next in size is Waikopiro—the two, conjoined in wet weather, covering some 500 acres. Within a couple of chains distance from the last-named, and at a lower level, is situated Orakai, five or six acres in extent. There is a lakelet, Opouahi, of about similar size, on the uplands of the west; a deep clear lakelet, Te Maru, on Putorino, and a couple of tarns on Heru-o-Tureia. Tutira lake, about two miles long, resting at the foot of the Newton range, is drained by a meandering serpentine creek of the same name, which, after crossing the old Maori foot-trail, breaks into a series of over-falls, and finally leaps at Te Rere-a-Tahumata into a magnificent chasm of 157 feet in depth.
As in the shaping of the run water has played so prominent a part, it will be well in this initial chapter to devote a few lines to the rainfall. The heaviest deluges are blown up from the north-east, east, south-east, south, and south-west. During some three or four days' duration, not infrequently one foot and over, and on one occasion nearly two feet, have been registered. Except in the form of showers, rain seldom reaches Tutira in appreciable quantity from the north and west. Thunderstorms, which cling to the coast and the ranges, the station almost entirely escapes. Snow falls but rarely—only thrice in my time has it lain for more than a few hours; during one of these blizzards, however, it certainly fell in the same whole-hearted manner as have done the greatest of the rain-storms. Everywhere on the low lands two feet deep, it lay still thicker on the Newton range, completely blotting out the sheep for a couple of days.
The rainfall of eastern Tutira is different in character from that of
The storm of 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th of June registered just over 20 inches. What weight of water may have fallen in addition we cannot tell, for on the 11th and 12th the rain-gauge was found to be filled and overflowing.
Height above Mean Sea-level, 500 feet. Hour of Observation, 9 a.m.
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