New Zealand: Two Islands, Two Walks. # 1, The Heaphy Track

Aotearoa, New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud. We fly in over the rugged snow-capped southern alps to breathtaking glimpses of Mt Aspiring, Lake Tekapo, ice-blue ribbons of water and the grey scoured ghosts of long receded glaciers. A dramatically beautiful landscape. Then the wild country vanishes and in its place are the neat, green fields and hedgerows of the Canterbury Plains. We’ve come to tramp two of New Zealand’s ‘great’ walks; the five-day Heaphy Track in the north-west of the South Island and the four-day Tongariro Northern Circuit in the centre of the North Island.  

Day 1: The Heaphy Track, Brown Hut to Perry Saddle Hut

A calm sea, blue-sky, early morning. We leave our eyrie high above Golden Bay and embark on a three-hour winding bus journey through small coastal towns and inland hamlets to the start of the Heaphy Track, one of New Zealand’s nine Great Walks. We are four, following in the footsteps of Māori greenstone hunters, drovers and gold seekers as we walk our way out of one year and into the next. 

Across the river and into the trees; a rainforest of beech and slender tree-ferns. Deep, lush, vine-entangled gullies, dusky pink blooms, pandanus and flowering manuka. The strange, sweet songs of unknown birds. The red shimmer of kaka in flight, a fantail coquettishly spreading its black and white fan, rifleman birds spiralling up around tree trunks. The main climb of the Heaphy Track is on day one, today. It’s a gradual ascent up to Flanagans Corner (at 915 metres), with views out across mountain peaks, waterfalls and mossy springs, through to Tasman Bay. 

Up higher the vegetation becomes drier and we hear the grunt of a wild pig from somewhere deep within the scrub. At Aorere Shelter there’s a family of wekas, flightless birds that you might mistake for kiwi if it weren’t for their boldness.

A night at Perry Saddle amongst tussock downs still flecked with summer wildflowers and backed by mountains. A heavy mist rolls in and contains our world to a timber hut and its verandahs. All else lost in the fog. In the damp melancholic darkness, a morepork calls. In the dead of night, we hear the distinctive, sustained cry of a male kiwi. 

Day 2: The Heaphy Track, Perry Saddle Hut to Saxon Hut

A day of extraordinarily varied landscapes beckons. We climb up through an enchanted alpine garden of pale lichen, velvet cushion plants, white and yellow daisies, sundews and stunted, gnarled trees bearded with moss. Scrambling up scree slopes to the summit of Mt Perry (1,238 metres) we look out across range upon range of rugged mountains. The Aorere River winds its way through a green valley, the sea washes into Golden Bay and, with binoculars, we can see Cook Strait and the North Island shimmering on the horizon. Ridges and peaks with names like the Dragon’s Teeth and the Drunken Sailor. A chorus of birdsong; skylarks, tui and bellbirds. Stoat traps laid at frequent intervals in an attempt to protect the endangered rock wren and other small native birds. The giant nocturnal Powelliphanta, the largest carnivorous snail in the world. An occasional old Heaphy Track milepost, rusted and illegible, sculptural now rather than for wayfinding.  

New Zealand cedars and beech forests sunken into the limestone. Deep river gullies concealing a complex network of multistoried limestone caves with hanging gardens and waterfalls. A meat safe abandoned on a rock ledge in the first cave of three we explore, theatrically lit by the sun slanting in from an opening above. Past a series of sinkholes and rocky outcrops, a second cave offers dramatic views out onto the escarpment. And in the third cave, a waterfall cascades from the sky. 

Chestnut-breasted birds. Rivers and creeks and the rills they make. The straw-coloured grasses of the Gouland Downs. Delicate, deep-purple orchids, white daisies and crimson foxgloves. A young French woman resting outside the Gouland Downs Hut takes off her dusty boots and changes into a very stylish pair of orange high-heeled sandals before walking on. A peacock in a land of muted sheep. The clouds build and then clear. Sun streams in through the windows of Saxon Hut. We soak up the warmth and ease into the evening. 

Day 3: The Heaphy Track, Saxon Hut to James Mackay Hut

Frost covers the earth at dawn. A calm, still, humid morning follows. We walk across tussock downs and ford creeks and rivers. An old milepost marks the border between counties. We leave behind Golden Bay and enter West Coast county, known for its tempestuous weather and wild, wide rivers. Rivers that rise rapidly after rain. Drowning rivers. Limestone becomes granite. The boulders, as beautiful as sculptures. Small delicate wildflowers, mosses of different hues, ferns unfurling the brightest of greens. West coast wetlands. 

There is just a morning in the day’s 12-kilometre walk. With time to explore we climb up through tea tree to Mt Otepo where we can see back to Mt Perry and the Gouland Range. As the cloud darkens the sky in the west, we hurriedly scramble back down. From the hut, we can make out the Heaphy River, its estuary, and the sea. An Irish man, uncommunicative with the weariness of walking, makes an island of himself and sits alone reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

As the mist rolls in and the rains come, we celebrate New Year on the pacific rim, one of the first places in the world to see in the coming of 2017. 

The hut warden foretells of big rains overnight and thunderstorms at dawn. He warns that we may be marooned at the hut for several hours, or even for another night. New Zealand is a storm-ridden country. Sitting in the ‘Roaring Forties’, the Heaphy Track receives between two and four metres of rain a year. 

Day 4: The Heaphy Track, James Mackay Hut to Heaphy Hut

All night rain hammers the tin roof and lightning splits the sky. At first light, there is more rain, driving horizontal rain. Wild, west coast weather. The first walkers to set off are back within 15 minutes, the creeks too treacherous to cross. The warden cautions us to wait until the water level subsides. Rain blows in sheets up the valley and cascades down the mountainsides. The windows of the hut become waterfalls.

A slow morning of reading, daydreaming and storytelling. After a few hours the ranger ventures out, like an envoy from the ark. Having checked the first of the five creeks he returns to say that it should be safe enough if we take the right precautions. We walk out into the rain and through the dripping rainforest with Tom from Hamburg. The five of us link-up at each creek crossing. The water is knee-high and surging in a white rush but our human-chain provides us with the strength we need to cross to safety.

A seam of glossy black coal runs alongside the track. The rain clears to mist as we descend through cloud forest to Lewis Hut, bedraggled but buoyed by adventure. The Heaphy River has broken its banks and is lapping at the footings of the hut. By the time we have something to eat, the water has receded enough for us to walk on, across the suspension bridge high above the wide, swift-flowing river and into a mystical world. Floating islands of flowering flax. Mist-shrouded, ancient, red-flowering rata forests, lofty palms and precipitous limestone cliffs with bright birds flying high up into the green canopy. Tuis calling. 

The sky clears and the sun shines. We follow the Heaphy River to the sea. Its sandy estuary is strewn with logs washed down the river and now lying bleached and silver on the shore. Someone, a walker perhaps, has created sculptures from the driftwood, making the beach cinematic in the soft afternoon light. Sooty oystercatchers, cormorants and terns scurry across the sand. Heaphy Bluff to the north and Heaphy Beach arcing away to the south, the river and the sea silken and shimmering at sunset. Venus, the first evening star, is bright in the sky. A crescent moon hangs low over the water.

Day 5: The Heaphy Track, Heaphy Hut to Kohaihai River Mouth

A splendidly sunny morning. Coastal forests and palm-fringed beaches. The stout, green-trunked nīkau palms shadowed on the sand, their bright red fruit food for the wood pigeon. Waves rolling in from the Pacific and breaking on pink granite beaches. All-day the sound of the sea and the scent of the sea. 

At breakfast, Tom tells us a story about the stray dog he fell in love with on a beach in southern India. He subsequently spent three months moving heaven and earth to bring it home to Germany with him. Jacob is the name of the dog and Jacob’s Way the name of the book Tom wrote about the spiritual journey of a man and a dog who now enjoy life together on a beach on the shores of the Elbe River, overlooking Hamburg’s industrial port.

Flax plants grow along the track, some of them deep scarlet with flowers. The Māori cultivated different varieties of flax and used them for making rope, baskets, shoes and cloaks. They regarded the inner leaves of the plant as children, the middle leaves as parents and the tough outer leaves as grandparents. They only used the outer leaves, leaving the parents to look after the children. 

We cross headlands thickly forested with rata and palms. Waterfalls cascade down narrow gullies, a white rush of water over boulders. Parts of the track are unstable and prone to landslides. In places, we are warned not to stop because of the danger of falling rocks. We come across a park ranger documenting a new fissure in the track. New Zealand straddles the collision zone between two moving plates of the earth’s crust and as a consequence is jolted by thousands of earthquakes every year. Fortunately, there are no tremors this afternoon and we walk safely to the track’s end at the mouth of the Kohaihai River. Its banks are crimson with flowering Pohutukawa trees, the red snow of a New Zealand Christmas. 

The Heaphy Track is indeed a ‘great’ walk. Across tussock downs, through alpine heathlands, lush forests and nīkau palms to the thundering seas of the West Coast. Diverse, exotic landscapes and wild beauty the likes of which we hadn’t imagined.

The second walk of our Two Islands, Two Walks journey was the North Island’s Tongariro Northern Circuit which you can read about here.