Tramps, helicopters and jet boats - an impromptu trip into the Waitutu

The Humpridge Track is a 62km loop tramp on the southern coast of New Zealand's South Island. It detours off then returns to the South Coast Track, which is a much longer coastal tramp which heads deep into Fiordland. There are a number of DOC huts along the South Coast Track, as well as private lodges, but the track is remote, and very muddy.

Three of the trampers I met on the Humpridge were from Marlborough. Rick has owned sawmills and continues to be involved in the forestry industry, so he was fascinated with the Port Craig history, and a good companion to go exploring the relics with. Rick and his wife Barb, and friend Marg, had planned to backtrack from Port Craig along the tramway and viaducts westwards to the Wairaurahiri River, absorbing more of the logging history enroute. They would stay at the privately owned Waitutu Lodge a night, then take a jet boat up the river to Lake Hauroko, and return by road to Tuatapere.

On the walk down from the ridge, Barb's knees had given way on her, so the three of them had hobbled in to Port Craig Lodge just as night descended. There was no way they could tramp back the 20km to Waitutu Lodge with Barb's knees causing her so much pain. She couldn't even make the trip down to the beach at Port Craig.

The Humpridge Track was closing its lodges down for the winter. Staff arrived at Port Craig by helicopter in the morning after they had closed down Okaka Lodge, and then helped load gas bottles and supplies to be airlifted back to Rarakau. This meant our hobbling trampers were able to hitch a lift on the chopper to Waitutu instead of walking! They suggested I join them, and after thinking about when an opportunity like this might happen again, I agreed. So I handed over my car keys to one of the Lodge staff to drive my car back to Tuatapere for pickup, and joined the trio.

The four of us shared the cost of a 10 minute ride along the coast to Waitutu Lodge. It was well worth it for the aerial views as the weather was clear and sunny. We were warmly welcomed by Rose, and her husband Peter, who have been managing the lodge on behalf of the Maori owners for a number of years.

The rest of the day was spent wandering the nearby beach and pristine forest surrounding the Lodge. We also visited the nearby DOC hut on the other side of the Wairauhariri River.

The next morning we all had a leisurely sleep in, before doing a little more exploring whilst waiting for our jet boat ride upriver. The Wairauhariri River is a true wild river, and drops 500m from Lake Hauroko to sea level, where we begin. The river is currently very high due to the recent heavy rain, so it is an awesome trip up 27km of river surrounded by pristine forest, and then a rather rough ride up Lake Hauroko to the boat ramp.

I would love to share some video with you of the trip, but unfortunately I have wasted too much time trying to wrestle with uploading it to the internet so have given up in disgust!

What an awesome Fiordland adventure I have had. Magnificent landscapes, interesting history, pristine forests, warm friendly hospitality and some novel forms of transport. And all of it on a whim at the last moment as a birthday treat. It sure delivered.

So where to next?

Ambition goes bankrupt - the story of Port Craig

In the middle of the second decade of the 1900s, The Marlborough Timber Company began looking at Fiordland as a potential new site for expanding their logging and saw milling enterprise. Directors John Craig and Daniel Reese envisaged an ambitious plan to build a state of the art business to log high quality Rimu from a remote part of the South Island.

In order to create this business they needed to build a port to bring in all the infrastructure. They purchased the latest technology from the United States to improve their production rates, requiring new ways to haul the logs out of the forests and back to the saw mill, and the building of an extensive tramway to support it. They also needed the port to export the timber, and were unable to use a fixed wharf due to the wild weather and unpredictable seas.

The sheer ambition could be seen as somewhat reckless, as within 8 years the entire enterprise was bankrupt, and the settlement abandoned. But some of the methods they imported to New Zealand were adopted elsewhere, and did result in improved production, but not at Port Craig.

John Craig actually drowned during the creation of the settlement, but Reese survived the project and subsequently pulled the pin in 1928. It must have been a dreadful disappointment...

So let's have a look around and learn a little more...

Down on the beach are the remains of a wharf. This wharf wasn't used to load logs, these were loaded  one by one via a cable to a ship anchored off shore. So there needed to be specialised equipment to do this.

In order to log the forests, the Company built a tramway to transport a Lidgerwood Hauler, especially imported from the US, where they were used to haul huge Redwoods from the North American forests. Using an aerial cable, cut timber could be hauled back to the tramway up to 800m away. That's a full circle within 800m radius from the tramway, a massive area that can be logged from just one spot.

The Lidgerwood, however, was a very big, heavy piece of machinery. It required the bridges over the streams on the tramway to be very strong, so they were built of imported Australian hardwood, and cost a lot of money to build.

Then, to make things worse, the Rimu they were logging wasn't of the quality the Timber Company was used to up in the Marlborough region. The trees were much smaller, and the technology being used was too big to provide the sort of production figures that would make the operation viable. Maybe if they had been less ambitious, used smaller machines that didn't require such expensive infrastructure, they might have survived. But a bit more exploration in the first place to discover the trees just weren't worth the investment may have sunk the project before it started. Instead, we are left with a ghost town and some very impressive viaducts on a tramping track....

After the abandonment of Port Craig there was some salvage of equipment in the 30s, but soon the forest took over. The viaducts were saved through efforts by DOC and community input, as the area became part of DOCs network of tramping tracks. The area is also heavily used by hunters.

Twice more there were plans to log further along the coast into Fiordland, but neither happened, and now it is either National Park or Maori land and the forests have survived totally intact.

I was offered a chance to see these pristine forests. So I went.

That's next.....