Unspoiled wilderness of Hollyford worth a walk
Remember when New Zealand was good old Aotearoa, and not Middle Earth? When Peter Jackson just another cigarette? And then along came Hollywood and JRR Tolkien, and the Kiwi’s South Island in particular shape-shifted in our imaginations to become a stage set for wizards, hobbits and gollums. Well, now it’s time to rewind.
I’m striding through Middle Earth Reclaimed, with not an elf, orc or ringwraith to be seen. Despite the cinematic grandeur of my surroundings — misty peaks, forest glades and rattling rivers — I am determined not to conjure up a wandering Gandalf or ethereal Galadriel. Instead, a huge, thousand-year-old rimu tree, matted with vines, stretches above me, brilliant ferns shimmer in the morning light and there’s almost more fresh air than a city boy can bear.
It’s true that major scenes of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy were shot nearby, but our route — on the west coast of the South Island — known as the Hollyford Trail, has its own epic history, firstly as a Maori trading route for pounamu — nephrite greenstone — and later as one of New Zealand’s most beloved “tramping” paths.
“You into scroggin?” asks an Auckland guy, one of our trekking party of eight, to a newly-landed American woman in the group. She looks alarmed by this possibly kinky Kiwi practice until he pulls out a bag of “trail mix” — dried fruit, nuts and chocolate — known in Enzed dialect as scroggin.
Jetboat on Lake McKerrow.
Our three-day tramp through Fiordland National Park (which covers almost one-tenth of the South island), starts with a drive from Queenstown. The final leg is on a remote road that was nicknamed the Pick, Shovel and Wheelbarrow Highway, thanks the rudimentary tools used to construct it in the 1920’s. Where the road ends, the glacier-carved wilderness of the Hollyford River Valley begins. “Every fern and moss seems to stand up and look at you,” says Ross, a Melbournian, as we start hiking west beside the jade waters of the Hollyford River, or Whakatipu Ka Tuka, as the Maori know it.
New Zealand was in ocean-moated isolation for some 80 million years, explains Tom, one of our two superbly knowledgeable guides. It may look like a benign world of fir trees, photosynthesis and glittering peaks, but he soon points out a plant, the tutu fern, whose nondescript dark berries contain “enough neurotoxin to stop an elephant.” So much for New Zealand’s low-tox reputation.
Given the country’s lack of elephants and other large creatures, we keep an eye out instead for small critters such as bellbirds, bush pigeons and lizards, and introduced species. There are red deer in the park but the truly destructive “aliens” are stoats, rats, weasels and possums, thanks to which we can’t expect to see endangered native birds such as takahe, kakapo and kiwi. As we walk, Tom points out the shoebox-size traps that have been set to capture the stoats, which prey upon native birds’ eggs.
Our trail is level, clearly marked, and when we come to a stream there is usually a fixed or suspension bridge spanning it. Definitely user-friendly wilderness. “The NZ parks people seem to really want you to get out and enjoy the place,” says Ed, a Tasmanian, adding, “In parts of Australia you get the impression that puritans want to minimise park access even for walkers.”
“Fiordland is sometimes called ‘the walking capital of the world’,” says Ray, our other guide. Some 4,000 walkers, guided and independent, have a go at the Hollyford Track each year (compared to about 14,000 who walk the more celebrated Milford Track, just to the south). Given Kiwis’ love of hoofing it over hill, dale and scrub, perhaps tramping not rugby is their true, national participant sport.
You hear a good waterfall long before you see it, and so it is with Hidden Falls, a 20-metre cascade that crashes out of the dense canopy, onto boulders then burbles on its way to the Hollyford River, to Martins Bay and the Tasman Sea. Coming next to a broad river beach, we happily drop our packs and refill water bottles while Tom and Ray hand out lunches. The summer sun beats down but behind us, to the east, Mt Madeline — 2536 metres — glistens like a prism of snow.
I’m tempted to jump right into the cool pool at the foot of the next cascade, Little Homer Falls, but we have to press on. Today we will walk 17 km in around seven hours; not really arduous but we need to reach our hut by nightfall. We climb to a saddle that at 168 metres is as high as our trail goes, then descend through more Gondwana-goes-Rivendell —see! Tolkien strikes again —forests of centuries-old beeches festooned with lichen, hanging moss and, for those with eyes to spot them, tiny orchids.
Hollyford Track beside the Hollyford River.
“I came, I looked, I conked out,” quotes Ray from the visitor book at our night’s rest stop, Pyke River Lodge. Now don’t imagine this as a rustic shed ripe with mildewed trekkers and their socks, where dinner is freeze-dried faux-food goop and where 15 trekkers compete for six coffin-like bunks. Instead we step into a purpose-built, private lodge (“It looks more like a small golf club,” says someone) where there is wine, an open fire and twin-share rooms. Tired but still babbling, we hit the showers, the sundowners and the canapés while the two resident hostesses cook up a perfect gourmet storm.
Morning is all silver mists and silver ferns as we take a warm-up hike to Lake Alabaster, crossing Fiordland’s longest swing bridge, one hundred metres of photo opportunity that’s framed by forests and snow peaks. Not long afterwards jet boat appears; we sling our packs in and settle back for a rip-roaring ride up the otherwise mirror-smooth Lake McKerrow to Jamestown, an ill-fated 1870s settlement whose tale, written in hubris and a few remaining headstones, is now just a footnote in colonial history.
We begin walking again, this time amid tall podocarp forests and grottos of ferns that burn like emerald fire. We’re now so far beyond the world of freeways and vehicles that they seem a century away, either behind or ahead of us. Keeping in mind an old Persian proverb that advises a traveller to "Lick up the honey, stranger, and ask no questions," I breathe deep. Sydney air hasn’t been this clear since 1788.
“I’m neckered,” sighs the Auckland guy, slumping against a tree. The American woman does a double-take. I translate that he is not so much naked as “knackered” —another potentially alarming antipodean term that I don’t bother to explain.
Martins Bay Hut.
Towards the end of the day’s 14 km hike we reach Martins Bay where the Hollyford River disgorges across a turbulent bar into the sea. A place of rips, rocks, driftwood, pandanus, lichen and silence. Not a soul around but ourselves. Ironically, its Maori name is Place of Screaming Demons — thanks of the ferocity of the prevailing winds — but all is calm today on this bouldered shore. Fur seals loll on rocks, sunning themselves slothfully while we slap furiously at the namu sandflies whose red bites will be my take-home memento of the trek.
For early European pioneers this was known as the Land of Doing Without, such were the remoteness and privations it offered. Not so for us. Our final “camp,” Martins Bay Lodge is even more luxurious than the previous night’s. More good wine, plus sushi, venison and a ruinous desert. “Roughing it” here might mean that your pillow chocolate is missing.
The Maori called this region Ata Whenua, “Shadowlands” —shades of Tolkien, indeed. Even though I’m determined to stride a Frodo-free world, next morning when capes of gothic mist swirl around Martins Bay, Middle Earth comes inescapably to mind. Beneath a glowering sky we take a six-km hike beside the surf-wracked, grey sand shoreline, while Tom and Ray tell us tales of pioneer families and the wild west bushmen who prospected here before it became national park in 1959.
We’re several days walk from anywhere, amid a World Heritage wilderness of greenstone lakes and white slash waterfalls, fur seals and sand flies — so how do we get back to Queenstown by tonight? Martins Bay has a small airstrip but it’s not a light plane that arrives from the south. Deus ex machina-style, a helicopter comes thump-thumping in to levitate us above Fiordland’s maze of drowned valleys, and then right down the emerald gullet of Milford’s magnificent Sound. Cascades to the left, thousand-metre cliffs to the right, snow peaks straight ahead. Talk about leaving the best until last, and not a ringwraith or wizard in sight.
Fact file
Getting there: Air New Zealand flies from Australia to New Zealand ports including Queenstown, from where it is a two-hour drive to Hollyford Road, starting point of the walk.
Information: The Hollyford River walking trail can be attempted year-round. The commercial hiking excursion known as the Hollyford Track operates October to April, departing every second day. The three-day, two-night excursion includes road transfers, trekking guide, lodge accommodation and meals, some equipment and helicopter departure via Milford Sound. www.hollyfordtrack.com
Accommodation: Peppers Beacon Queenstown; www.peppers.co.nz
