Communication between Lindsay and I is on
the whole pretty good. As cavers that should probably be counted as
exceptional. Often I know a week or more in advance when he is planning to be
about and up for some caving. Handy for me when trying to schedule my week’s work
and wheedle out a day off to go caving. However the best laid plans… etc etc.
This particular week Lindsay had
notified me that he was due over and that as usual he had a long list of plans,
projects and prospecting. I was keen, having managed nowt for weeks and weeks
(at least 2 anyway). So up went my hand for starters. It was not to be.
For the past 5 years or so I’ve risen
early six days a week to sort freight at one of the local Courier depots.
That’s all I’m supposed to do, sort freight. But, unfortunately for me, I also know
how to do the deliveries side of things as well. The lay of the land was thus;
the boss wanted a holiday away and had organised a relief driver. So the boss sets off for a remote corner of the country, and no sooner have they flown out, than
the relief driver goes and has a family emergency. So, who ya gonna call? As
Ghost Busters are no longer listed in the local directory, it falls with a limp
thud to me. Well, 2 days knocked out of my normal schedule is enough to throw
it all into a messy tailspin. So, sorry to Lindsay but I can’t make Wednesday
work.
Of course you know it gets worse. Next Caver-Neil calls, and naturally I miss it because I almost always have my phone
on silent. I call him back, I listen to a short but impassioned lecture on
climate change and then he says we should go climb the as-yet unclimbed rock
face in the back of Fox River cave - tomorrow. Oh dear, that’s not going to
work either - and that makes for about the 10th time that I’ve missed
out on a trip to the Fox River Cave.
Next up, Caver-Michael txts me to say
that he and his Wife-Sarah are going to survey Waireka Cave in the weekend and
that I’d be more than welcome to join them. Great, I’ve been wanting to be in
on this project for a while now and Sunday I can do. But actually I haven’t
told you the whole truth… Before Michael txt me about surveying Waireka, Friend-Richard had asked if I could spare some time on Sunday to take him and his 8yo
son out caving. Well of course I couldn’t say no to that. At the time I had no
other plans and it’s always fun out with Richard and his boy, so I agreed and
started thinking about where we could go. Now introduce Michael’s txt, to which
I also immediately said ‘Yes’ to, whilst simultaneously trying in my mind to dove-tail it with my
plans with Richard. Maybe the cave Richard and I go to is Waireka, and we could just happen to do some surveying while
we’re there. Maybe we could pick up another cave on the way in or out as well. Anyway,
for a time it seemed perfectly workable so I was quite happy.
Then reality began to nibble away at the
edges, perhaps this wasn’t workable, perhaps all that would end up happening is
that everyone would just get annoyed with the situation and would feel let
down. Richard probably wouldn’t enjoy 6 hours of surveying, his boy wouldn’t
like the hour plus hike in and the same again at the end of the day. Michael
wouldn’t like having an 8yo repeatedly telling us all that he was now tired,
hungry and bored and that he wanted to go home and I would be stuck in the
middle of it all. In the end I had to start back tracking, so I made my
apologies to Michael and said we might bump into him but for him not to expect us – which he graciously understood.
Roll round Sunday morning, and not
that I was ever expecting an early start with Richard but 11:00 did seem a tad
tardy, still he had his reasons and I was at my leisure. So 11:30 rolls round and
Richard turns up with a sheepish look on his face. His boy isn’t feeling great
and could we just wait an hour or so and see if perks up. Well, it was nearly
lunch time, so that was easily accommodated. Then when his son decided he still
wasn’t up to it, we called the whole shebang off.
So what to do with my now free
afternoon? I could still go out and survey with Michael albeit that it would be
a bit of a rush. But I have no means of contacting him to tell him so, or
indeed to know if he even managed to get there in the end or not. After a short
moment of deliberation I decide to leave things as they are and instead look
elsewhere for recreational fulfilment.
Kerry enters stage left. Kerry is almost always
up for a bit of walk, unless he isn’t. During my phone call to him, he mentions
a couple of options that he’s had on his mind for a while, but that one way or
another he was up for a short tramp and the weather was fab.
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| Kerry |
By the time I gotten organised and out
to Waimangaroa, Kerry had had a brainwave and remembered another old trip he
had done some years back and that he fancied a re-run of. Off up onto Denniston
we drove, through to Burnetts Face and then a little way along the Waimangaroa
Gorge road where Kerry pulled his trusty HiAce off to the side of the road and
we clambered out.
 |
| Off we go |
From here we set about getting into the
bed of Burnett Stream. It’s not an easy thing to do unless you fancy abseiling
in or spending ages bashing about in thick gorse-infested undergrowth. We remained
dispassionate about either of these options and consequently took our time
finding a convenient and sanguine pathway.
 |
| Watch that gorse |
The journey down Burnett Stream was simply
fantastic. I guess you could think of it as a form of canyoning, but one where
we got to stay dry. If we ran into sections that needed ropes we simply abandoned
the gorge and went up the bank and around. How often you were required to do this
depended almost entirely on how keen you were feeling. Happily for us, the
weather had been dry for some days and many of the rocks that would have
otherwise been impassable due to their nasty slippery near-vertical nature were
today crisp, sure-footed and there for the traversing.
 |
| Bubbling Brooke |
There was one beauty spot after another. Nooks
that were hot, dry lazy sun-traps, crannies that were cool, shady and seductive.
Rocks with amazing colours, textures and patterns, waterfalls that defied plausible
hydrological explanation. Delicious, impossibly-wide, yawning distances to jump
down over as if we were sporty Greek demi-gods, the sort of gaps that you were
never going to get back up unless gravity were to slam the gears into reverse.
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| Enormous leaps |
Giant boulders squatted closely together leaving
only tight rifts to shimmy in between and escape elatedly from on the other
side. Slimy copper-hued slicks of streaking moisture seemed visceral and earthy. Deep
sparkling pools of enticing emerald winked at us as we passed by.
 |
| Shady spot |
The sun embraced us with a sultry fondness, as
if savouring our lightly clad epidermises. The breeze ran its cool, refreshing fingertips
gently through our hair, sipping juicily past our ears. Each step bought a new
horizon, suddenly sheer with no way on, then unexpectedly with footholds or a
jump that allowed us to continue, as if some Mosaic miracle had just played out
in front of us.
 |
| Fly-boots |
The stream snaked and twisted on and on,
continuing until I, at least, felt like young Alice in a land of wonders. A fleck in a world of over-sized
proportions. A world in which Time had gotten side-tracked smelling the flowers
and ceased to care about ever moving forward again, content instead to linger
ponderously. A world in which the conventional laws of physics let slip their
gripping dominance, where gravity, inertia, and even friction could be bent to
our will, rather than us to theirs.
 |
| Behind the veil |
It could almost have been Ground Hog day;
each twist and turn we negotiated offered a fresh start. Every time we got over/round/down
one section still puffing and blinking in semi-disbelief at what we had just
crossed/climbed/jumped, a new challenge immediately appeared before us, popping
our eyes open even further.
 |
| The Dynamic Duo |
Kerry would occasionally wander off up the
bank saying that the next jump or whatever was too ridiculous and I would then dash
forward only to have to then hold back never sure of where he would reappear
above me. We floated blithely, euphorically or at least I did. I concede Kerry may
have seen the afternoon through sunnies of a different shade. And of course we did eventually get to
the end of the stream.
 |
| Thundering waterfalls |
I didn’t keep time records for the
trip, but I suspect that getting into Burnett’s streambed and then down to its
confluence with the Waimangaroa River took up about half of the 5-6 hours we were
out.
 |
| Swim-time |
Once we turned up into the Waimangaroa River
everything changed. The sun was screened off by the disquieting hulk of the adjacent
mountain, the breeze became a chill, ill-disposed messenger and the rocks had
remained smoulderingly damp, duplicitous and almost entirely unpleasant. The way
forward was barred utterly in places. Kerry resorted to swimming but as I
detest wet feet, I elected to back-track until the gorge relented and a way
forward was offered up. This side seemed wild and unyielding, demanding our respect
in payment for onward angling progress. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the
Gorge was openly hostile but it was gruff and blunt in character where Burnett
Stream had smiled warmly toward its guests and embraced us affectionately.
 |
| Tricky climb |
An
hour more of steady work and Kerry recognised the spot where it is best to pull
out of the Gorge momentarily and head up the hillside. From memory it was not far
past a large resurgence up on the true left. We scrambled up a lichen-dusted scree
slope until we were back in the sun again. Not that we needed warming up after
the climb but it did the heart good as always.
Here we paused for a spell. We spoke of the old days,
madness, and world problems – many of which we of course knew the answer to.
We swapped stories of appalling idiocies that we knew of or could make up on the spot.
All in all had a jolly good old natter. Time was no long-haired, bare-footed
dilly along this valley though, marching on instead in a visibly deliberate manner. Sitting
now on the creeping edge of Mt Frederick’s grey evening tide, the moment ripened
to be moving on.
 |
| Home-time |
From this mid-point up the slope we
traversed horizontally into a small patch of bush and then shortly after
dropped back into the river just about where there is a collapsed rusty old bridge.
Not too far off there is short section of pink tape that shows where a funny little track
starts, crosses over in front of an old mine shaft and then with slightly more diligence
makes it way up the face of the broken-sided hill to the terrace where the road is
also located. For all the time we had been away from the van since we started it
didn’t seem to take long for us to wander along the road back to the vehicle and
close the circuit.
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| Track route |
A clip of the afternoon may be viewed on YouTube here.
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