The Kea: a New Zealand problem/Chapter 1

by George Reginald Marriner

THE KEA:

A NEW ZEALAND PROBLEM

 

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CHAPTER I.

 

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THE KEA COUNTRY.

 

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Ranges on ranges, far crest on crest,
The long Alp-barriers closed the West,
Like the walls of the Median city old,
A guardian girdle sevenfold.

There grimmest ridges looked softer through
The clinging film of their gentle blue,
Where high in the haze of the summits show
The cool, faint streaks of belated snow.

—William Pember Reeves.

 

ave you ever seen “the Kea Country?” The writer has; and the way in which the vision came to him seems worth the telling, especially as an introduction to an attempt to describe and discuss one of the most interesting creatures in a land where the interesting abounds.

For years I had longed to see the haunts of the Kea; and when at length a convenient winter vacation came, bringing no call to roam more pressing than this. I left the laboratory for the mountains. It is not an expedition to be enjoyed alone. But at the last minute my chosen companion failed me, and, rather than lose a rare chance, I went without him.

By train and bicycle I gradually wormed my way from Canterbury’s city of the plain into the foot-hill country of the range that stretches along not far from the western edge of our South (or Middle) Island of New Zealand. Back of the lesser heights appeared the glistening peaks of the alpine country, where river beds of shingle and terraces of browning tussock and lakes of deep calm occupied the spaces between the sky-piercing points. As I struck in

Kea country: Up the Wilberforce River; showing the darkness of the mountains east of the dividing range.

from Glentunnel, Mt. Hutt towered in front: a gaunt, mute sentinel seven thousand feet in height, with epaulettes and trappings of tussock and helmet of snow. Nothing daunted, I cycled by him deeper and deeper into the ranges by the way the Rakaia River has made for itself in its descent from the heights to the plain.

Here and there great shingle slides come down the mountain slopes, long streams of broken boulders that creep into the gorge and spread fan-like for a mile or so across its broken expanse. In places the river has shorn them off clean; and their massive walls, often a hundred feet in height, bound the river’s torrent.

A night was spent at Lake Coleridge Homestead; and then, with my outfit transferred from cycle to horse, I skirted the lake, its wild water-fowl rising in clouds at my approach. About midday I reached the top of the pass.

At last! There before me it lay, the lonely, solemn, weird but fascinating country the Kea chooses for a home. Not a sound broke the great silence as I reined up and gazed across the apparently endless succession of snow-clad peaks. My coming seemed an intrusion. Save for the dray-track that wound easily down for a mile or so to the river-bed, passing an empty galvanised-iron hut as it went, there was no sign of man’s presence in this vast wild. Over this scene, looking then much as it does now, the giant moas, whose remains have been found in the gorge, must have strutted in search of food.

Hundreds of feet below lie the Rakaia Forks, where the Wilberforce, Mathias and Rakaia Rivers unite their forces before they charge down the gorge on to the plains. Their reinforcements are called from all the surrounding peaks. They rush from the terminal faces of the glaciers; they trickle from the snow-line; they ripple and bubble through the cushion-like vegetation of the higher slopes. Down amid the dense bush they tumble, forming numerous cascades and waterfalls. Here they rattle under a fallen monarch of the forest. There they slip and slide over the great boulders that in vain stand to stem their progress. Down they scramble, seething over the shingle of the river-bed, sweeping round the hill slopes, hurrying to join the roaring river.

Where the gorge widens out the streams of the Rakaia anastomose like silver network, with the tussocky flats filling up the intervals. Farther away lie great swamps, where paradise duck and swamp hen thrive, but horse and rider may be hopelessly bogged in awful quagmire.

Westward the three great river-beds spread, first for ten or twelve miles as broad U-shaped valleys and then as deep precipitous verges leading away to the supplying glaciers. There the streams are lost to view.

Kea country (Boundary Creek): A small tributary of the Wilberforce River.

Their flood height can be gauged by the broad reaches of naked shingle flanking the water’s edge. Everywhere else below the hardy tussock is supreme. Above, peaks, jagged and white, stretch away to the great heights of the Southern Alps themselves. It is all so appallingly gigantic that man seems helplessly insignificant.

Behind, running away to the east, the Rakaia cuts its way, first for fourteen miles over a shingle-bed about a mile wide, and then, for another eight, rushing through a narrow defile amid some of the grandest gorge scenery of the Dominion.

Away to the left the Mt. Hutt Range continues, until it meets the Arrowsmith Range, capped with snow and girdled with glaciers, standing across the valley. To the right is Peak Hill’s lower range, ending in a sharp point, — Mt. Oakden, cut off from the Rolleston Range by the Wilberforce stream, which has been strengthened above by the lesser Harper and Avoca.

All around, the mountain sides are weathered into great shingle slips, marching down to take possession of the plain, debouching here, uniting forces there, now in file, then in column, but always met by the indomitable tussock. The fight goes on, but the tussock is here unbeaten; life tells; “a living dog is better than a dead lion.”

But these shingle slides—which for size and abundance are said to be seen nowhere else in the world, and accounted for by brittle strata and very sudden changes in temperature are an annoyance to the traveller. Travelling is frightfully heavy and slow; and any attempt to ascend their shifting stretches is heart-breaking.

As night be expected, over this vast wilderness sparse settlement only is possible. A few lonely homesteads, each with its shearing sheds and shepherds’ huts, are all that can be found in the way of dwellings. The attendant sheds and huts are often separated from each other, and from the central dwelling, by miles of mountain range and stony river-bed. Each homestead is the centre of a sheep-station, which often includes many mountain chains. Life in the central dwelling is as a rule rigorous and lonely enough for the most austere hermit. News from the outer world filters in uncertainly, and usually with intervals of many weeks. For the lonely musterer, or shepherd, in his detached hut, the life is even worse. Little wonder that now and again one becomes mad or misanthropic.

The region is an extremely stormy one. In July of 1907 I stayed some days at the Mt. Algidus Station, a fair sample of those described. It stands about forty miles back from the plains, and includes the Rakaia Forks, shut in among the ranges. On my return journey I had experience of the fury of the winter tempests that sweep over the area. My attempt to

Kea country: Glenthorne Homestead (3000 ft. alt.), and the Birdwood Range (7000 ft. alt.).

make a dash on horseback for the Lake Coleridge Station was made painful and perilous by a snowstorm. It took six hours to do the intervening twenty miles. The drift was blinding, and the snow so caked upon the horse's hoofs that the ride became a stumble through the gale. Soon riding was impossible. The falling snow shut off all but a few yards ahead. Compelled to lead my horse, I fought my way until the pass was crossed and the homestead safely reached.

I was fortunate. Such winter travelling in that wild waste is full of dangers. A false step, and death may be met. Some years before, on the opposite side of this same gorge, a surveyor was injured by a fall. He lay for days in that land of awful distances, starving, freezing, until his mind wandered and death came to rescue him. His note-book, found beside his body, told a pathetic tale. He had heard the men shouting to their horses as they dragged supplies

Kea country.

up to the Mt. Algidus Station; but the help for which he looked never came.

Such storms as I experienced come in close succession in the winter months, burying everything under many feet of snow. The night frosts clutch everything with a grip of iron. Cascades become threads of shining icicles. Nothing but the main body of the streams resist the binding cold.

When spring comes there is a change, but only doubtfully for the better. The biting blasts give place to the warmer winds from the north west. These come over the Tasman Sea, getting charged with moisture on the way, until they strike the rampart of alpine peaks and pour their burden on the snow. At night the scene is weirdly grand. The lightning plays among the rocky crests, darting fiery fingers again and again down into the valleys. A veritable cannonade of thunder shakes the mountain slopes, while sleet and hail sweep ruthlessly everywhere. Soon every crevice in the mountain side sends forth a torrent; the creeks become rushing rivers; and the river itself awakes to fury, losing its winter gentleness for a violence indescribable. Swollen from bank to bank, it becomes a seething, whirling, irresistible flood. It gouges out the bases of the cliffs and sweeps away the fords, while the roar of its water and the growl of its crunching boulders can be heard miles away. Heavily laden with yellow silt, it rushes out over the plains and discolours the sea for seventy miles out from the coast. The coming of these spring winds effects a devastating transformation, well described in the following stanzas from “The Nor’-Wester,” by the late Mrs. F. M. Renner, née Craig:–

Then I spring up the slopes of the Alps, but recoil at the touch of their snow,
And wrap myself round in cloud; and my angry eyes, aglow,
Shoot forth the zig-zag lightning; my thunder shakes the air,
And I scatter the great drops thick and fast from off my sea-wet hair.
But never a whit can the Alps stop me,
I leave them soon behind,
And revel and dance in maddest glee,
A riotous Nor’-West wind!

My warm breath frees the waters, and makes the snow flowers die,
And the sides of the Alps are torn as the torrents hurry by;
There’s a fresh in the Waimakariri, a flood in the turbid Grey;
Each swollen river is rushing, o’erwhelming all in its way.
And this is my work that none can withstand,
Nor any power can bind;
And I dance and revel throughout the land,
A riotous Nor’-West wind!

During midsummer and autumn only are these vast alpine tracts at all comfortably accessible.

This band of alpine country forms the back-bone of the South Island of New Zealand, and stretches for about 480 miles, from one end of the island to the other, lying somewhat to the west. It is composed of long parallel ranges of mountains many thousands of feet in height, crossed all along their length by shorter transverse ranges, which taper out to the plains. In between these cross ranges the rivers run, fed all the year round by the alpine snows, and cutting out deep gorges between the mountains, which form picturesque defiles opening to the plains.

These river-beds form the easiest way of access to the alpine country, and usually a road or track stretches along their high banks, cutting across miles of shingly river-bed, over low hills and flat tussocky terraces, until it runs towards the central range, often getting rougher and more hard to follow as it approaches the passes that lead to the West Coast.

On the east side of the dividing range the mountains are clothed with tussock grass, which grows up towards the snow-line, where it gives place to the sub-alpine vegetation. Where the rainfall is sufficient fairly large patches of forest stretch for miles.

On the western slopes, owing to the large amount of moisture deposited by the north-west winds, the barren tussocky scenery changes almost immediately into beautiful snow-clad peaks, covered on their lower slopes by evergreen forest, where ratas, veronicas, olearias, tree ferns and mosses form scenes of exquisite beauty.

From the sides of the steep forest-clad mountains foaming cascades and rearing torrents tumble down into the valleys; and, when the upper snows melt, waterfalls of all sizes pour from every depression and gully, forming, with the dark evergreen of the bush, scenes of unsurpassed loveliness. Here one leaps from the cliff a hundred feet or so above you, and, arching over the roadway, tumbles with a roar into the valley, drenching the traveller with spray as he passes under its watery arch. There one darts out from some bush-clad precipice, and, when caught by the wind, spreads itself out for some hundreds of feet along the sides of a dark cliff, like a gigantic silken bridal veil, throwing out iridescent colours as the sunbeams play among its folds.

Northward the alpine country gradually diminishes in height and grandeur, and spreads out almost from coast to coast, forming the hills of Nelson and Marlborough.

Southward the ranges rise higher until the chain is

Kea country:Showing the bush-clad mountains west of dividing range.

crowned by Mt. Cook, which well deserves its Maori name of Aorangi, or “the heaven piercer.” Snow-clad and grand, it rears up its sharp precipitons peaks some 13,000 feet into the air, surrounded by a large number of minor peaks, second only to itself in height and splendour. Here on all sides the valleys are filled with huge glaciers, stretching out to eighteen miles in length. The glacier streams which flow from their terminal faces fill large glacier lakes; these in turn feed the rivers, which hurry down their gorges to the sea.

Southward beyond this the mountains spread out and cover Otago and Southland; while to the west the scenery along the main chain increases in imposing loveliness. The rugged, barren peaks give place to bush-clad mountains; peak after peak, range after range, they seem to vie with one another in presenting to the traveller scenes most varied and striking. Here a peak mightier than his comrades shoots up his hoary crest into the blue, his lower slopes clothed in evergreen forest of rata, lancewood, ferns and mosses, often so dense as to be impenetrable. As the height increases the growth dwindles, until near the snow-line it gives place to the celmisia and mountain lily, which in turn give place to the cushiony vegetation of the sub-alpine flora. Above this, plant life ceases to fight against the terrible odds, and the rugged, rocky summits are clad in eternal ice and snow. Alongside this symbol of massive strength and grandeur, a deep, peaceful lake will be found quietly nestled, which, but for the bush-clad precipices and the snow-clad peaks reflecting themselves on its surface and the heavy bush fringing its sides, would fit well in some English country landscape

The whole country about this region is an endless series of craggy peaks, dark mountain gorges, sylvan lakes, picturesque fiords, which for grandeur and beauty are unsurpassed, and draw travellers from all parts of the world to gaze upon them.

This long stretch of alpine country is the home of the Kea. Here he reigns supreme. At times he may be seen flying about the snow-clad peaks and the glaciers, or hopping from rock to rock in search of food. Again, he may be found in the dense bush, seeking berries or prying curiously into the ways of the homesteads. Here, in a region of mountain, forest and flood, the bird bas lived and flourished for centuries, until man came unbidden. With man came sheep, and with sheep the great temptation, and soon also the fall that has for ever blackened the character of these interesting mountain parrots. Even yet, with the brand of Cain upon them and every man’s hand against them, they find a refuge and a home in the mountain fastnesses.