Writing about Ōtari

The Photo

Lightly, between forefinger and thumb, I hold up a photo and study it closely. It’s from one of the first pages of my Otari album. It shows two older men sitting on a bank. They are smiling and squinting into the sun, each with grubby-fingered fists raising a tin of beer in cheer.

One sports glasses and a bottle-green jersey; his thin white hair is lifting slightly in the air. The other has an impressively lush mop of brilliant white hair, combed tidily to one side. Both would be in their mid 70s; both have mud stains on their trousers’ knees and grubbers at their side. With their impish grins, they could be the Statler and Waldorf Muppet characters that heckle from their balcony seats in the theatre. But they’re not.

It’s Jock Flemming to the left, Athol Swann to the right; two doyen of the Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush Trust. Along with John Dawson, Margaret Crimp and Margaret Chetwin, they form the cabal I most associate with the gentle persistence that resulted in the formation of the trust.

The photo was taken in 2004. We’d just finished a Saturday morning of planting beside Kaiwharawhara Stream. This was a drink of satisfaction at the end of a morning’s digging. Twenty years on, the area is now a thick scraggle of young trees. It would be hard to find the cleared bank they sat on; even harder to understand that twenty years ago, this bushy section along the Kaiwharawhara Stream in Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush had been a hopeless mess of blackberry.

I raise my own glass to these two gentle men whose vision and support has seen the rewilding of the Kaiwharawhara valley.

Bronwen Wall, Ngaio

Relief from the Dry

Soaking rain poured in drips and splodges from water-laden foliage. My trouser bottoms were wet and my shoes muddy. The hood of my green parka was leaking over my specs, but I could hardly see anyway, the mist was so dense. I was swimming in rich gleaming greens of all shades and densities as I slipped and squelched through the top paths in Ōtari. It was utter bliss! I shall never forget that enormous sense of relief, of escape, an almost unimaginable contrast from the straw-coloured grass of the drought-ridden New England Tablelands of New South Wales that I’d been riding over a couple of days before. In that dry climate, it seemed that I had shrivelled myself, but was now plumping up, absorbing damp greenery through every pore of my body, wrapped in waterproofs though I was. It was an enormous sense of relief, a catapult from one universe to another. I have relived it many times over the years, back in this dry continent.

Elizabeth Teather, Canberra

Tuna Kuwharuwharu

Clouds, blown across the Strait by the relentless nor’wester, shroud the top of Mt Kaukau. They sit there piling up around the transmitter mast, covering the tops and settling in the gullies that rake the sides of the hill. Closer, the cabbage trees take the impact of the gale, their leaves dancing like shredded flags. It is not a day for walking the tops.

In Ōtari, alongside the Kaiwharawhara Stream, it is calm under the forest canopy. Dog-walkers are out enjoying the tracks through the bush. “Kia ora” they say as they pass by. Some stop to enjoy my interest in their pet, but most have earbuds and don’t respond to my greeting. I’m searching the stream for eels. It’s late afternoon and in the shallow, quiet reaches of the river I see one, then two, three, more. They move languidly, swaying in the current. Big ones. I silently voice my hope that teenagers no longer have the urge to go eeling like we did when we were kids. We’d head down to the river at dusk with poles fashioned as spears. The next day we would pose proudly with our catch while dad took a snap with the box brownie camera. We’d hold the biggest one up by its gills so it hung down beside us, from our head to our feet if it was a really big one. We never ate them. They were trophies that gave us bragging rights at school. “It was huge. Taller than me.” Or “We got six last night.” The one below me in the stream turns effortlessly in the shallows. I pray for its survival.

Further downstream, below the tunnel that takes the river under the railway line, there are fewer eels. Here dogs run freely into the water, splashing in the shallows where eels like to rest. A dog owner is yelling at his large dog to “Get the eel!” which is swimming barely a couple of metres away. Luckily, the dog is confused with his owner’s command. I wonder whether he has the ability to catch its scent through the water. “Did you know that eels are protected in this stream?” I gently inform the owner. “Yeah?” He glances at me and throws the dog a stick, close to the eel. It bounds through the water after the stick, sending up a spray of water before returning to his master. After a vigorous shake he turns back to the stream to retrieve the next stick. The eel has silently slid into the dark, hidden deep of the opposite bank. I breathe a sigh of relief.

A warning has been erected informing park users of contaminated water. The old sewer pipe that runs alongside and across the stream leaks whenever it rains, making the water undrinkable, un-swimmable. Un-fishable. You can smell it when you pass the entrances to the sewer tunnels, an embarrassing stench in a scenic reserve where visitors come to enjoy the wild beauty of regenerating native bush. When it rains, the stormwater from the neighbouring suburbs gushes into the stream turning it into a raging beast, a brown torrent filling the gorges and carrying branches and plastic rubbish down the gully. Much is caught by the debris trap constructed of old railway lines which stand like fence posts across the stream. Today, upstream of that wall of thatched debris, where the stream is wide and shallow a lone eel glides lazily across the pebbles. Close by, on the bank, a large sign tells the story of the longfin eel, Tuna Kuwharuwharu. “The longfin eel has lived in New Zealand for 80 million years. It is our top freshwater predator and probably the biggest eel in the world. Some females grow 2m in length and weigh up to 40 kg. The oldest eel found was 106 years old…”.

I walk alongside the Kaiwharawhara, pondering the plight of the longfin. In the 1950s there were eel extermination programmes to clear eels from rivers earmarked for hydroelectric dams, or to protect trout fisheries. Many dams were built without fish passage for eels during their upstream and downstream migration. Commercial eel fishing took off in the 1960s. By the early 1970s New Zealand’s eel population had been decimated and migration numbers had reduced sharply. Even now there is ongoing loss of eel habitats. Wetlands continue to be drained, streams re-engineered and vegetation removed. Recovery of eel numbers is going to take time.

The light is fading when I return upstream to Ōtari. The dog-walkers have left, just an occasional jogger passing through. There is a perceptible break in the wind. The cabbage trees are standing erect, barely moving, a southerly turn. The water of the Kaiwharawhara is darker, the stream narrower and shaded by the forest. I catch sight of movement in the water. A big longfin is lolling near the far side. I watch it, marvelling at what it represents. The fact that I have seen it means that it is not old enough to migrate to breed, and die. It moves slowly upstream, sometimes turning on its side, showing its light underside. I follow, keeping it in my sight. It moves effortlessly, hugging the larger rocks, sucking at them. Then with a strong flick of its tail, it moves up a swifter channel. Suddenly, without warning it is being swept downstream on the current, headfirst, at the mercy of the river. I turn and follow, peering into the darkening waters. “Hi” mutters a passing runner. Unexpectedly he stops and asks what I’m looking at. “An eel,” I say, “but I’ve lost sight of it.” He tells me there are plenty up by the Troup Picnic Lawn. “I think people feed them there,” he says.

The stream widens slightly, and there it is, commencing another systematic search of its territory, working its way upstream again as far as the rapids where it will let the water take it back downstream to continue its endless patrol. Will this one ever grow old enough to breed? And will its elvers find their way back from the tropics to start the next generation? Can this remarkable species survive for another 80 million years in the Kaiwharawhara?

In the fading light I watch as the eel negotiates around a large rock and slides into deeper water. Good luck, I breathe. Stay safe, Tuna Kuwharuwharu.

Anne Tuffin