For Kurow to Burkes Pass

174 • WILD ROADS BURKES PASS HAKATARAMEA VALLEY ROAD HAKATARAMEA KUROW THE HAKA KuROw To BuRKES PASs HIGHWAY ‘DON’T BE DISTRACTED By THE BEST VIEW IN NEW ZEALAND, THE SOUTH PACIFIC, POSSIBLY THE WHOLE WORLD.’ Most people heading north from the lakes take the So now you cross the Waitaki from Kurow on two smooth road through the Mackenzie Country from fine new concrete bridges. If, like me, you rather liked Omarama. But, if you’re adventurous, have the time, the old wooden ones, you’re in luck: the plan was to and want the best view in all New Zealand, you could preserve sections of them for display on what is called take the Haka Highway. Kurow Island, lying in the middle of the Waitaki You set off from Kurow, whose favourite son Richie between the two bridges. McCaw, the great All Black captain, left the building You cross the river nicely insulated from the torrent quite some time ago but lives forever in its heart. The below and find yourself immediately in Hakataramea. other big news in Kurow has been how to get out of This town was once ambitious. A railway line ran to town. From 1881 two one-way wooden bridges carried it, over the bridge from Kurow. It was to have been road and rail traffic across the mighty Waitaki River extended up the Hakataramea Valley through a new to Hakataramea on the north bank. At 662 metres town of 10,000 people. Neither the town nor the long they were among the longest wooden structures railway line ever happened. Hakataramea remained of the age. the terminus until 1930, when the line stopped instead Locals fretted: 132 in wooden-bridge years made at Kurow. Now it’s a tiny town where traffic going them ancient structures. What if they fell down? north over the bridge usually turns right and heads off They were the main link between Kurow and the to join State Highway 1 at Studholme. north by way of Waimate. If the main bridge over the Instead, today, we’re heading north through the Waitaki at Glenavy was closed, there’d be no detour Hakataramea Valley where there’s absolutely no trace through Kurow for State Highway 1 traffic. As for the of a town, imaginary or otherwise. Hakataramea Valley, why, it would be isolated or, The New Zealand Railways Magazine noted in rather, more isolated. 1938 that: Feral ROADS • 175 Between the last ramparts of the Mackenzie it is certainly true, as you look around, that this is Country in the south-west corner of Canterbury rural New Zealand in aspic. The road goes by farms, and the Waihao basin of fertile downlands and more farms, and just to make sure, past Farm south-eastwards, lies the broad valley of the Road. It’s as green on this side of the ranges as the Hakataramea, 25 miles in length. Today this is Mackenzie Country is gold on the other. practically a closed valley. But when the other 20 No cafés, burger stops, gas stations, picnic areas, miles of road across the Hakataramea Pass is made, big houses or welcome signs. it will [ . .] be a direct route for tourist traffic Wait! Here’s a place: Cattle Creek! An old hall. An between Lake Tekapo and the scenic area round the old school. This was the Cattle Creek School, which, new Lake Waitaki. by September 2004, had run out of pupils. Completely. The next month it closed. School, hall, swimming Well, it’s direct all right, but not much tourist traffic pool, tennis courts, all that work and community is using it today. The road sets out over a saddle then effort, were put up for sale. drops into the broad river valley flats. A nice, lonely This is the end of civilisation as we knew it. The country road minding its own business with no traffic seal stops. Still 72 kilometres to Tekapo. Ahead, PREVIOUS SPREAD other than the odd farm ute, straights so long you several dust trails. Hang on, there is only one, divided Wooden bridge over welcome a bend or a bridge; one-way, for there is no into little puffs hanging in the still air like smoke the Waitaki. other kind. signals. Pale blue sky, brown hills to the left, brown TOP LEFT Burkes Pass, The valley is separated from the Mackenzie mountains to the right. The car’s rear window itself 1951. Country by tough-looking ranges, although it is a takes on the look of a clay hillside, now and then TOP RIGHT Hakataramea whole geological shift away. In this valley enormous collapsing in little avalanches of dirt. rural area over the Waitaki River, from baleen whale fossils, 23 million years old, have been Even farmhouses become scarce. Car, don’t break Kurow, 1956. found, for this was once part of a shallow inland down. Help seems a very long way away. RIGHT Welcome to sea. Scientists working on their recovery regard the Hawks glide and swoop. A few sheep run beside Burkes Pass on a area as one of the planet’s last fossil frontiers and the road then, in that way sheep have, in front of the fine day. 176 • WILD ROADS car. Who says they’re dumb? A sign. ‘Caution. Narrow roads. Steep grades. Fords. Snow. Ice. Drive carefully.’ The sign-writer had a sense of humour. We roll through a farmyard. You don’t see that often. ‘Close the gates’, says a sign. The dust road narrows. A man on a quad bike in a paddock, dogs on the carrier, stares, waves. The puffs of dust ahead dissolve into a ute parked in a farm gate. This time the dogs stare. Now we are alone in a tawny world. A sign points to a pass in the hills ahead. The road gives up going straight and turns crooked, shimmying around hills, through creeks, following a valley somewhere in the headwaters of the Hakataramea. A tail twitches. We just miss a cow’s backside, sticking out of a matagouri bush. No room to swerve. The cow looks as if it might wave, too, but goes back to eating instead. We go through a ford. I think I hear the tyres hiss but it may be my passenger. A rock scree leads away up the mountainside. Then another ford. Impossibly, the road narrows even more. Forty-five kilometres to Tekapo now. That’s reassuring. Only another two hours at the present average speed. The mountains on either side grow closer. They squeeze. We pop out, onto a smooth saddle between the ranges. The Hakataramea Pass at last! And a gate: ‘Keep shut at all times’. In other words, close the bloody gate and don’t be distracted by the most spectacular view in New Zealand, the South Pacific, possibly at that moment the whole world! It is so sharp, so huge, it seems to penetrate your eyes. The Mackenzie Country spreads itself far in front of us. Mount Cook rises into the pale sky with its acolytes ranged attentively on either side. Shadowed white and silver, still, secret, impervious. So much New Zealand in just one view, so impressive. This is James McKenzie’s country, the wide, empty Feral ROADS • 177 basin where he and his dog Friday drove thousands of the right. It wriggles between the Dalgety and Rollesby sheep stolen from Canterbury farmers. He used passes ranges then sneaks through hills until it emerges near then unknown to Europeans, for McKenzie was an Fairlie in South Canterbury. The Haka Highway goes explorer as well as a sheep-stealer. One of those secret on to Burkes Pass and Dog Kennel corner, where some routes became the McKenzie Pass, and that’s where lonely hound was once based to keep stock within the McKenzie was caught. He had stolen a thousand boundary. Civilisation. Isn’t life wonderful? sheep from the Two Levels Station owned by the It’s hard to believe on a fine day but Burkes Pass Rhodes brothers and this time he was tracked and is a mountain pass with all the wintry character of captured. He was tried and imprisoned in Lyttelton the breed: snow, ice and a sharp gradient to slip on. jail, escaped twice then was pardoned within a year, so Michael Burke may not have been the first European flawed was his trial. through the pass in 1855, but he was the one who For all the thousands of words written about left his name on it. The road was first a dray track McKenzie, little is known about him, not even how into the Mackenzie Country, then a road. So Burkes he spelled his name: it is ‘McKenzie’ in the records, Pass became a stop for teamsters and travellers and ‘Mackenzie’ in the place names he left over this region. was called Cabbage Tree Creek before it grew into The legend simply grew, and the romance bloomed a town. My family often stayed at the Burkes Pass in the fine, free air of the Mackenzie Country. Hotel, largely built of sod and the first licensed hotel The Mackenzie Pass lies only 20 kilometres in a in Canterbury: it burned down in 1994. Now several direct line from the Hakataramea. The road is tight cob cottages made of clay, straw, earth and water have and the ranges so uniform that as you scan them been restored along with other buildings including you understand why McKenzie’s route remained his the little white weatherboard church, St Patrick’s. A secret.

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