Old Coach Road Track

page 2

Downhill from here, as they say. To begin with it's open and scrappy, but as we begin to head downwards it closes in a little. Both Miranda and Alice sense that home is close and I catch fleeting glimpses of them from time to time way up ahead. Miranda has not had a great sleep the night before, and she is starting to feel, not so much physically knackered as just plain sleepy.

As we descend, the bush becomes lusher and the track assumes its characteristic ditch down the middle shape with two narrow strips of path either side. Where it's wet, it's slippery and I have to pay attention.

Just down from here, the track passes right by someone's back fence and an extremely menacing looking Pyreneean Mountain dog about the size of a small cow has trodden the boundary on his side of the fence to a muddy pulp as he paces back and forth barking aggressively. Miranda tells me later that Alice had to be forcibly restrained from doing battle with it. Stupid dog! I move past quickly.

At the side of the track popping up through a bed of rimu leaves is a young Waiu-atua or Taurepo (Rhabdothamnus solandri)

and speaking of rimu, Alice is well and truly hooked up. There are bits of dried leaves stuck to her all over, almost like camouflage.

The next pic, superficially similar, has slightly narrower, more pointed leaves, glossier and slightly blotched. It's a putaputaweta (Carpodetus serratus).

Neither of these are overly common on this track. Larger trees of this kind were often found to be hosting wetas in long vertical holes in the trunk, but these were not bored by the weta as the Maori believed, but by the larva of the ghost moth.

We pass the other end of the Goodfellow Track

and continue down towards the ranger's house.

The track as it descends is becoming darker and more tunnel like.

The house is over to the left. I don't know whether the ranger still lives here or whether it has been sold to private owners.

For a few metres we have the wide luxury of the ranger's drive before heading briefly downhill, across the drive again, and onto the last stretch.

Up above us the rewarewa (Knightia excelsa) is in flower and a couple of blooms have been dislodged. These are about life size.

Also on this section of the track I spot a rather unusual looking large-leaf Coprosma. These leaves are narrower than anything I've ever seen on C robusta or C lucida, and it's definitely not C australis.

I take a couple more closeups of the stipules and domatia to send up to Tony for a look . When I get his email, he reckons it's a female C lucida. He has an idea about female coprosmas having narrower leaves than males, which he is discussing in more depth in his new book due out soon.

This bit of track I've been over several times before, so it's familiar. I'm also tired so there aren't many good shots. But one of the plants that feature strongly along the track is the mangemange. And here we have a mangemange making it's way up a hangehange (Geniostoma ligustrifolium)

Mangemange (Lygodium articulatum), or climbing fern, grows in great wiry tangles and was often used by bushmen to stuff a makeshift mattress. The tough, wiry rachis of the climbing frond forms small, fan-like arrays of pinnae along its length while the rhizome remains on the ground.

Up ahead are voices and a few metres further brings the van into view and a whole bunch of people who have arrived in our absence. We have left the lights on inside the van, and neither the gas stove or the water tap - or the lights will function as a result. Fortunately we have a thermos of hot water and tea and sandwiches vanish in short order. Fortunately also the motor runs off a separate battery. The battery is fully charged again inside twenty minutes, once we start for home. We have a date in the future to check out the Goodfellow track.