8-12 November 2007

From the Psychotic to the Sublime

The Lake Waikaremoana Track

Day 4, Page 3: Marauiti to Waiharuru

Much of the lushness of the bush as we have it has emerged first from the government deer-culling programmes of the fifties and sixties. This programme also provided dozens of what later came to be part of NZ's backcountry huts network. Besides deer and goats, other predators, such as opossums, rats, and stoats were targeted using poison and traps.

This particular section of bush is one of the loveliest I have walked through. It's a cumulative experience, hard to capture in any one picture.

Here's another almost perfect Crown Fern.

Tree fern are especially lush in the understorey.

Here's a punga stump hosting a colony of small ferns, quintinia and rata.

This one is covered in filmy fern.

There's a large, emerald moss along here, too.

Here is a tawari. I have seen many in bud but have so far never sighted a flower that many describe as among the most beautiful in the New Zealand bush.

A perching lily? Well, probably. there's a whole heap of plants that have been tagged with this name. It's another of the huge number of holes in my botanical knowledge.

More chainsawed debris after storm damage.

The bush is open and filled with light

Tree roots - yes, but with oceans of space around them and a carpet of leaves

We head up another small gully and round the other side.

The path is undulating and easy.

Here and there, great banks of moss line the track.

Another small gully and a footbridge.

We move from a yellow green to a bluer shade.

Another gully and another footbridge, yet not repetitive in the sense that I found the first day of the Heaphy: "eternity in 50m segments". Note the slight difference in bridge design here, with the horizontal floor pieces extended to provide an extra support for the hand rails. Is this a post-Cave Creek bridge, perhaps?

From here on someone has planted kilometre posts, but I'm not sure what they are referring to. I suspect, in hindsight, the roadend of the track.

We're out of the bush briefly and into open track again.