View of Mt Aspiring (9,950ft) in the Southern Alps, from ZOT The South-west Ridge is to the right, NW Ridge left, with Colin Todd Hut on the rock, centre left. Bonar Glacier Icefall front.

For those of you who do not know us, we are a little group of islands in the remotest corner of the South Pacific. From here 'tis a long way to any place else. A few months back I set off sailing determined to find a piece of the rest of the world, any piece at all. Three weeks later we saw a rock. A day or two after that we saw a coral reef, then a low flat island big enough to play a game of cricket on but not much more. And so it went for another 4 months. So there may be another world out there but I am not convinced. Like Rome, England had this habit of setting up colonia in remote places. Like Rome she sometimes forgot about them.

The Dart Glacier, about 15 miles SW of Aspiring. Mt Edward on far side, Plunkett Dome foreground, Mt Liverpool to right. Click to enlarge, or here for maximum

We were found by a Dutchman in 1642 who called us "Nuovo Zeeland", and a "Sealand" we are, having about 2,500 miles of coast line. Waves which have travelled 7000 miles from Cape Horn are somewhat irritated at finding us obstructing them and we take a fair battering. On our southwest and western side, (The West Coast, or more simply the "Wet Coast" we get a fair bit of rain, about 35 feet of it. This translates to about 11-12m for you foreigners.
A few weeks ago I was travelling in my Landrover from Marlborough on the dry side (which was suffering a real drought) and picked up a genuine West Coaster who was hitching (It is not true they have webbed feet). At Tophouse we crossed the divide into the beech forest following the Buller River and it began to rain; heavily.
"Ah", said my passenger enthusiastically, "Nice to see a real bit 'o Buller fog!" By the time we reached Sullivans, it was pouring and we were sloshing along in 4WD. "You know" says my passenger, "This drought has been bad. If this mist keeps up we might get a drop o' rain out of it yet, me boyo!"

The Olivine Ice Plateau in spring. Mt Aspiring in right distance. Click to enlarge or here for maximum

We have a chain of mountains 7 - 12,000ft high which stops most of it as snow. So our mountains have been carved out by glaciers, often well below sealevel and we have an area of fairly decent fiords with sides that are quite steepish, in places about vertical. Tour liners come in close so that tourists can pat the rock.

One the eastern side of the Alps, things change quite sharply, the rainfall drops down to about 8-15 inches, no trees grow, and the land is or was covered in waist high tussock grass. All the same the rivers get the rain near the middle of the Alps so this dry side has rivers flowing across which used to drown a lot of impatient people. These days we have bridges which only get washed away occasionally. A river a mile wide of foaming, surging, grey torrent still impresses me. Seventy-odd years ago it also did as we crossed rivers in water to our knees, standing in a massive dray pulled by three equally massive clydesdales called Punch, Judy and Bloss! Today there are no clydesdales, and even a Landrover will not face a flood of water 5ft deep, so one goes home and waits a few days. In God's own good time all things subside, even Otago rivers.

The SW ridge of Aspiring seen in cloud. Click to enlarge, here for maximum

A hundred years ago, even 70, the land was quite idyllic, forest-covered mountains with snow peaks, winding sparkling rivers, grassy plains, coastal podocarp forest, millions of birds, ducks, seals, whales, dolphins, fish, and sandflies. The Romans made their colonia look like Rome by building a forum, a Circus Maximus and a Colosseum. We made NZ look like England by felling and burning a few million trees, washing out of the rivers a few hundred tons of gold, sowing grass, putting up hedges and grazing 75 million sheep and a few cows.

Aspiring seen from SE with the Pope's Nose in forground and the cliffs of the Kitchener cirque. Click to enlarge, here for maximum

Mt Aspiring with a climbers Click to enlarge or here for maximum.

So the land is not quite as immaculate as it once was. The whales, ducks birds etc have mainly gone but we still have the sandflies. I forgot about the million or so corrugated iron-roofed houses!

All the same there are still valleys in the south shut off by gorges where the latest pest, the tourist, does not find his way and there are no Jet boats or "Adventure Treks", and the hills manage to still look much as they always did though the glaciers are receding. And above the bushline, amid the alpine tarns, with the glaciers winding down, and a snow banner blowing off a peak, it has not changed so much. These days I fly over it in a little microlight plane I built in my boatshed. Here we see a few pix which will record the less spoiled parts of our country before the glaciers are gone entirely.


Mt Cook and the Tasman, Franz Josef and Fox Glacier Region.

ZOT at Camerons Flat, Mt Aspiring Station, 20 miles from Lake Wanaka In my younger days this was all open range and we used to ride our horses for miles amid the grazing cattle (and the odd deer!). Mt Aspiring lies out of sight behind hills to the left. .

On the dry side of the Alps only exotic trees grow. Lombardy polars in their fall colours line the banks of the Cardrona, near Pembroke (Wanaka).

Click to enlarge or here for maximum.