The Wonderful Bulldozer

This is the amazing but true story of how three West-Coasters in the early 1950s dragged a mighty D8 dozer through some of the most rugged, dense bush in New Zealand. Written by JIM HENDERSON, The Wonderful Bulldozer appeared as the first chapter in his 1984 book, Tales of the West Coast.

In Reefton, in an office, four men sat round a table. They’d been given the OK to go ahead on the Halfway Bluff contract on the Jackson Bay-Otago road which was taking shape. Spread before them were maps and one or two aerial photographs. And while the cigarette butts were piled up, as teacups were emptied and filled again, these four men planned the journey their 23-ton bulldozer would make through the heavy South Westland rain forest, where no machine had ever been before.

Soon news of this meeting spread out from Reefton.

‘Impossible!’ said the oldtimers scornfully.

‘Why, none of these fellers has ever been there before! They haven’t even got a track, let alone any sort of road, to travel on. No, they don’t know what they’re doing.’

They’d have to smash their way through trees and rocks over rough hills and valleys covered in forest, tackle swamps, cross deep rivers with never a bridge to help ‘em. Rain! Had they thought seriously about rain, now? The rain belting down in great driving sheets, up leap the creeks and the rivers, they and their precious bulldozer would be cut off, trapped, starving to death, or maybe drowning, trying to get out for tucker.

Somebody reckoned they should be stopped to save a lot of trouble before it was too late.

‘Anyone with any brains knows it’s quite impossible to ride a horse over parts of this country. And here they’re thinking they’ll get through with a dirty big bulldozer.’

‘No show,’ others agreed.

The old men, and the young men too, began to bet with one another that the bulldozer would never get even half the way.

The men from Reefton, the four men who owned this bulldozer, were Bill Blair, the manager, who with his three friends had formed this business, the Commonwealth Construction Company; Ray Smith, who drove the bulldozer; Ted Storey, the spare driver, and Maurie Hartley, who was to scout ahead in the forest, help around the bulldozer and, when food began to run low, fetch more food from the nearest settlers, many miles away. They had no thoughts of ‘trail-blazing’ or of ‘making history’. This was a simple job of work, and tractors were made for work, not history. As for the country they intended to cross, far below Reefton on the wild sea coast is the tiny settlement of Jackson Bay, a little outpost in the forest. Only about four or five farmers lived around there then, raising cattle. No roads to Jackson Bay in the bush and tall mountains over your shoulder.

Perhaps once a month, a small ship would call at Jackson Bay with food and clothes for the settlers. And that was all, until an aeroplane started flying down from Hokitika three times a week, a small areoplane holding six people, the mail and the newspapers, some stores and a few odds and ends from the shops. And now, at last, a settler who became ill or got smashed up could be flown off quickly to hospital.

Before this (because of course the ship was never there when it was wanted most) anyone sick had to make a cruel journey through the bush, along a rough steep track not much wider than a horse’s body. The sick or injured would travel night and day, sitting on a packhorse or, if they were very ill, strapped onto the horse.

Along this track – hard work, taking days – the farmers their drove cattle, off through the bush until at last they met the road. Then along the road to Ross, where the railway began and the cattle trucks waited to take the great red and white beasts to market, twice every year.

But one day, down at Jackson Bay, about thirty men with machines arrived from Hokitika in a ship, which returned to bring down more machines. At last a road was going to be built, out to the east, into the Southern Alps, to join lonely Jackson Bay with the people of Otago over on the other side of the Alps. This road through the forest, crossing many rivers and climbing over hills and cliffs, wouldn’t be finished until 1958, and until 1958 the people of Jackson Bay would only have their aeroplane and a rare ship calling.

The four Reefton men, who called themselves the Commonwealth Construction Company, were going to help make this road with their bulldozer.

But the bulldozer, a yellow D8, was a giant of 23 tons – it was quite impossible to fly even small parts of it in the little aeroplane to Jackson Bay. And so their plan was to send their dozer by ship, first taking it from Reefton to Hokitika. At Hokitika the bulldozer, too big to be lifted in one piece onto the small ship, would have to be taken to bits. All these bits – broken down into two-and-a-half-ton loads, would be nailed up in large wooden cases and the lot tiresomely unloaded at Jackson Bay without proper machinery to lift the heaviest parts, carted some 50 miles to the job on the Haast Road, and assembled again with no special tools or equipment.

‘No. That’s no good to us!’ the four Reefton men decided

‘Cost too much, take too long. Waste far too much time.’ No we’ll take the bulldozer straight through the forest. Nobody had ever dreamed of doing this before. ‘Our bulldozer, she’ll make her own road.’

They agreed on this plan.

‘We’ll show’em,’ said Maurice Hartley.

The men were no new chums with their bulldozer, which for five years had opencast mining in the hills above Reefton – stripping away solid rock guarding the coal, then scooping out thousands of tons of hard black coal lying beneath. The work was tough, but so were the men and their machine.

This bulldozer had a heavy winch, two and a half tons, at the back of her – a most important weapon in the battle against the bush. All strength of the 130-horsepower motor could be switched over to work this winch. The winch drum, looking like a giant cotton reel, held many yards of tough steel rope, firmly fastened round a sturdy tree, the bulldozer like a spider juggling its own thread, winching in the rope, could haul herself up to the tree, covering land too difficult or too steep for her tracks. Fastening this steel rope onto smaller trees the machine could easily uproot them to clear the path ahead. A good many trees, and all of the saplings, would yield of course before her advancing 13-foot blade, thrust in front like a shield, nearly four feet high and weighing about two tons.

Before the journey began, a wooden sledge had to be built to tow behind the bulldozer. The sledge took shape: 12 feet long, eight feet wide, with powerful broad runners, all the wood bolted firmly together. On this sledge they would carry three spare drums of wire rope for the winch, seven drums holding 300 gallons of fuel, three lots of oil and a drum of petrol. Onto the front of the sledge they fixed a wooden box: for tools and spare parts – and also for twelve bottles of beer to be drunk in triumph at Jackson Bay. (The beer didn’t stay very long – the last empty bottle was tossed into the Black Swamp.) They completed the sledge’s load with a coil of hemp rope, axes, shovels, crowbars, bedding and spare clothes. Over all this the men lashed two large tarpaulins, to protect their stores from falling branches and from the fat blue blowflies which plague people in the forest, pestering men at mealtimes and laying thick clusters of eggs on coats, clothes and blankets. These yellow eggs soon hatch out into unpleasant, squirming young.

Strangely enough, nobody thought much about food, or provisions.

They felt one man would be able to tramp back to settlements on either side of the 38-mile stretch of forest – a journey of 15 miles or so through the bush was no hardship. Besides, deer were plentiful, and counting on fresh venison, they stowed away a .303 rifle and ammunition. The idea seemed reasonable enough. After all, with well over a million deer shot in New Zealand in the last 20 years, surely the three crew could feast on venison to their hearts’ content.

They put the finishing touches to the sledge, they overhauled the five-year-old bulldozer. Then they sent a man to tell the captain of the ship that they didn’t want him, after all.

‘You’ll be sorry’ said the captain thoughtfully. ‘You’ll never do it. Not in a month of Sundays.

He shook his head. ‘Tell the boys, when they’ve tried and failed, my ship will be waiting to take them and the bulldozer (if there’s anything left of her!) down to the Bay.’

The man thanked the captain, and said he’d remember all right. He turned away saying, ‘But they’ll do it captain. Bill Blair knows his men. The men know their machine. A good machine well handled. Just wait and see.’

‘Maybe,’ said the captain. ‘But they don’t know the kind of country they’ll be travelling through!’

So they put the bulldozer on a train. The train left Reefton, passed through Hokitika (where the captain, a good sort, wished them the best of luck) and puffed down to remote Ross. Here the railway line ended. The train could go no further.

They put the bulldozer onto the last road of all leading south. They travelled down this country road; on either side the bush, tall, dark, thick.

The trees – beech, rimu, white pine, rata – stand thickly together, the branches lacing overhead and hiding the sky. In parts hang great vines, supplejacks and the thorny lawyers. Through bush like this the bulldozer, alone, would blaze her trail to Jackson Bay.

Down the road they made their way, past two great rivers of ice, glistening white, the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. Above, magnificent against the blue sky, or wrapped in solemn mists, stood Cook and Tasman.

The bulldozer travelled down this road until it stopped by Paringa Settlement, one or two houses besides a river. No more road now. The bush rose all about them. Here, as planned, Bill Blair, who was a good deal older then the other three men, left them.

Bill Blair wished each man the best of luck He had business matters to clear up at the office. After that he’d fly to Jackson Bay, to make arrangements for their arrival.

Down in this forest, across the rivers and ridges and valleys, 38 miles away, lay Jackson Bay. In a fortnight, the Reefton men felt sure, their bulldozer would bust her way through the 38 miles of forest. In three weeks, why, they’d certainly be working on the new road to Otago. If anyone had said, ‘Boys, in a month you’ll still be trying to get through,’ they’d have laughed at them.

From now on, from just after Christmas 1953, the bulldozer and the three men, were on their own.

On 16 January, the yellow bulldozer shaped up to the forest. The engine roared, the tracks clattered bravely. From his seat Ray Smith lowered the powerful blade in front of the bulldozer and sent the first tree crashing out of their way.

The great adventure was about to begin.

Maurie, taking a little food with him, scouted on ahead for two days, trying to find a dip in the hills above the long, lovely lake in the bush, Lake Moeraki. Once the bulldozer had climbed into these hills past the lake, half the journey would be over. Then the caterpillar tractor could cut through this dip and down the hills to the sea.

All this sounds rather easy. It wasn’t. Hills and ridges ran this way and that. With trees all around, the sky quite hidden, and the undergrowth and ferns covering the forest floor, Maurie, stumbling and pushing through the forest, found it vary hard to tell exactly how the land rose and fell. He climbed higher into the mountains, climbed trees, and looked about him again. It was still too difficult with the trees covering everything. It seemed as if he was just looking out into the clouds of green.

The map he carried with him was no help. The photographs taken from the air told him nothing.

Maurie couldn’t find the hills, but between Little River and Martha’s Creek he looked in amazement at a spot where the trees had thinned a little. He felt he must be dreaming – looking down at a herd of Jersey cows! The animals were hinds; with growing astonishment he counted 34 female deer, grazing quietly among the trees and the shadow of the hills. Later, Maurie walked up quietly to within 11 yards of a stag. The animal seemed quite unafraid; at first it paid little attention to the man, then walked slowly away to vanish in tall timber.

A thought flashed into Maurie’s mind: ‘Throw your slasher at him, quick!’ But the stag seemed such a noble beast, and looked at him with such calm trust. He banished the thought.

Past Mistake Creek, another surprise: a fawn, a pretty gentle little creature with white spots. Remembering how his children at home had always begged for a pet fawn, Maurie chased the little animal through trees, ducking and diving and twisting, until he caught it where a log had fallen against a high bank. The fawn very frightened at first, soon settled down comfortably, tucked away in a haversack. ‘But,’ Maurie told his children much later, ‘I jolly nearly strangled, so I carried the fawn over my shoulders, much better.’ After a while the fawn seemed restless. Maurie looked round and saw its eyes were black with swarms of mosquitoes (and how theses mosquitoes drove the men mad later on!) At once he brushed away the mosquitoes, bathed the fawns eyes with water from a spring, and gave his little pet a good drink of condensed coffee-and-milk. The fawn lapped up this strange drink eagerly.

By the second night Maurie had returned to a house at Paringa Settlement, and stayed with a farmer (who promised to look after the fawn), and early next morning had set off to find how far Ray and Ted had travelled with the bulldozer.

The bulldozer had worked along the cattle track – that was plain enough to see, with the marks in the earth, and the trees splintered and pushed out of the way by the two-ton blade in front. This blade was a match for most trees. Six miles up the narrow cattle track Maurie walked, and was very pleased with Ray’s and Ted’s progress, for he noticed a good many rocks as well as trees had been freshly broken and pushed aside. Then the trail turned right, away into thicker bush, where cattle had never been.

He didn’t have to go far before he heard the crash of a tree in the distance and the roar of the motor. He found Ray and Ted ploughing on. They looked a little worried. They brushed aside the news that Maurie hadn’t found the pass in the hills – together the three of them surely would find it without much trouble. No. Something else was a good deal more important at the moment.

‘Those blessed rocks over the last two days have been hard on the bulldozers tracks, knocking the old plates about,’ they explained. ‘We’ll have to be careful. We still seem to be striking solid rock and the plates don’t like it much.’

(Later they sent back a message for fresh plates, to be dropped by the aeroplane on the Jackson Bay run. The plates would be released in reply to smoke signals from the bank of the Little River, not far from where Maurie had seen the hinds).

That night, beneath the spreading tarpaulins the bulldozer silent above them, they cooked their meal over the campfire, they lay in their blankets and sleeping bags. They switched on Ted Storey’s portable radio set. They heard the crowds cheering Queen Elizabeth during her New Zealand visit. Then came the weather forecast: clear skies. ‘Royal weather,’ the announcer said.

All next day the blade carved its own trail, 14 feet wide through the bush and undergrowth, uprooting trees and crushing down saplings and ponga tree ferns. Trees a foot or even 18 inches thick were no problem, but anything over two feet meant cutting the roots and pushing with the blade, or getting the winch to work and winching the trees over.

But the good progress ended at a slippery ridge. Here they managed to crawl only a few hundred yards in the rest of the day. They chopped down trees, old roots, saplings, anything, flinging them down in front of the bulldozer to give the big tracks a grip and make a wooden carpet before their machine. The tracks held on this, and slowly the bulldozer swayed onward.

But the work was slow, hard.

That night they fell asleep as soon as they crawled into their sleeping bags.

Next morning was much better. Carefully they inched down a rocky gully (more punishment for the tracks), and with the dawn next day clattered across the Blue River to a small clearing by Lake Moeraki. They found an old hut, used by the whitebaiters in the spring.

On the sixth day they set off along along the south side of Lake Moeraki through solid timber, great beech trees with black sweet-smelling bee-lurking trunks, which the bulldozer shouldered aside like an elephant in the jungle. But soon they ran into supplejacks and lawyers, sprawling tough vines, the supplejacks perhaps a little like slender overgrown bamboo, but dark grey in colour, solid, tremendously strong and springy. Lawyers, with thorns on the underside of their hard green leaves, spread in a painful interlocked mass taller and wider than a house. The vines in parts formed a solid green wall in front of them. The men have never seen such big supplejacks before: some were two inches thick, and twining in amongst one another like nets they reached towards the treetops.

But through these nets of green the bulldozer ploughed, often crawling along completely smothered, hidden in greenery. How the men wished they had a movie camera, for now they were even more proud of their bulldozer, and they felt their friends would never believe the story of how they conquered the vines. Many supplejacks and lawyers had knotted and laced themselves tightly around branches, and time and again the vines didn’t break at once but instead brought branches crashing down about the bulldozer and the men. They had to be particularly careful and quick here, and while Ray drove the bulldozer forward, Ted and Maurie struggled on in front, their glistering slashers rising and falling, cutting away as many vines as they could.

Three days passed winning a way by the shore of Lake Moeraki. The mosquitoes were tiresome. ‘I don’t mind the buzzing,’ said one of them, ‘and I can put up with a bit of biting, but when they flap their wet wings over my blankets I get really annoyed.’ After a hard day’s work, the torment of mosquitoes night after night is really hard on a man. The third night brought Ray and Ted to the end of the lake, and the welcome shelter of another whitebaiter’s hut – the last old hut for many miles in the forest. Maurie had left Paringa Settlement in the morning, and at dusk he returned, bent beneath his burden of tinned food and biscuits, to find venison steak hissing invitingly in the frying pan. Approaching the hut, Ray Smith had seen a stag; the first shot from his rifle brought it to his knees, a second shot ended its life.

Maurie, worn out, enjoyed the venison steaks, but his mind kept straying to the trusting stag he had met a few days before. He hoped their supper came from another beast. This was the last the party saw of any deer. Apparently they had fled to safer country, thoroughly alarmed by two shots and the echoing roar of the first machine ever to venture into this forest.

The crew felt proud of the performance so far. The bulldozer had conquered the rocks, the steep sides of a valley, the Blue River, the endless twisted curtains of vines.

But ahead, under a light mist, lay an evil two-mile stretch they must cross, a wilderness of water and mud called the Black Swamp.

The Black Swamp – watch out there – mark my words, you’ll never get through the Black Swamp on past Lake Moeraki,’ A gloomy old possum trapper had told them, sucking his teeth and nodding his head most annoyingly, on the way down past the glaciers.

‘Isn’t that typical?’ Ray Smith remarked. ‘I bet the old coot can’t even ride a bicycle, but here he is trying to tell us what to do with our bulldozer!’ He sighed. ‘That’s the way it is in this world, boys.’

Before them now stretched the Black Swamp. The early morning mists were peeling away, like strips of half-hearted steam or ghostly smoke, from the surface of the swamp, and they looked ahead over two miles, and the trapper’s words came back to them.

Here dark water oozed on oily looking-pools besides great clumps of New Zealand flax and raupo reeds. A brilliant blue swamp-hen, its long red legs and scarlet beak glistening, scuttled in front of them, amazed at the machine, then disappeared with a squawk into a clump of niggerheads, a tough, swordshaped kind of grass twisting tightly together and growing up as high as a man’s shoulders. And through the swamp, like fountains of green, rose tall ponga tree ferns, high as telegraph poles.

But in three-and-a-half hours the bulldozer had crossed the Black Swamp. ‘Her greatest achievement,’ Bill Blair said proudly afterwards. Strange as it may seem, the crushed tree ferns and the sturdy niggerheads just held long enough to carry the bulldozer’s 23 tons.

Often the tracks sank deep in mud and slime. The men, wet through, and splattered with ooze and evil-smelling swamp water, sloshed through the muck, wedging more pongas before her. Then gripping on the pongas, now and then by good fortune biting hard on some hidden rock or slimy old log laying beneath the surface of the swamp, the bulldozer would lurch on again, to grip and pass over a niggerhead with its strong network of roots before it churned to a mass of pulp.

And so, in just three and a half hours, the swamp was mastered. Thankfully, they rested.

One man, glancing at his watch, rose to his feet with s sigh. It was his job to send the smoke signal up from the Little River. For three hours he tended the fire, tossing on armfuls of greenery and ferns and sending thick smoke climbing high above the treetops.

The aircraft appeared, circled cheerfully, and disappeared in the south. No plates had been dropped, as arranged. Something had slipped up somewhere. They would just have to make the best of it, hoping the present tracks on the machine would see them out.

However they would soon forget their disappointment in an important discovery that afternoon, Exploring ahead in the bush above the lake, they found the pass, 1000 feet up in the hills. Everyone grew much happier then.

After the Black Swamp the going was good, fairly flat; the bed of the Little River gave no trouble and on they went until Mathia’s Creek forked in the hills. Here the crew decided there was only one way to go, zigzagging, climbing and cutting a way up the hillside to the dip at the top. Slowly but surely they edged up among the trees covering the hillside. When the winch hauled a tree from the ground it sometimes left a flat bit, or a small hollow, and biting on this and part of the exposed roots, the bulldozer kept on, now leaning one way, now tilting the other sometimes nose down, often rearing high in the air.

After lunch the going grew much harder, and finally impossible. They could zigzag no longer, for here some time ago earth slipped, leaving exposed clay, wet, greasy, sticky. Any dirt bulldozed to form a track only slid infuriatingly away. It seemed equally impossible to turn the bulldozer back. Above looked even worse. Over their heads, naked rock appeared before them, like small cliffs.

They were trapped. They talked it over. They decided only one thing could be done the next day. That was to winch the bulldozer up the cliff, backwards. Twenty-three tons hanging from a steel thread, one-and-one-eighth inches thick.

Each evening, in one way or another, the Haast River was a little nearer. With great difficulty next morning they managed to turn the bulldozer half round, there on the treacherous hillside, and run lengths of steel rope from the winch at the back.

For 70 years the 23-ton machine would have to haul herself backwards up the cliff. But so far they’d climbed 600 feet. Only 400 more remained to the welcome dip in the hills. With care and intelligence and skill, the highest part of the great journey would be reached. But these stubborn last 400 feet, to the dip in the hills, would take three days.

For a long time no trees strong enough could be found to take the end of the steel rope. Time after time they fastened the steel rope firmly about a likely-looking tree, the winch rumbled to life, the drum turned, the rope tightened – tightened – the bulldozer began to move slightly and then – crack! Roots yielded, then broke, as though a dentist were in fine fettle, and down crashed the sturdy tree.

Eventually they would find a tree strong enough to take the strain of the machine, but then the steel rope would break. More time was lost making repairs. Even though she sometimes seemed to be standing on end, the bulldozer would remain firm on her tracks. Often Ray had to thrust down the 13-foot blade on the bulldozer, to dig in, to hold her, to act as a powerful brake, to stop her from slipping suddenly back.

They mended the rope, or ran out a fresh one.

On one of the steepest patches, where rock showed smooth and stubborn and it seemed nothing could hold the bulldozer, they held their breath, but the straining rope did not break.

They felt their hearts in their mouths many a time.

In parts no footholds at all appeared. When at long last they got the bulldozer safely up those frightening final 70 yards to the top of the cliff, they had to winch some more, to find a parking place flat enough to turn the bulldozer round again until her blade faced the forest in front.

‘I wonder,’ said Ray suddenly,’ how many yards start we and the dozer could have given Hillary to the top of Everest?’

They began to walk down again, by the way they had come, to fill the billy from Mathia’s Creek. They soon found it impossible to climb down some parts where the bulldozer had hauled herself up. They had to go round these bits. Clearly, it would quite impossible for even the sure-footed deer to climb up that 70 yards where the bulldozer had been.

‘Anyhow,’ said Ted, ‘you bet we’ll never meet anything quite so difficult as this, again.’

From the night a morepork called questioningly.

For two solid hours, as if exhausted by cliff climbing, the motor refused to start next day – the thirteenth day out, they suddenly remembered, glad that this, was not the day the cliff had to be tackled. But then they made excellent progress, heading inland along the still very steep side of the ridge, and camped within three hours’ travelling time of the top.

All the while one man went ahead, cutting down trees to help the bulldozer and the sledge along and to save the driver being swiped by sudden branches, and to conserve as much fuel as possible. For now they were growing rather anxious about the fuel. Bulldozing and zigzagging up the hillside, and then the struggle on the steep cliff-face, had eaten deeply into their reserve supplies of diesel on the sledge.

By lunchtime on the fourteenth day, very pleased, they reached the highest point of their journey, and from here, looking through one small gap in the trees, over the hills and valleys deep in forest, over rivers and streams, they could see at last, far away in the distance, the Haast River on the edge of Jackson Bay – 15 miles as the jet flies.

They loved that sight. Their trail lay mainly downhill now, most of the way through the forest, and surely the worst, as behind them, once and for all.

The worst was about to begin.

The yellow bulldozer was resting safely in the dip on the top of the ridge. Now they must find the best way down to the sea. From the top of the ridge, spurs, hidden in bush, ran off in all directions as our map shows, and the spurs themselves ,were not flat and open, but rose and fell sharply too. The three New Zealanders stood there bewildered. Only one of these spurs (and there were so many to choose from) would take them down to Bullock Creek, and to the seashore. Which was it?

They had two small clues, not very helpful. They knew that the correct spur, the one along which they could travel, was called Robinson’s Spur. They had heard that somewhere on this spur, years ago, a surveyor working in the bush had driven a small iron pipe into the ground, to mark a spot for his instruments.

Leaving the bulldozer, the three companions set off tramping through the bush to try and find this one important spur. For the rest of the day they walked backwards and forwards, now passing waterfalls in rough creek beds, now clambering up valleys onto yet more ridges which seemed only to lead to rougher and more impossible country.

Slowly the shadows lengthened in the forest. Far up in the purple hillsides an early morepork began calling. The men decided to return to the bulldozer, spend the night there, and continue their exploring with the dawn. Weary with all this tramping, they sat down for a badly needed spell.

Ray Smith flopped down like a rag doll, then sprang to his feet as if he’d landed on nettles. An amazed look spread over his face.

‘What’s up?’ asked Ted.

‘Hasn’t – hasn’t this spur got an iron pipe on it somewhere?’ asked Ray.

‘That’s right,’ puffed Ted. ‘So what?’

‘Well!’ said Ray. ‘Just come here. I sat on it.’

Thinking it was a poor sort of joke, his two pals looked. Sure enough, there was the pipe, just poking out of the earth, and hidden in ferns and moss!

Thanks to Ray, they had found Robinson’s Spur!

Now, looking carefully around from time to time, they could see and remember clearly which way to guide their machine to the sea.

In high spirits Ray and Ted went back to the dozer. Maurie set off to the Haast River by Jackson Bay to gather more food. He took his slasher with him. His weariness forgotten in the excitement of the discovery, he strode off confidently down Robinson’s Spur. But – and this is how many a New Zealander has lost his life in the bush – he became too sure of himself. Soon, with a sudden icy feeling of dismay, he knew one thing: he was lost – bushed – with no idea of where he stood or where he was going. And night was coming on fast.

Robinson’s Spur (like many a spur which has bewildered a tired tramper) had split in two near Bullock Creek. Maurie, over confident, had taken the right-hand spur instead of the one to his left, and now he found himself in the roughest country of all, not knowing where he was going, with bluffs rising up all around him. For two hours he staggered on and up these bluffs, sometimes hauling himself forward with flax bushes. At last, bruised, scratched and very much out of breath, he reached the coast in the dark (how comforting the waves of the old Tasman Sea sounded!); he knew where he was at last, and with a half-sigh, half-sob of relief, he struck off to the Maori River.

Clouds hurried over a watery moon. One by one the stars were hidden from view. Maurie thought to himself, ‘Crook weather coming up maybe?’ and his anxiety grew for his two comrades and the Caterpillar in the hills.

He had taken no food with him – he had hoped to reach the Haast River that night, and besides he knew that food was low at the bulldozer. Bone-weary with all the scrambling and scraping over the bluff, Maurie saw, to his delight, an old tumbledown hut loom up in a little clearing ahead.

‘I’ll spend the night here,’ he told himself thankfully.

In the hut, thick with cobwebs and smelling of bush rats, he struck matches and hunted about for a light. Sure enough, groping away among the dust and cobwebs, inside a biscuit tin which had been shut tight against the patrolling rats, he found four inches of an old yellow candle and – even more precious – a couple of ounces of old cheese, rather green with age and hard as stone, and a slice of even harder cheese rind.

Maurie lit the candle, ate the cheese ‘and very nearly the candle too’, shook up a pile of dead dusty bracken in a corner of the hut, and, pulling the collar of his jacket close about his ears, blew out the candle and at once fell asleep.

The sound came suddenly – a loud scrapping, a heavy bump, a chattering fierce kind of mad laughter – then the noise of heavy breathing, just as if someone was gasping and fighting for breath.

Eyes still heavy, his mind dazed with sleep, Maurie clumsily lit the candle.

The terrible breathing began again.

Maurie laughed. He threw down his slasher. He strode outside the hut, hands on hips. Down from the tin roof scrambled a frightened possum, the cause of all the-trouble, and looking like an enormous, hunched-up rat, fled apologetically into the bush.

Maurie closed the door. Suddenly he felt very tired again: the aches from the bruises and small cuts returned. He shook up the bracken, stood over his rough bed, and was about to blow out the candle when he paused, stock-still, listening sharply

The candle flickered, the light grew dim. Footsteps, very faint were approaching the hut.

The candle spluttered, then burned brightly again.

The footsteps grew nearer, then stopped.

What now? Maurie’s throat felt rough and dry. His slasher lay just out of reach, half hidden between the bracken and the wall of the hut.

The old wooden latch on the door clicked up, the door, creaking, slowly opened, and there in the doorway stood a stranger, a tall dark man with a long beard. His eyes seemed large and bright in the candlelight, and his lips, surrounded by thick whiskers, looked red and wet.

‘Hullo,’ said the stranger. ‘How do, I’m Mr Nobody.’

‘Glad to see you,’ said Maurie faintly, thinking: odd people in this weird neck of the woods. He’d heard of a man who called himself merely ‘Mr X.’ Maybe this was his brother?

Mr Nobody set briskly to work. He unstrapped his pack, lit a fire in the chimney, produced a billy blackened and caked by many fires, filled it from a pool outside, and set it to boil. He seemed a goodhearted, cheerful man, willing to chat in a vague sort of way, and Maurie didn’t worry at all (well, not very much) about his curious name. In isolated places like this, a man’s name is his own business. And why not?

Mr Nobody, Maurie gathered, might have been a sailor once. Lately he seemed to have been prospecting for gold or even little rubies in the hills and streams round about, and now he was turning over in his mind (perhaps!) an idea of making maybe for Jackson Bay. He’d think about picking up a job with a farmer there for a while, or on the other hand possibly work on the new road for a few weeks. That should be able to give him enough money for a store of more provisions and tucker, and, taking his secret with him, he’d have the chance of returning to his lonely life in the hills and the bush again, the restless, roving life of the gold prospector – if he was a prospector?

Bending before the cheerful fire Mr Nobody prepared a steaming billy of black tea. The two shared the tea, drinking it, burn by turn, out of the billy lid.

‘By Jove!’ said Mr Nobody, rummaging cheerfully in his pack and making a clear remark for once. ‘I’m sorry mate, the butter and sugar have got all mixed up together’. He produced a handful of hard biscuits and smeared the butter and sugar over them generously with a wicked-looking sheath knife he carried on his belt.

The biscuits were delicious on top of the scalding hot tea, especially after that wretched piece of cheese. Maurie thanked him happily, to be told: ‘Ah, you’d do the same for me!’

Taking a threadbare grey blanket out of his pack, Mr Nobody, murmured, ‘Might sleep for a bit eh? Could do worse.’ He rolled himself up neatly and quite happily on the floor while Maurie returned to his bracken, blew out the candle and thoughtfully returned it to the rat-proof tin. Shadows danced from the flickering fire. A snore came from the figure huddled in the blanket.

Mr Nobody seemed a little restless in his sleep. He began to toss and mutter. A few words came very slowly and hard to hear. Maurie raised his head slightly. Mr Nobody was murmuring, ‘...police ... identity papers ... please.’ A loud snore. A faint. chuckle. The sleepy voice again.

‘Fancy...”dent” papers! Fancy a man...’

The voice trailed away. The snores took over.

Maurie had £5 with him to buy food.

He tucked the note deeper into a pocket. Of course everything was quite all right. But nevertheless he kept his little slasher and handy beside him all through the rest of that curious night.

At daybreak, through a light drizzle which worried him more than the bites of the sandflies, Maurie set off for Haast River. He hoped the rain would stop, for the rivers and creeks rose quickly like magic in this part of the country. ‘The New Zealand death’ he knew was the old name for drowning in a river.

As he closed the door of the hut behind him, Mr Nobody called out sleepily: ‘Let them know I’m on the way to Jackson Bay.’ (To be sure, next time Mr Nobody was seen he was well away in the opposite direction passing rather quickly through Hokitika.)

Maurie collected provisions – tinned fruit (a bad mistake) and other tinned food and potatoes. The hospitable Cron family (two plucky sisters running a cattle farm by themselves) gave him a spanking hot dinner. Crossing back over the Maori River (the Haast River was running waist-high), Maurie got lost again, He blazed, a trail with his slasher, cutting large chips of bark from the tree trunks as he walked along. Soon he found he had walked in a complete circle. (Most people lost in the bush do this: some say that one leg, a little stronger than the other, slowly but surely leads them round in a circle.) He discovered to his dismay he’d returned to the marks he had first cut in the tree trunks. An hour’s hard walking had got him exactly nowhere.

‘Steady now,’ he told himself.

He followed a creek, already rather muddy and beginning to rise, up and over rising ground until he realised he was far too high in the bush. He came part of the way down again and listened. Still not even the echo of a sound from the tractor’s motor. He clambered onto a rise. From here he shouted again and again.

At last, far below and far away over to his right, he heard a faint voice answering: ‘Hul-oooo.’

And oh, the relief!

By calling backwards and forwards over an hour Maurie joined his comrades in the dusk. They had been overhauling the tractor motor: some trouble had cropped up. That’s why he hadn’t heard them.

Night came, beautiful with stars. Far out in the darkness, in the waters of the Tasman Sea, they watched the twinkling specks of the lights of the trawler fleet.

How beautiful – the stars and the great Southern Cross, the lights of the sea and the far fishermen, the glowing campfire, the clean mountain air and the rich earthy smell of the silent bush. The three men, close in their comradeship, didn’t speak much, their thoughts drifting sleepily. Long contented silences were broken only with the scraping of a match and the sudden lighting up of a face puffing intently at a freshly filled pipe. Now and then a sprawling figure would reach lazily for another stick, tossing it onto the fire and faces would lift slowly in the firelight, eyes following the trail of fresh sparks high into the dim shapes of silent boughs and the black ceiling of the night.

So they missed the weather forecast, but Ted Storey turned on his radio set in time to hear ‘Royal Progress’. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were now being welcomed in the South Island, on the other side of the great mountains looming behind them. And then the voice of the Queen herself, saying how happy she felt to be among her people in this strong young nation rising in the Pacific...

That night, the dreaded rain came, fast and furious.

The rain fell on the upturned faces of the sleeping men, roused them to flounder about, cursing and stumbling with torches and candle, hoisting a tarpaulin for shelter, and bringing in parts of the starter motor, still in pieces, for protection.

All through the night the rain beat down mercilessly while the three men huddled together under the streaming tarpaulin. Boughs and shrubs bent under the driving weight of downpour, and towards dawn the roar of the rivers grew louder, joined by swollen streams, and fresh creeks starting up with leaping new waterfalls in the sopping bush.

Throughout the next day the rain poured down. The men had a wretched time, trying to keep dry beneath their tarpaulin, making sure the motor parts remained out of the wet, attempting to gather enough dry wood, among the mud and drenched bushes of the forest floor, to keep the sulky fire alive. Almost every piece of wood they found now was either green, or decayed and rotten. Somehow they kept the fire alight. The fuel was too precious to brisk up the fire to any extent.

The rain beat down all through the next night. It was impossible to sleep. They spent the long hours sitting up. For this was the night – the first of two nights of torment they would never forget – when the mosquitoes, always troublesome, attacked in black clouds. Millions of mosquitoes. The spindly little wretches were angry. They seemed to have a personal grudge against the intruders.

The men covered themselves with insect repellents. This was quite useless. So they tried raw disinfectant, Dettol, but even this didn’t turn the mosquitoes away. They appeared infuriated, driven mad by the rain and the freshly turned earth and dead leaves disturbed by the bulldozer’s tracks. Smarting from myriads of stings, the men flung green leaves on their dismal fire, but the smoke only maddened the mosquitoes further, making them even more determined to get at the men.

Hunting desperately, they found a few small strips of muslin packed away with cotton waste on the sledge. Wrapping the muslin about their faces, and pulling scarves tight about their necks, cramming hats down harder on their heads, they prayed that at last they had defeated the little demons.

Far from it. Whatever they did, some mosquitoes managed to burrow into the folds of the muslin and strike again, while others outside nipped at foreheads and ears which the men found very difficult to protect properly. All through that night it was just one dull roar from millions of mosquitoes. (I might have hesitated a little before believing this account, observes author Jim Henderson, if I myself had not heard clouds of mosquitoes roaring in the mangrove swamps of Momi Bay, near Lautoka, Fiji, during the war in the Pacific. I believe a hurricane followed the day after.)

In two days, after another sleepless night of torment, they got the tractor going again. Peering into the sack of provisions, Maurie thought the food didn’t seem to be lasting as long as usual this time, but he said nothing. The tractor, the rain, the flooded rivers and the mosquitoes were enough to worry about for the moment. Determined not to spend a third night in that accursed place where the mosquitoes seemed demented, they drove the bulldozer half a mile down Robinson’s Spur, camping beneath the spreading boughs of a big rata tree. That night sleep seemed a little easier.

The rain did not stop with the dawn. Now they hunted far and wide until a pile of fairly dry wood grew up beside the campfire. Down one steep slope, a young rata had fallen a year ago. This wood was a Godsend. They built up a roaring fire and did their best to dry out wringing wet clothes, blankets and sleeping bags.

Away they went after sun-up – if the sun had appeared from behind those grey depressing clouds covering the sky. This was now the fifth day since Maurie had returned from the Haast with his stores of food. They moved on painfully, for the worn tracks of the bulldozer were giving, trouble, not gripping as well as they should, labouring up slopes which would have been easy going before. The men were worn and tired too: faces swollen from mosquito bites, tired with little sleep and, with gums now beginning to ache, aware of a growing hunger. Another danger was threatening; the food was running out. Tinned fruit can’t be relied upon to satisfy real hunger when energy is being used up.

One by one, faster and faster it seemed as their worries increased this week, the tins had been opened, emptied, and thrown away. The last tin of beef was divided up; only two small tins of South African apricots lay at the bottom of the sack alongside four and a half wet packets of jelly crystals – of all things!

Oh for lamb chops.. hot scones dripping with melting butter... apple pie (‘Yes thanks, another helping please. Pass the cream...’) ...a steak at the Green Parrot (‘Heap on the onions, don’t spare the onions, Tony!’) ... oh to think of the oven door opening in the snug old kitchen at home, and the sight of a big roast sizzling, done to a turn, circled with roast potatoes and parsnips, all deep in boiling, bubbling, rich brown fat...

Except for the venison, for the previous fortnight they had been living mostly on tinned meat. Like soldiers they had wearied of bully beef, and also of the sheep’s tongues. That was why Maurie had returned with much less meat and a good deal more tinned fruit.

Everyone had expected that by now the expedition would be down past Bullock Creek and safely onto the seashore. But how high had Bullock Creek risen, with all this rain? Nobody needed reminding that the Maori and Haast Rivers were impassable, like the Blue and Little Rivers behind them. They were cut off, trapped between the rivers, just as the doleful old settlers had rather gleefully feared.   

Perhaps escape lay in the heights above, for higher up in the mountains, surely rivers and flooded watercourses narrowed enough to let a man past? This would mean circling for miles up into the hills before daring to attempt a crossing. Probably even then another river, or swollen side-stream would block the path again. The place had become a rushing network of trouble. And as the mountains grew higher and higher, the creeks, although shrinking a little, ran faster and faster. The mists, turning to thick fog over the higher country, would add to chances of losing direction and getting bushed. And even now, although no one would admit it yet, the pangs of hunger were beginning to tell.

No friendliness lies in the New Zealand bush when the rain belts down and someone is reproaching himself or herself with: ‘Now why, oh why didn’t I ...?’

Now they turned the limping bulldozer round and winched her up slopes, fastening the steel ropes to trees, drawing her level, then dragging the heavy rope further on to another sturdy trunk. They didn’t get very far.

But the rain had slackened, died away, came again fiercely – then stopped. In two days’ time, perhaps those rivers could somehow be crossed?

The next day (a packet of red jelly crystals each for breakfast) Robinson’s Spur rose in a small hill. They climbed only 70 yards the whole day, for thicker and stronger trees barred the way here, and they found they were taking longer and longer rests. Trees had to be pulled out of the way to make room for the tractor to pass. Trying to dodge some clumps of trees they found themselves in even thicker timber.

Big ratas crowned many of the ridgetops, making the going sometimes very difficult. Often the crew hadn’t enough room on the razorback edges to manoeuvre and cut the roots with the blade and bulldoze off in the usual way. So the tractor had to be turned and the winch used to pull the trees out. This was work. The sledge had to be dropped and picked up again when the way was clear.

Shackling the rope onto a giant rimu, they hauled the bulldozer to the base of the tree. Close by grew another rimu, three feet thick. They all felt sure enough room lay between the two trees to allow their machine through, The bulldozer faced the gap – she was just too big: by six inches!

Rather than clear a way with axes here – and they were weary – they winched her back down again to where she had started an hour before: the slope was too steep for the dozer to reverse down on her tracks. The weary day ended with a 10-minute storm of rain, and mud everywhere. “Lunch” (nothing was eaten) had used up most of the remaining tea and condensed coffee-and-milk. For supper they ate the last of their food: half a packet of jelly crystals apiece. The crystals were yellow this time – for a change. Now they had nothing. Hunger, sore gums, and mosquitoes kept them uneasily awake far into the night.

The three had thought about sending distress smoke-signals, but even this slender hope had to be given up. Low clouds still hung close above the treetops, and the passenger plane to Jackson Bay (if it was still on the job with clouds blanketing forest and mountain), certainly would be flying well out to sea.

Next morning, giving the rivers one more day to go down a little, they cleared a new track in front of the bulldozer. Only with great effort did they manage this small patch for their machine. ‘All we wanted to do,’ the men remember, ‘was to go to sleep. How wonderful it seemed, just to think of stopping work and snatching forty winks. You found your head growing heavier and heavier. Sometimes you’d pull yourself together to find your chin touching your chest, your head nodding. After a while you’d look half dreamily at your axe, take a swing, then put it down. All we wanted to do was sleep...’

But somehow they cleared a little path ahead, carried out the heavy rope (‘Funny how heavy the rope’s grown in the last few days,’ said Ted), fastened it securely – and at the first hard pull the rope snapped. Fixing the broken bits together took the rest of the day. That night, round the campfire, they decided come what may, no matter how high the rivers continued to run, two men had to get out next morning for food. A little comforted by this decision, they were about to turn in when Ray Smith found a few squares left from a block of chocolate in a forgotten coat pocket. A banquet!

At 6.30 next morning Ted and Maurie set off for the Haast River while Ray Smith stayed behind, sure he could last out on his own for another night until fresh food arrived. Besides, he was unwilling to desert his bulldozer now, After all, he was her driver. He felt rather, as a captain would about deserting his ship.

‘So don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right,’ Ray assured them. ‘Get back with a good feed. That’ll do me.’ He waved them a cheerful goodbye. That was the last they saw of him.

Any fit man could walk from the tractor to the Haast River in four and a half hours: it took Ted and Maurie exactly twice that time. On their way, streams which were up to Maurie’s ankles were now up to his chest. They trudged far up Ship Creek and Maori River before they dared plunge in, half swimming, half swept across. The dreary journey seemed endless.

This time Maurie had the rifle and ammunition with him. When hunger had been about to set in, they had gone off several times to try to shoot a deer. The deer, which had been thick down by Little River, were of course now nowhere to found. On the edge of the Haast River, Maurie pointed the rifle in the air. He fired three quick shots, one after the other. fast as he could – the SOS of the outbacks – which lonely settlers know and recognise.

Across the great, flooded Haast River the Cron family heard the distress signal. Those kindhearted people at once, came out in a boat and rowed us both across.’

The first thing next morning Maurie, ladened with provisions, went by boat across the Haast again and struck boldly through the forests and floods towards the tractor. Ted, in spite of his protests was kept for a longer rest.

This time Maurie carried no tinned fruit (he never would again, for the rest of his life). Instead he took rice, oatmeal, tins of meat, and on top of this great wholesome loaves of oven-fresh bread. Under one arm he carried a tin of Mrs Cron’s home-made biscuits and scones. His other hand gripped a great bundle of juicy lamb chops: a treat in store Smithy!

And, just in case this was not enough, for a special surprise he had filled one deep pocket to the brim with sweet fancy-coloured, liquorice allsorts.

‘Just the ticket for poor old Smithy,’ he kept telling himself as he went along. But every now and then he found he was popping yet another liquorice allsort into his mouth and they’d diminished alarmingly by the time he reached tractor.

This wasn’t the only alarming thing. The bulldozer was now in a different place – abandoned, a sorry sight. Brave old Smithy, alone, had kept on at his work driver, taking the tractor on until suddenly and unexpectedly it lurched down one side, bogged. The winch rope lay broken in two parts. Walking back up the track Maurie found the sledge almost upside-down, and then, alarm growing, came upon the ashes of the fire, stone dead. Not a sign of Ray anywhere.

He called again and again. Only echoes came back, an eerie sound. He circled backwards and forwards, up and down the bush.

As the sun went down (at least the weather had improved and how pleasing it was to see the sun back in the sky), he built a fire, cooked his evening meal, and rolled himself close to the embers. And all through that lonely night, worrying about Smithy, he listened in on the radio to South Africa playing New Zealand at test cricket, a relay from South Africa.

‘That’s the first cricket match – and the last – l ever want to listen to,’ Maurie still tells his friends today.

Mending the fire next morning and coaxing damp wood into flames, Maurie, growing impatient, sloshed the ashes with a tin of petrol. The flames leapt up with a roar and the tin exploded in his face.

Staggering back with half his face burned, dazed with pain and almost blinded, he spent the rest of a painful day under a blanket. He tried to forget his injuries and hide from the mosquitoes, which, seeming to sense he was ill, returned in growing numbers and showed him no mercy. Waking in the night, lonely and sorry for himself, he turned on the faithful little radio. He listened to Children’s Services from Australia, far over the Tasman Sea which washed against the bluffs below him. He felt comforted, somehow.

Maurie awoke much better the next morning. He made himself a billy of strong tea, toasted and heavily buttered some bread, grilled three chops and enjoyed a hearty breakfast. Now to find Smithy. Walking to the bulldozer, he stopped in his tracks: there stood a gaunt Smithy ‘looking mighty thin on it.’

Smithy, with the tractor bogged down, had gone off for food. Just where he’d find it he didn’t quite know, but something led him to a rough shelter where a camper had spent the night some time ago. The camper had left behind (probably he’d lost it) a tin of flour, and, starting a fire, Smithy had made some scarcely exuberant dampers. These had kept him going until this morning. He carried, the last damper with him: it was hard as a brick, and burned black.

‘I’ve got something better than that!’ said Maurie, heaving the damper away with a shudder.

‘Anything – anything at all – except jelly crystals,’ Smithy begged.

He took Smithy along to the campfire for a slap-up feed and a rest.

In the afternoon they straightened the sledge, patched up the rope, hauled the tractor out, and made everything neat and shipshape for the next day. Tucking away a piping hot supper, they slept like logs.

After lunch the two had just finished running a new rope onto the drum when out from the trees a spruce and tidy Ted appeared. At first they didn’t know him, they had grown so used to his lank hair, whiskers and thin face.

‘We’re not the only ones who’ve been in trouble,’ Ted told them. Bill Blair, the manager now down in Jackson Bay and considerably worried about his men when the rains began, had ridden from the Haast River towards the tractor with a load of 12 gallons of fuel. But, trapped between rising rivers and streams and with no extra food, he had lived for three days with little enthusiasm on sow-thistles and green fruit picked from a wild apple tree he had discovered. Weak and anxious, Bill had turned up at a settler’s place with a troublesome foot which later became poisoned and sent him to bed. He felt very much better when he heard his men had plenty of food again.

Ted brought even more food with him. The only thing running short now was food for the tractor. There were only 20 gallons left, but enough to get them further on down Robinson’s Spur. They worked the bulldozer for in hour that evening, covering half a mile, crashing through the scrub.

They made good progress for the most of the next morning until the ridge turned into a ‘razorback’ (narrow at the top and very steep on either side) for a hundred yards. The step sides made it quite impossible for the bulldozer to circle down the razorback, and the narrow footing at the edge of the ridge was choked with giant ratas, almost five feet through. The men had never seen such ratas. How were they going to tackle this fresh difficulty?

Meanwhile the last of the fuel had gone. This problem had to be tackled first. Ted had said that drums of fuel were being brought in from Haast by packhorse, through the bush, to be dumped near Ship Creek. The three went off, found the drums, and cursed them for being so heavy and awkward: they weighed 120 pounds each. They cut down a sapling, strung a drum on a long pole, and away they went, carrying their burden like coolies. Every now and then the pole or drum would catch in branches. Immediately the man in front would cry out sharply: ‘What the dickens do you think you’re playing at?’

Mopping their brows, they dropped their awkward burden at Bullock Creek, and began to climb up the ridge towards the bulldozer. The pole made things too awkward on this long steep climb. They threw away the sapling. In turn each man, watching his feet closely, staggered on and up for a short distance, red in the face and bent nearly double under the weight of the drum on his shoulders. After this, grown wise, whenever they went back for fuel, each man carried an empty drum. Into this they would pour about 60 pounds of fuel, which was much easier carrying.

After a wet night the tractor wouldn’t start. Soon bits of starter motor were strewn everywhere. Fingers crossed, they put it together again and at once the engine burst into its welcome old roar. All day it took them to work their way a hundred yards through the giant ratas blocking the ‘razorback’. They’d chop through as many roots as they could find, then put the winch onto the weakened tree. A good strong steady pull and the giant rata would shudder slightly; the pressure increased, and at last, with a tearing groan, the tree would yield and crash.

They soon found the roots of most of these trees had locked thickly among the twining roots of neighbours, one hooking in with the other. Once a few ratas had been hauled out of the way, the others fell with much less trouble. But winching, bulldozing, reversing and crawling through these large defiant trees used 12 gallons of fuel over the 100-yard stretch.

The next morning saw them almost into Bullock Creek, close to the coast, and only 13 miles to go to the Haast River.

Surely the worst must be over now? The men thought to themselves.

It was. They packed in more food and fuel, swimming over the rivers, the sturdy packhorse weighed down with their burden.

Down Bullock Creek they guided the 23-ton bulldozer down on to the stony beach and the salt spray. Choosing their time at low tide (and a mistake or breakdown here meant the bulldozer would be covered by the swift sea) they clattered round the bluffs where higher up Maurie had scrambled so painfully that night on his way to the hut and Mr Nobody.

And here they met their last challenge from – believe it or not – a pigheaded old-man sea lion! Barking defiance, the beast refused to shift, defying the first monster from the Mechanical Age to emerge onto his own rocky, but private beach. The sea lion stood fast, right in the path of the oncoming 23-ton bulldozer. Nothing the men could do would shift him. Only when the great 13-foot blade was lowered to doze him out of the way did he retreat angrily into the waves. Nature had made her final open challenge, and lost. Last of the defences – forest and hill, river and valley, swamp and mosquitoes – guarding Jackson Bay were crumbling now before the three New Zealander’s and their machines.

Onward. Past Ship Creek, wide and not so deep where it fanned out to enter the sea, the river water and the salt spray flying from the victorious tracks. On past the Maori River, gentle again now the rain had gone, but still deep enough to give them their anxious moments On to the Haast River itself, the last great stretch of water, almost half a mile wide, to cross and to master. Three days they waited at the ford for this mightiest river of them all, still in flood, to shrink into a peaceful size.

Then, on the 38th day, the greatest day, on Monday 22 February, through the Haast River ploughed the wonderful Caterpillar bulldozer, steadily on, the water still in flood rising about her Yellow sides, until the shore drew near; only a few yards more, and then clattering up the southern bank onto firm dry land, and onto the threshold of Jackson Bay.

Bill Blair, well again, stood on the southern bank to greet his men and the bulldozer – the first machine ever lo make its way through the defiant forest into Jackson Bay. ‘This was one of the best days of my life.’ said Bill later, and he wrote proudly of how his men ‘had taken in good spirit really tough living conditions throughout the trip. The long days of hard work, sleepless nights in wet sleeping bags and blankets, the unending torment of sandflies by day and mosquitoes by night, short and monotonous rations, were endured because each day in one way or another the Haast was a little nearer.’ Now they were here.

Towards him came his yellow Caterpillar, the 23-ton machine which in a few days would be roaring ahead again, proud as ever, up rooting more trees, shouldering aside the stubborn rock and earth as yard, by yard, New Zealand roadmen pushed the new road east, over the mountains, until Jackson Bay, its long isolation ended forever, joined by road the fair fields and towns of Otago.

The day after arrival, Ray said to Ted, ‘You know I had a bad dream last night.’

‘What was that?’

‘I dreamed the old man changed his mind. There was Bill Blair standing on the riverbank telling us to turn round and take the thing back to Reefton again.’

•  From Tales of the West Coast by Jim Henderson. Published in 1984. Reprinted here with the permission of Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd (www.reed.co.nz).

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