Giveaways
JUST lately, I read a news story about the reopening of the bridges over the Blue Pools near Makarora after a two-year upgrade.
I mentioned the Blue Pools in an earlier post about the highway from Wānaka to Haast, so it’s a good time to blog about them again. In this post, I’m also going to blog about the Blue Pools of the Hokitika Gorge, hundreds of kilometres to the north of Haast, and compare the two.
The Blue Pools near Makarora are gorgeous gems that never seem to be muddy no matter how much it rains.
They are not the only blue pools in New Zealand, made blue by depth and clarity of water. But they are very accessible from the highway, whereas other pools of this sort tend to involve more of a detour, if not a hike.
Here are some photos that I took before the upgrade. The old swing bridge was completely replaced, and two others upgraded.
Here’s a video I made, also pre-upgrade:
If you are a keen tramper, you can carry on from the Blue Pools to do the so-called Gillespie Pass Circuit via the Wilkin and Young Valleys.
On one of the occasions that I was in this district, that was my intention. I was to spend a week as a volunteer New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) warden at a place called Siberia Hut, which is marked with a red rectangle on the following map.
The Hokitika Gorge is 33 km southeast of Hokitika, via Kokatahi and Kōwhitirangi.
The blue pools of the Hokitika Gorge are not distinct pools like the ones near Makarora, but rather a local deepening of the Hokitika River in the gorge. The river is sometimes milky and sometimes clear.
There’s an information panel that describes how the gorge was millions of years in the making.
And a boardwalk walkway, that leads to the gorge, which has two bridges, one a swing bridge and another bridge of solid construction.
Here’s a photo of the swing bridge, with two people on it, above the gorge.
And another showing the swing bridge and its wooden planks.
The next photo shows a path down to a vantage point formed by a rock jutting into the river. Just to the right, you can see an artificial viewing platform.
Here’s a view of the vantage point, looking downstream. Hidden away in the trees on the right, you can glimpse another artificial viewing platform.
The next photo is taken looking downstream from the vantage-point.
And here is that second viewing platform, with a person looking at an all-black fantail, which is something you see occasionally in the South Island. They are very rare in the North Island.
In New Zealand, the black fantail is not a separate species but rather a dark version of the otherwise mostly brown-and-white New Zealand fantail, or pīwakawaka, in the same way that black panthers are leopards, or jaguars, of the same species as the more common spotted varieties.
Here’s a video my friend Chris made of the black fantail, flitting about on the viewing platform.
The next photo was taken a short distance downstream, showing the clarity of the water. You can see the more solidly built of the two bridges just to the right.
On the way to the Hokitika Gorge, you past through two rural villages, Kokatahi and Kōwhitirangi, (a name that used to be spelt Koiterangi). In 1941, Koiterangi, as it then was, was the site of a mass shooting by a paranoid anti-government farmer named Stan Graham, and a 12-day manhunt for him, run from the Koiterangi Settlers’ Hall.
In 2004, a monument to Graham’s victims, all of them police officers or public officials who had ventured onto Graham’s property, was erected in Kōwhitirangi, bearing memorial inscriptions and the crests of government agencies of the time who lost personnel in Graham’s one-man rebellion or were otherwise engaged in the manhunt.
Here’s a closer view.
And the plaque in the middle.
Below the quote from Pericles, there is a hole through which it is possible to look to where Graham’s house once stood (understandably vengeful locals burnt it down soon after), and a quote from a version of the Policeman’s Prayer found on the body of one of the officers Graham shot.
This sort of thing was very out of character for New Zealand at the time. Indeed, between New Year’s Day 1917 and the same day in 1970, the New Zealand Police only shot two people dead, one of them Stan Graham. Of course, that was in the days before social media algorithms.
In 1981, a film called Bad Blood was released about the incident, starring the Australian actors Jack Thompson as Graham and Carol Burns as his wife Dorothy, who is depicted as egging him on. According to Wikipedia, as of the time of writing,
Bad Blood received rave reviews in Britain and later in New Zealand. Although considered risky when released, Bad Blood is now regarded as a New Zealand film classic.
Next week, I will have an update about the walks around the Southern Alps railway town of Ōtira. If you liked this post, check out my book about the South Island! It’s available for purchase from my website, a-maverick.com.
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