Whirinaki Manaaki

barefoot trail 3

2012-02-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

Over the school holidays Te Mai Ora and his mate Patrick wanted to do possums to get some holiday money. We headed down the Okui ways and up a ridge just off the main road. Once a line of 60 traps had been set up they plucked enough possums, in four days, to get $200 each. There weren't a lot of possums there, as everywhere easily accessible has been done several times, but the ones that were caught were generally big and healthy. I weighed one at 4.3 kg. with guts still in but an empty stomach. The price per kilo of fur was also the highest its ever been at $145. Its since dropped back to $110.
At this time of year, January, there are quite a few juvenile possums about. Still clinging to their mothers back they are known as; back-riders. Often they get caught in the trap before their taxi. Whenever we found one in a trap we had the decision to make whether to let it go or not. If its leg wasn't broken or too badly damaged away it went.
When we started setting up the line we only had two pairs of usable boots between the three of us and one boot on each pair had a hole in it so water got in at the first stream crossing. To be fair to everyone we decided to go barefeet. It worked just fine.
An important part of growing up in the Whirinaki is to spend time walking the ridges and gullies and getting to know the way of the land. To look down on familiar scenes from a different view point increases your sense of place.Possum trapping provides an excuse for such wanderings.
Killing possums however is not something I now easily do.

now

2012-02-13T01:05:00.000-08:00

Back on the blog after a break from things. The seasons roll on. We are just at the end of raspberries and in the midst of the blackberry season. Soon it will be apples then grapes. In the forest kaka are nesting as per d last year, it doesn't appear to be full on (not all are nesting) and there is no indication of rimu fruit yet, although other things such as kahikatea may have some fruit in the autumn. Pipiwharauroa and koekoea (shining and long-tailed cuckoos) are due to leave if they haven't already.
I have been reading Eckhart Tolle. I recommend his books to anyone wanting to learn more about themselves and how this world works.

whats up DoC

2011-11-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

Yet another investigation into theft and corruption at the Te Urewera Area Office is covered up. No case to answer, no release of the report. A bad,sad situation that hurts the heart just thinking about.
Watch this space for developments....major announcement coming soon.
"If you tell the truth you won't have to remember anything"- Mark Twain

kefir

2011-09-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

I am in love with my kefir. Its an amazing health drink that must be somewhat addictive. Theres lots of information on the internet about it.

hard times in the forest

2011-09-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

This a a boar Mark caught in Bettys Basin last week. It was neither fat nor thin and stood for the bail without injury to dogs.

This time of year in the forest, late winter/early spring is a hard time for all animals. The forest food cupboard of flowers, fruits and tubers is exhausted and waiting for the warmth.

Mark has been trapping possums in an area that hasn't been trapped for years. The possums are very skinny. A while back he shot a deer on his trapline but couldn't find it. Until he smelt it the other day. Its back end had been partially eaten and next to it were two very skinny, dead possums. His theory is that the possums were that hungry they had resorted to feeding on the deer.

In areas where possums aren't controlled, over time, they take out all the palatable plants and eventually arrive at some kind of balance where they can survive in a forest with a lesser variety of plant species. Of course bird and insect life too is dimished. Possums compete with such birds as kereru for fruit.

Kaka too are finding it hard right now. There are quite a few of them in the Pines getting seeds out of the pine cones. Kereru are on the' leaf" including kowhai and broome, which both have the high nitrogen content these birds need. According to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council some 6 bio-control agents have been released to attack broome. Crazy stuff. What are kereru gonna do if these agents of broome doome actually work?

C'mon spring.

minginui sawdust

2011-09-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

We are sawdust millionares in Minginui. Over sixty years of saw-milling has left piles of the stuff scattered around the valley. Most sawdust heaps are now hidden, covered in blackberry and forgotten. New technology is finding new uses for sawdust so potentially one day it could be the focus of a small industry or just left to be occasionally mined by local gardeners. Its a great source of carbon.
When you think about it these sawdust heaps represent something like 2 or 3% of every tree that was ever cut down and milled.
Taonga.

pine pollen

2011-09-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

The haze in this photo is caused by pinus radiata pine pollen. It seems to be a bit later than normal this year. It seems that somehow the trees release the pollen on windy afternoons. Maybe its just a matter of windspeed. Another interesting aspect of it is that different pine species release pollen at different times so if you have a multi-species pine forest you would expect to have a much more abundant invertebrate life.

GE pines

2011-06-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

I was disappointed to read in a recent Forest and Bird magazine that ERMA had approved continuing research on GE pines at SCION in Rotorua. There has been an ongoing battle to try and have this stopped, but it just won't go away. As usual greed takes top shelf. We are all guilty of such blindness.
While I don't pretend to under stand all the GE stuff, messing around with the building blocks of life for financial gain must have unforseen consequences.
What I do know of this project is that it is designed to produce an asexual pine tree. No cones, no pollen. Its a bit like animal sterilisation, all the organisms energy is put into growth instead of being drawn off into reproduction. This results in bigger trees for your buck.
For the Whirinaki the replacement of normal trees with these muscle woods would be a disaster.
Every spring the pine forest gives its gift of pollen. I think I have mentioned this before. Masses of high nutrient pollen are dispersed by the west wind right across the Whirinaki and Te Urewera. It shows up in Lake Waikaremoana.
What benefit this is to invertebrates and other microbial beasties is unmeasured. Who cares?

Another part of the equation is the pine seeds themselves. Male kaka for instance spend quite sometime in pine compartments extracting seed from the pine cones. My theory is that one of the reasons kaka are still abundant in the Whirinaki is because of the availability of kai from the pine forest when other food is short.
One male kaka, that we monitored', fed its nesting female almost exclusively on pine seed. Flying backwards and forwards from the native to the pine.
So neuter the pine tree and it has all sorts of implications for other life in the forest.
Of course "other life" doesn't get a say in the matter it just gets dished out with another load of trollope from master mankind, (something of a contradiction in terms; man kind)
Everything is connected on all sorts of levels.
So don't mess with the connections. Unplug this gene, add this one and theres a risk everything will collapse.
SAY NO to GE.
DO the scientists that mess with it ,actually like Pinus radiata ,or is it just another clever experiment on a dumb plant? It happens to be one of my favourite trees. AS it is.
later...
Thinking more about this last night...what about people.. if science could produce de-sexed humans think of the increased production you would get. Such a person could be totally work-focused with no distractions.
Ahh the productivity...
Its a fairly well trodden science fiction trail I guess, but hey we do it to everything else And you say ; No not people, then where exactly do you draw the line?

Big snow

2011-06-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

Recently I spent a couple of relaxing days at the Mangamate kiwi hut. Almost 5 years ago to the day since i experienced the BIG snow.
This photo was taken two days after.
On the snow-day, after checking kiwi transmitter signals, I arrived at the hut on evening. Things had progressed through the afternoon from lovely sunshine to overcast and just after dark it began to snow. Quiet, soft, fluffy snow. That makes a change I thought.
Well it didn't stop.
Not being a connoisseur of snow I didn't realise it was the heavy-wet variety.
About midnight trees started cracking and crashing. Branches and then whole trees were breaking under the un-accustomed weight.

5 or 600 year old rimu bought down by snow

Luckily the hut site was away from overhanging vegetation. That thought didn't help the sleep any though. The noise was loud and continuous.
I awoke to a very still, all white, day.
Thoughts of checking kiwi abandoned, it was survival mode.
I packed up to walk out, putting on all the clothes I had.
It took an hour, where it normally took 15 minutes, to walk to a low saddle. The view was not encouraging, ridge after ridge of smashed,snow covered, forest.
I was saturated and exhausted from falling into snowdrifts and grovelling through piles of jumbled vegetation.
The wind had started. A snake wind i called it. Not steady in any direction but winding almost tornado like through the trees. Howling. Sending up plumes of snow and releasing more branches to fall. Louder cracks and thumps signified trees.
I struggled back to the hut.
Soaked and thankful for the gas heater. Without it things would have been grim.
I called up on the radio, batteries were low and messages limited.
I got the word, a helicopter was coming, but couldn't get back to say; don't send it ,the wind is too strong for landing.
Forty minutes later the familiar sound and then it appeared, going sideways more than forward.
No chance. Gone again.
I was Ok really.
Took me all day to dry my clothes, another day for the wind to settle and the welcome helicopter returned.
Wheww.. Thank you Silver(the helicopter pilot).

This snowfall, which covered the central North Island was pretty much unreported because of the lack of people where it fell.
Huge areas of forest were flattened. Trees which had stood for hundreds of years, such as the rimu above, were taken out.
Today the forest is still in recovery . The branches and trees that fell are rotting away and the light gaps created by their loss are filling with new growth.
Far as I know, in this corner of Te Urewera, only myself and Owen Luckman( in Pukareao) were actually out in the bush.
Though of course people at Minginui,Ruatahuna and the Lake etc. experienced it
Another example perhaps of things to come with climate change. An extreme event.
This winter by comparison is wet and warm, with just one significant frost so far. There have been half a dozen flood events this year.
I still keep a wary eye for snow.

the road to nowhere Okahu pt 2

2011-06-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

This is the Okahu valley. I wrote this a while back, just got round to putting it up.
The road up the valley was built in the 1960's to open the valley for logging. The dense podocarp forest of the lower valley was removed and then tracks were made up the ridges to extract logs from the more inaccessable places.
A tributary stream on the true left of this valley is called the Whanau a Mihi. ( The family of Mihi). Long lost Land Court Records from the 1903 land court hearings in Murupara shed some light on this unusual name.
The Mihi referred to is Mihi te Kapua.( which could be translated as; "greeting to the cloud"). This lady, who lived in the Urewera in the early 1800s, is a legendary song composer whose beautiful, but often mournful, waiata still resonate around the ngahere, being often sung at tangi and other occasions. Their sometimes cryptic meanings subject to various interpretations. Taku rakau- "my walking stick" is probably her most well known.
It is recorded in the Land Court minutes, from 1903, that this stream was the traditional bird hunting ground of her family, at a certain time of the year.
Today many Tuhoe whakapapa to Mihi te Kapua. She lived in various places around the rohe, but belonged primarily to Ngati Manunui at Ruatahuna. Her husband was Parahaki, so one source informs me.
Earlier this year, descendants of this Kuia ( from Ngati Manunui and Ngati Tawhaki) re-occupied the Okahu valley to protest about the spreading of 1080 on their traditional hunting lands- not that they hunt birds so much anymore- pigs, deer and possums now provide income and sustenance.
Poisoning the forest/your food cupboard is seen as an anathema.
Something you would never do, for any reason.

I have still yet to have a korero with anyone from this brave and dedicated group. They stuck at their protest for four months or so. 24/7 at least two people kept a vigil at all times and maintained a block on the road to public access. They stood and held their place against various attempts by officialdom to move them on. Word of their progress rattled around the bush telegraph lines.
" New Zealand for New Zealanders!!" was one comment flung their way.
Ngati Whare representations ( they have been awarded "mana whenua" over the Whirinaki through the Treaty settlement process) were easily repelled with a short recitation of whakapapa. ( Everyones related anyway).
Surprisingly, most members of the public, that were stopped from accessing the Whirinaki Forest Park, were supportive of their stance and they managed to collect a huge number of signatures for their petition. Many tourists were disappointed that DoC hadn't actually informed them that the access was blocked off when they picked up hunting permits etc. Some had travelled long distances for nothing.
People passing by, especially locals, supported their stance by dropping off supplies and giving encouragement.
When I heard an elderly, and ill, kuia from the "Hills", who I admire and respect, was dropping off kai each time she went backwards and forwards to Rotorua hospital, I realised how deep the support actually was, right across the community of Ruatahuna and Te Urewera.

Unfortunately this very strategic and quite brilliant occupation couldn't last. The wheels of bureaucracy grind exceedingly slow, most of the time, but they do grind. As I understand it, from bush telegraph korero, once land tenure had been properly sorted it seemed they were sitting on road reserve. That was the Councils jurisdiction not DoC. Eventually this authority got its A into G and along with a contingent of police moved in and broke up proceedings.

One reason I was glad of this protest is that it gave the Okahu valley a break. It gets a bit of abuse from everyone, including from those vested with its care, it deserves more protection and respect. Horses and cattle graze freely up and down its length and well up into the bush on either side. There used to be a cattle stop but for some reason it was removed. The animals belong to locals but they don't really like the stock grazing there. A couple of years back a spotlighter shot several horses and they often lose cows to the gun, leaving orphaned calves.
Spotlighters hammer the valley. Some nights there is a procession of vehicles, inviting an incident such as happened in Turangi the other day.
Vehicle accidents are quite common as its a narrow road and people speed along.
Doc regularly sprays the road side growth with a powerful herbcide which has actually increased the grass area, for the cattle and horses, and affected native regeneration.
Dogs are free to roam without permits or control, yet it has a reasonable number of kiwi still.
Kiwi can be heard calling from the road end campsite.

The road to nowhere.

It occured to me a while back that I couldn't recall a public protest that was unsuccessful. Can you? All protests result in change. When people feel strongly enough to set aside time and make a stand, something happens. The result may not always be exactly what the protestors wanted but peoples viewpoints do shift.
This protest strengthened resolve and drew all sorts of people around it.
Pai rawa atu tera bros.
.

okahu

2011-06-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

My favourite photo of the Okahu valley. In the background is Whakaipu, who presides over it all. Its a place that deserves more respect than it gets.
Last year Ngati Tawhaki from Papueru closed it off with an anti-1080 protest. That was a very courageous action that shows the depth of feeling that exists among the tangata whenua of Te Urewera on the matter of poisoning the land.
The 1080 battle is not over yet it seems, with a recent review recommending is use be continued and rumours abound of more drops planned for the fringes of the Whirinaki.
With the price of possum fur currently $135/kg the question has to be asked. Why?

At the moment the Okahu is being worked by a contractor who has a crew of six men trapping possums. They are employed by the Animal Health Board and getting somewhere between $70 and $100/hectare. When we did it last, as DoC contractors, just over two years ago, we got $40/ha.

re-cycling

2011-06-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

Recycling Minginui-style. Along with the dumping of rubbish in the forest some people have taken up waste minimisation by burning. This is tyres being burnt on a frosty morning last week. Burning plastics in fireplaces has also increased.
When people have been used to having an open dump for so long it takes a while for change. I find it hard to believe that people aren't aware of the issues around burning oil-based products.

mill site

2011-06-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

Remediation of the old mill site at Minginui has almost been completed. Large areas of the top soil have been removed and taken to the old Minginui dump. Tests showed up high levels of CCA ( copper, chrome and arsenic) in the soil especially where raditata pine timber treatment occurred in the last years of the mill.
The mill roof was also asbestos so there was a lot of that left lying around. Not good things to have near to where people live.
Thankfully through the Treaty settlement process it was highlighted as a priority action and managed to jump up the queue of the numerous toxic sites that need to be cleaned up.
Ideally it should have been dealt with on site by burying or mycco-remediation( using special fungi to break the bonds in CCA).
The people of Minginui had no input into the decision-making nor had anything to do with the contract work. More opportunities lost.
The Trust accepted the Regional Councils best solution which was to put it in the old dump site and cap it with clay so that water percolation is minimised.
Now the decision needs to be made; what to do with the site. The whole area is around 5 , mostly flat, hectares but two of that is taken up in sawdust . ( There-in lies other possibilities).

If we get the lease back in time the people of Minginui will get to make that decision. Thats as it should be. If we don't get it back and nothing is done, it will probably revert back to its blackberry state.

Tony Beveridge Reserve

2011-06-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

The cut-over in the foreground used to be like the bush in the back.
During the logging controversy days, as a scientist at FRI, Tony Beveridge was responsible for some trial plots in that patch of bush.
This study looked at the effects of animal browse on podocarp regeneration. Netting fences were put around groups of seedlings to exclude pigs, deer and possums. As the research was being done the forest around it was being logged.
When the trial was all but over the local logging manager contacted Tony and said; "now that you've finished we can clear that land for pines." 'Oh no" said Tony "the trial is ongoing". With those few words he saved around 50 hectares of forest.
The last time I looked there was still some remains of netting enclosures there.

For years this was known as the Plot Road bush, I reckon it should be the Tony Beveridge Reserve. In my book it is anyway. At 85 Tony still has a passionate interest in the Whirinaki and podocarps.

He also argued against his boss of the time, and other Forest Service big wigs, over the logging of the Totara forest up in the Mangawiri basin. This was probably the largest and most dense totara stand in the country. In the sixties and early 70's it looked like they were dying. Log it ! was the cry. The theory being it was sufferimg from some unknown disease or insect. Mortality was imminent.
Tony always reckoned it was possums, though very little time was allowed for proper research .One study was conducted on possum browse and the results showed totara to be third on the preferred possum diet list. This wasn't accepted as sufficient proof.
Down went the trees.
Possum numbers peaked in the 60's and 70's.
Today many of the totara trees that were left, have survived.

I think it still rankles Tony that he couldn't stop the clearance.
Apparently prior to the logging it was an amazing piece of forest to walk through.

Totara die-back occured right through-out the Whirinaki at this time.

poss n poss

2011-06-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

This is Colin with his pig ,Colin. Colin.pg got to be about 3 or 400lbs in weight. He used to ride around in a van with poss till he got a bit too big and stroppy.

osho

2011-06-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

This is Hayso. A guru of the Urewera. He takes long journeys from one side to the other. . Earlier this year he took six weeks to go from Kanohirua-Maungapohatu-Te Ranga-a- kapua and out the Waioeka at Wairata. When I last saw him he was heading to India via the Whirinaki.

I am always glad to meet him as he has korero on other places.

Half a day can easily disappear in brews and good conversation.

bikes and tracks

2011-05-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Its come to my attention that an odd piece of legislation is going through, or has just gone through Parliament . It concerns the use of "vehicles"on tracks in the Whirinaki.
The explanatory notes associated with it refer mostly to mountain bikes, which makes me think this is old legislation drawn up before mountain bikes were flavour of the month..

In the same notes it states that locals and iwi have been consulted and are generally supportive. It has been many years since anyone in Minginui has been consulted by anyone, "high-up" in DoC ,about anything.

As an example of how this community interacts with the DoC theres the Mangamate access track. :
The Mangamate 4 wheel drive track was made in the early 1970's by the Forest Service. For more than 30 years it provided hunting access for locals. Thousands of possum skins, 100's of deer and pigs have been transported out of the Mangamate via this well- formed track.
It used to be open access to everyone but in recent years a land leassee, across whose land the track goes, has prevented anyone but locals going through. Use was low and mostly bikes and horses.
Along comes a mountain bike track and hello a hole is dug and the road is closed. No consultation there. Mountian bikers have preference over the livelihood of locals it seems.
A group of locals fills in the hole. Back in business." We'll fix you "; says DoC , to themselves, and at a cost of a round $4,000, a digger spends two days digging 22 deep holes.
I guess you could call that dirt diplomacy or is it just sheer bloody-mindedness? We don't know.

So whether this legislation is a delayed embarrassment aimed at mountain bikers(in which case its now illegal for them to ride on the tracks DoC made for them) or its target is local people on trail bikes and quads, its neither here nor there.
Without any expectations made on our goodwill nor any requirement for co-operation we can only assume we continue to do as we like.
Seig to it all.
And;" if you don't know what its like to take a Honda some place- its a great shame..". aahhah...(old TV add for Honda).

poss

2011-05-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

Poss died last Thursday the 12th of May 2011. For the last 12 years or so Poss lived in vans and camps in the Forest around Minginui. He had a pretty much care-free life that revolved around his animals, riding bikes, reading, smoking and drinking.
Throughout his 2 year struggle with cancer he was incredibly brave, his humility and strength of character shone through the difficulties.
He is missed by his mates and whanau.

For his funeral Poss didn't want a fuss, didn't want to be embalmed and didn't want to leave the valley.
He had a tangi Minginui-style which was amazing to experience.
His first night was at our house, then he moved up the road to Deans, and for the final night he went to the Marae for burial next to his Mum in the urupa, the following day.
His tangi blurred the line between maori/pakeha funeral rites and made something unique.

Basil Iraia and Lena Brew guided us through Ngati Whare tikanga and whenever something needed to be done some one was there to do it. It was awesome to see Minginui rangatahi doing the mahi at the Marae.
More than 100 people attended his burial service and hakari afterwards.

A little bit of something untamed and free has gone from the Whirinaki.
Haere Poss haere haere.

Poss funded his free life through the dole. This ment putting up with occasional visits to the WINZ office. On one such visit,after they had cut his dole once again, he was told if he didn't have a proper address he wasn't elligible for state funding. It looked like they had finally got him on a technicality. Then a voice from the listening queue pipped up: "hes staying with me!" "Since when? " asks WINZ. "From today" says Ata Tamaki a fellow Minginuian.
They never got him again after that. It actually takes its own set of skills to remain unemployed for long periods of time.
Money and material possessions never really concerned Poss. A lesson for us all. He had what he had and it was enough to get by.

Consequently his funeral had to be low budget.
The biggest expense was; $750 for a coffin, lack of embalming fluids created no issues. In fact through this exercise we learned what a rip-off conventional funerals are. Apparently funeral parlors routinely charge $500 for doing the paperwork associated with a death. If you do it yourself and want a death certificate its $26 .If you don't want a certificate its free.

Yet another bit of the fabric of a society that is pricing itself off the planet, is exposed.

tuhoe ahurei

2011-04-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

On a wet Good Friday we travelled to Ruatoki to the Tuhoe Ahurei. They are awesome bi-annual events that pass the wider NZ community by.
This is the Ngati Whare ropu performing. It was a great feeling to watch the youth of the Whirinaki valley performing as well as they did. There were some trully ihi/wehi moments.
Fantastic,
Its great also to support a Tuhoe event.As an iwi they have some big issues to deal with at present and they continue to stand by their kaupapa and not back down to what can be stifling,and often over-whelming ,Government manipulation.

the art of survival

2011-04-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

Another year passes BYE..
The April stag "roar" was a relatively quiet affair this year. In the Whirinaki at least. Maybe it was the mild weather, the moon phase or that the hinds weren't cycling on time..who knows and thats one of the great mysteries. Please let it not be figured out.
On a rare frosty morning earlier this week we tip-toed into this stags territory, with a little enticement from us, he came rushing in to do battle. Despite what caution there may have been in the wind he ran a noisy 400 metres to step from cover 15 metres from where I stood and an even closer distance from Mana, lying behind a log, rifle ready.
Pumped- up with testosterone the stag seemed oblivious to our presence. Seconds passed as minutes. I willed it to run or gun to fire, I had switched from protagonist to impartial observer.
Father, son, brother deer, something had to give.
BOOM.
A point-blank, neck-shot dropped it where it stood.
I muttered something about just bringing a video camera and leaving the gun at home next time.
Then whispered a karakia of thanks to forest and animal.
Always..... the attitude of gratitude.
The rest is kai,cold meat,a photograph and another set of antlers to tie on the fence.

I wanted to write more about the; Art of Survival which is a term coined by Chinese environmentalist, Kongjian Yu, for the way we should be living in this world. Looked up his website : turenscape.com. Its full of marvellous examples of kaitiakitanga in action. Brilliant.
I will have to think some more about it.
Everything is everything.
All things are connected.

pouakani

2011-03-31T12:55:00.000-07:00

This totara is just off the road over western Taupo way. It is one of the trees Stephen King sat up when protesting about the logging in the 70's. It is estimated to be around 1800 years old. It contains 77 cubic metres/tonnes? of timber.
Once when I visited it, it was full of birds eating the fruit. That told me it was a female tree. ( All podocarps have separate male and female trees).
In te Ao Maori, it was said that male totara had one kind of bark(long and shaggy) and female trees had softer bark that resembled that of the fuschia and was called kotukutuku.
While there is definitely these two different kinds of bark we haven't been able to confirm that they correlate to the sex of the tree.
Pouakani is an interesting area. Iwi from Wairarapa were relocated here in the late 19th century. They were given no choice. They owned Lake Wairarapa and wanted to continue managing it for the abundant eel fishery, pakeha wanted to farm the land around it but couldn't do so if it was always getting flooded.
So a people with a coastal, water -based lifestyle were banished to one of the most inland and desolate places you could find in NZ. It was a long time before anyone could find it in themselves to actually go there.
Today they have dairy farms and forestry to give them an economic base. Even so the loss of a tipuna/taonga such as Wairarapa must still be in their hearts.

macs multi market

2011-03-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

This is George Macmillan talking to Claude August. George came to Minginui in 1959 and ran the shop here till the mid-1970's. The shop was called Macs Multi Mart. It had everything you could need.
George has many great stories about his time in Minginui.
As well as the shop he traded in possum skins and deer. At one stage deer carcasses were worth $1/pound. Shoot one deer and it could be worth twice the average weekly wage or more. His best supplier of deer carcasses was the local Forest Service District Ranger Bob Collins. Bob once told me he shot two deer short of a deer a day, in one year, thats 363 deer.
Bob was officially investigated for his part in contributing to the deer industry at a time when they were classed as pests. George said the investigation stopped at the shop. Regardless of the often strained relations between him and Bob, why would he "dob-in" his best customer, besides he didn't have Bob listed in his books. "Lyall Mueller" was his top hunter and Lyall always left his deer down a side road in the pine forest for George to pick up.

George took in professional hunters and provided them board and keep at his house in Minginui. He set up a drying shed to process skins charging $0.20 cents a skin for scrapping of the fat and drying them. In one year 185 000 skins passed through his shed. Given that trappers were getting somewhere near a $10 average for their skins thats approaching $2 million worth of product. Little wonder that possum trappers could afford to buy Range Rovers.(then worth about $8000- for that same price you could get a Landrover and a Rover car)

The other aspect of this is; that amount of skins equates to some 18,500 hectares of forest @ 10 possums per hectare, that had possum control. In fact one trapper from that time, Tony Jefferson, reckoned that at the end of the possum skin boom it was hard to find an area worth trapping, possum numbers had been severely depleted.
Who said commercial trapping can't control possums.
(We now have the DoC putting in kill traps in all the accessible areas around Minginui. While fur prices aren't what they used to be for skins there is a bit of living to be made from fur, provided such things as transport costs are kept low. )
George was always a fan of horses. He initially provided hunters with a pack horse service till they all got their own.
One time a string of 10 pack horses loaded with 2 or 3 deer each arrived at the home paddock minus their deer. Some one had intercepted them along the way. Bugger.

The early days of Minginui were "wild west times".
Theres probably a book in Georges yarns.

George used to "own" Boyd airstrip in the Kaimanawas until one day he got a letter from Lands and Survey saying he didn't anymore. Before that happened he bought a fixed wing , employed some hunters on contract and flew deer carcasses from the Boyd out to Taupo. That was prior to helicopters arriving on the scene in a big way. Eventually he based his plane in Minginui and got a pilots license himself.

"The Candy brothers, who derived a living from these hills for several years- had a rule, when on a hunting trip, not to eat or sleep before the first deer was shot."

When he first came to Minginui George checked out the shop, which was for sale, he looked it over and said to the shop keeper; "yep I'll buy it".
"Oh no its not for sale "said the shop keeper in a spontaneous change of heart..
It was an IGA franchise store so George went to the IGA guy in Rotorua.; "
"I thought that shop in Minginui was for sale? Went out for a look and got told it wasn't."
"Oh its for sale alright"
George duly bought the shop.
Upon opening the books he found it was bankrupt, the previous owner had gambled the money away.
George went back to the IGA and said: "Its bankrupt I've been sold a dud."
"Well " said the IGA guy," you went out and looked at it and you could see a quid in it. Then, when you came to see me, I saw straightaway you were the bloke to sort it out. So wheres the problem?"

George doesn't really remember the numbers of deer that went through his chiller. He measured them by tons. His van took a ton of deer. He took the deer to Rotorua in his van. In one week of the Roar,in the heyday of high prices, he went to town 5 times. Thats around 11 200lbs of venison..

.

Kei te manaaki koe i a Papatuanuku? part 2

2011-02-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

This is a worrying and unpleasant sight. The random dumping of rubbish since the recycling centre opened has actually got worse in the last few weeks. I have difficulty understanding the mentality behind it. Laziness?? Ignorance? This small canyon is filling up and smelling bad.It drains directly into the Whirinaki river a few hundred metres away. As we have no locally based authority no one has an enforcement role.
Other people have backyard drums where they burn all their rubbish. Plastics included. Desperately needs a re-cycling education programme of some sort.
In the Waimana, in pre-european times there was a hapu that put their dead up in trees because the earth was considered too sacred to be "contaminated" with the dead.
Just a half -measure of that kind of respect would suffice.

whakapapa

2011-02-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

Today I attended a powhiri for students at Waiariki polytech. The campus Marae is Tangatarua and the wharenui is Ihenga. It is an awesome whare; carved by Lionel Grant in the mid-1990's. The totara wood for carving came from the Whirinaki Forest. Some of the last to be gifted before the rahui/ban was put on. As a Conservation officer at the time I helped locate the fallen logs and get them out to an old skid site using a local farmers bulldozer.
Some of the logs were partially rotten and shattered in places. Rather than complain about the quality of wood given to him Lionel, humble, master carver that he is; "cut his cloth to suit". Hence the stitching together of several pieces to make the ama and the maihi (the front boards) of this impressive building.
It represents a blending of art and nature. Art that through its intricate, stylised, depiction of ancestors connects whakapapa to the earth and the forest. and makes of mythology - a visual reality.

It has been a long tradition of Ngati Whare to gift totara for such construction. There are many other whare around the North Island constructed of Whirinaki totara. (The wharenui at Orakei marae in Auckland being another one apparently.)
A year or so after the construction of Ihenga I travelled with Pita Iraia to this marae for a DoC function. As the korero unfolded and Te Arawa kaumatua became aware that P.I. was a chief/ariki of Ngati Whare, a huge wave of gratitude flowed towards him. Apparently no Ngati Whare people had attended the opening of this wharenui and so there hadn't been an opportunity to thank people before then.
It was a special moment that I had all but forgotten until today.
Whakapapa is not just about your connection to your blood lines its about the fact that;
Everything is connected.
All things have whakapapa .

fruit of the valley

2011-02-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

This year is a fruiting year in the Whirinaki Forest. While such things as blackberry have fruit every year it is not the case for many native species which only fruit sporadically. Birds such as kaka only breed in the years when there is going to be some fruit for their offspring. They start nesting well before the fruit is ripe. How they predict its going to happen is not known.
Many older people recall going to pick blackberries in their childhood. Mum made blackberry jam or pies. The use of sprays mean sblackberries aren't as common in many places as they used to be. We are lucky theres still plenty here.
Later..June 2011
As it eventuated this was not a full on fruiting year. I wasn't the only one fooled into thinking it was. Kaka nested over summer but very few chicks survived. Of the 10 or so nests that Claude August found and checked just one chick survived the fledgling process.
Tawa fruiting was light, matai there was some, rimu virtually none, kaik also. Hinau has been quite plentiful and the pigs and possums etc were getting fat on it. But high winds blew most of the fruit on the ground. Already pigs are digging for fern root and kereru are eating kowhai leaves. Its actuall going to a hard winter food -wise from here on in.

mother earth

2011-02-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

In 1995 I employed an artist to design this poster to go in the DoC huts in the Whirinaki. I thought it would help to provoke peoples thinking. Although one copy made it into the Central Whirinaki hut, it was considered unsuitable for public consumption given that it depicts Papatuanuku/mother earth as a naked women.

2011-02-05T02:45:00.000-08:00

A renown thief gave his girl friend a diamond ring. "where did you steal this?" she asked. To which he replied;"There is no crime. Like the present?"

whakamaaratia te Ao

2011-01-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

The "tropical" rain storm last week gave everything a boost.

2011

2011-01-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

Its been a little while. Yesterday I planted 56 manuka seedlings on the 'P'basin cutover. Heavy rain is coming this afternoon so I am going to plant some more very shortly. Its a small gesture. I have around 300 seedlings that I germinated and grew, in winter, from local seed. The roots are growing out the bottom of the pots so out they go.
'P' basin was logged last year and is being left to regenerate as part of the Ngati Whare initiative to restore native forest where once was pines. There is supposed to be something like $1 million allocated to this project once the treaty process is completed. I have no idea of the full details of this agreement but you don't need that kind of money to do this work.
All you need is a love for land that has basically been exploited and trashed by logging. Soon as money is involved the kaupapa/cause is lost. The true picture distorts and clever government wins again. Greed rules. (one NW person actually said to me that their claim wasn't worth getting involved with as there was no money in it.)
There is no mana in money. Kati tena korero/End of story.
Setting aside the political obstructions, all the ingredients for healing the land are readily at hand and nature, given a chance and even a little help, is capable of taking care of itself
'P' basin got its name from the class of native forest that used to be there. It once had a very dense podocarp forest that was logged more than 50 years ago and then planted in douglas fir, which was itself logged at 50 years of age.
There was an unusually high mortality in the D.fir stand, primarily caused by kaka ring barking the trees to feed on the nutrient/sugar rich cambium layer. Kaka need exotic trees to sustain them when the native forest has nothing. Native forest ecology is based on a boom and bust cycle of abundant, occasional fruiting followed by lean periods.
Faster growing pine forests have a higher nutrient turnover which is of benefit to many native and introduced animals. ( Wild Pigs are always fat in the pines- whereas for more than six months of the year, pigs, that live in the native forest, are skinny.That fact alone tells you something about whole ecosystems.)
A pine forest, if left unlogged, will eventually succumb to native re-invasion simply by the fact that native plants are better adapted to NZ climate and soils. Most pines aren't all that shade tolerant for a start.
Different soils and different types of pine combined with seed availability result in the regrowth of different types of native forest. Using pines as a nurse crop you can fast track the re-establishment of a native podocarp (rimu,totara,miro,matai,kahikatea) forest. If thats what is wanted.
In considering our actions of support for, and co-operation with, nature it should be borne in mind that; the whole landscape gets maximum benefit from a mosaic of forest types and shrublands. ( A "fruit salad" forest -Bob Collins used to call it)
In the 1990's we spread manuka branches on skid sites that were being returned to DoC care. These have worked very successfully and I got quite a bit of my seed from these places.
(Interestingly the manuka has not spread much further than where the branches were laid- I think it needs fire to create large stands)
Manuka is a very important colonising plant that is becoming scarce, in any quantity, within the Whirinaki valley.
I will keep an occasional eye on these; aku manuka-mokopuna.
The biggest risk to these seedlings will be people and politics. In that regard I could be wasting my time.
2011 is going to be an interesting year.
Things are changing all the time. Being part of that change is the challenge.
It should be noted that I am not a scientist and have no desire to be one, the above comments are based on my gathered observations and intuitions over quite a few years of living in the Whirinaki and seeing how things are.
That is all.
It could be classified as natural knowledge.
Though I learn more every day, probably a similar amount gets forgotten.
Namaste- have an excellent rua tekau - tekau ma tahi.

bok choy

2010-12-21T17:56:00.000-08:00

Lovely rain has got everything pumping. Do en-joy your self over Christmas.

hoiho2

2010-12-19T23:15:00.000-08:00

another horse photo without the sermon this time. oh by the way this is Brian and hes 20something years old, which is getting on a bit for a horse.

freedom

2010-12-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

Why the long face? Apart from our looks, and the same first name, (F %^&ampken - around here the word horse is usually prepositioned by this well-worn expletive- especially when you find them in your garden in the middle of the night or collide with them on your vehicle) what do this horse and I have in common?

1)We are part of the same food chain. What comes out the other end of this animal I use sparingly, as manure in the garden.

2)We share a freedom. Well for most of this last year I have been lucky enough to experience something of the freedom of a minginui F%&XXN horse. Most days I have been able to get up out of bed and do exactly what I want, just as these horses have done for a few generations now. This is the kind of freedom people try to get a taste of in the two or three short weeks in a year when they have leave from work. Just as is about to happen now with the Christmas holidays.

This freedom is about having time to just be YOU.

What has happened to our society that we mostly spend our lives, doing things we really don't want to do for somebody else and not really being in touch with who we are?

I'll be working over the holidays. Not because I have to but because thats whats i do each day- a few hours mahi on something I like doing.

The downside of course is I am on the "dole". Financially I have probably never been worse off. In every other way its been, even through some bad bits, a good year. ( I don't need to look for work it has no trouble finding me-just not paid employment).

Free-ranging horses are a symbol of freedom. Theres very few places left where semi-domesticated animals are allowed to roam as they like. People ask. Why don't they run away? Simple answer; where would they run too? We are surrounded by bush and horses don't really venture into bush, they stay where the grass is.

In the winter they get lean and carry a winter coat, in spring and summer they are sleak and fat.

With the price of petrol now around $2/litre and the cost of running a vehicle rising all the time, people around here are now thinking maybe; a horse might be the way to go.

Fuel cost zero, low maintenance, self-replicating, sounds very "eco", might be some methane emmission issues.

For freedom theres a price to pay.

All things are connected.

rakau rangatira

2010-12-16T11:08:00.000-08:00

Rakau rangatira

Tu teitei i te wao

Ki te kore koutou

Ma wai e mihi te ra?

Chiefly trees

Standing tall in the forest

Without you

Who will greet the sun.

serendipidty dipty hop

2010-12-15T19:04:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in this photo is a small town called Minginui. Its not the right photo for the story but it will do for now.
One morning this week I woke early and decided to take the dog for his usual walk. Off i went down the Red Metal Pit Road. Through a small stretch of blackberry and willow at the end of this road- is the river. For the need of the exercise and lack of anything more important to do I decided to walk down river, to the Mangamate Camp ground. Apart from the odd fisherman and rare pighunter no one ever walks there. Solitude, just me, the dawg and the meandering water, ten minutes from home.
The river is low and no crossing was much more than waist deep. Most of the way I walked down the middle of the river, the dog swimming in circles trying to find foothold in the shallowest parts.
There are rules to follow around rivers, based on respect. Rivers demand your immediate attention otherwise you don't stay upright long.
Just after I stepped into the water a stick came into view, floating with the current, some ways ahead.
A stick- for support- is a handy thing to have, in places where the water has a bit of speed and weight to it. I found myself following it with intentions of catching it up and putting it to use. Which I did.
Just about an hour later i emerged-half dry- at the waterfall camp and headed up the road back to Minginui.
On approaching a recently logged area I spotted a car with the boot open and a women collecting bits of firewood. I thought it was a local, till I got closer,.
"Doing a bit of gathering?" i enquired. "yes I am off to camp at Mokau Landing and thought i'd take some wood just in case theres none there. "
This is an astute traveller i thought.
"Do you know John Hutton?"
Yes I do. I am Andy.
I thought you might be.
I am Veronica I was at an anthropologists conference with John and he gave me directions here and suggested i call on you if I needed anything."
You can't help but smile when such things happen.
Its the kind of ' tourism' I enjoy.
Totally incidental or impromptu, and in this case; full of coincidence.
But then... everything in our life coincides.
Is there no co-incidence in the fact you are reading this.

the meat that you eat

2010-12-15T14:36:00.000-08:00

Just a couple of years ago this stream was flowing quietly through a manuka dominated shrubland, that would have eventually become: a podocarp forest of the kind pictured in the rakau rangatira entry..
Now...
its yet another farmers drain, trampled and shat in by cows. The beef that you and I eat may have walked through here. This is economic development at its best. The "system" totally supports this. This is a typical example of how maybe 20 or 30 streams in the Whirinaki farmlands are treated. Farmers don't seem to realise their precious soil is disappearing down these waterways.
I may have mentioned before but at a recent world conference on climate change it was noted we need to give 40% of the worlds land mass back to nature if we are to survive. They agreed to try and achieve a figure of just 17%.
We have got a ways to go.
Every thing is connected.

garden the planet now

2010-12-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

Amaranth, quinoa, chia. A few months ago I had not heard of these South american grains, now we are growing them. Along with other things like; chick peas, chicory, globe artichokes,okra and corn. Its very much an experimental garden, see what grows in our climate.. We had our last light frost in mid- November now we have drought-type conditions.
Growing good soil through improving its organic content is the key.

Recently Dr. Conlon, our local , much- valued, GP, gave me a book: The China Experiment by T.Colin Campbell.
Basically it shatters another pillar of society; Proper nutrition..
Cancers and heart disease are caused by high animal protein intake. Its as simple as that. Dairy products,eggs and meat have been shown by thorough and long term research projects to be the root cause of much of western societies ill-health.
Get your hands on this book, absorb its salient points and seriously consider changing your diet.
The evidence is that compelling.
Once again we have been led up the ' garden" path . Just that its the wrong garden.
More and more of the foundation stones are shifting. The great model of "modern' living is based on falsehoods largely created by people with the wrong agendas.
Primarily based around making money.

Meantime our totally organic garden is humming. Its possible to make a salad with 10 different ingredients.
I am facing my first Christmas as a vegan..
Sounds alien.
More knowledge needed.
namaste.

ancient stump?

2010-12-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Imbedded in this eroding river bank is a stump. There was a log protruding here before, thats washed away, now theres a stump. Its gotta be old, real old. Where its sitting is in a layer of oxidised, compacted river gravel. Above it in the profile is another layer of gravel then a layer of pumice. The last in a series of huge eruptions from Lake Taupo, scattered ash across here some 2000 years ago. There is no ash in the lower river gravels that I can see. Therefore with my limited knowledge of geological processes I conclude, it is at least 2000 years old and possibly much much older.

rubbishing our whenua

2010-12-13T19:26:00.000-08:00

This is a scattering of rubbish on a skid site in the forest near Minginui. Several months ago we opened a re-cycling transfer station in the village, paid for by the Whakatane District Council. ( Who prior to this have had no investment or interest in the village apart from trying to impose higher rates on the house-holders).
The initial response of quite a few people was to do this.
Dump it anywhere.
Now most people( baring some easily identified recidivists) have bought into the whole re-cycling thing and much more is showing up in the Transfer station.
Awesome.
One fact that has impressed me is; the amount of waste generated by the alcohol industry =the large amount of alcohol consumed here. (Everywhere?)
My thinking is if we are going to consume alcohol then; why aren't we making our own? This would be cheaper, result in a huge reduction in waste and take profit away from moguls of alco-pop empires.
Something like apple cider is apparently hangover free, if made by traditional methods.
Gotta be good for you.

Putting things back

2010-12-01T00:52:00.000-08:00

te whaiti

Some positive digger work has been done in another part of the Whirinaki valley. On Matekuare land, under the supervision and inspiration of Tony Goodman, a series of something like 5 small lakes has been created. Apparently there used to be a lake there before it was turned into farmland.
So far, two, community-max schemes, employing local youth,have provided the labour to clear the land of blackberry, fence the area off from stock and plant hundreds of native seedlings around the banks. Its still very "raw" at present. Given a year or two it will be an awesome wetland home, for an abundance of wildlife. The photos show eels, caught in the main river, being released into the "ponds". (Out of 15 eels caught only two or three were kept for eating and the rest let go-since elvers have been transferred over the two dams, further down river, eel numbers have increased markedly.)

Conservation should always be about putting things back. This is perfect example where the actions, such as those displayed by the gung-ho farmers of the Minginui stream "debacle", are reversed. We need more of this. As far as I am aware there is no other initiative like this anywhere in the Bay of Plenty.

As regards the Minginui stream, I heard from the EBoP guy, after, he had had a bit of a rev-up. He had inspected the stream, with the farmers, when it was flooding a bit of grass in winter. He had given some kind approval for work to be done, but heard no more of it until my photos turned up in his e-mail.
Does this mean that all streams and rivers, wherever they transgress farmland, must be controlled, channeled and/or diverted? That the only useful water is that which is controlled and used for irrigation, stock watering or taking away cowshed waste?

You cannot take, endlessly, and not put something back.

For the fisherman in the photo, there is satisfaction in releasing an animal back into the wild. A life returned, that could have so easily been extinguished.
Its a lesson for us all.
We are ALL culpable.
The Te Whaiti Lakes are an example to be followed.
All things are connected.

minginui stream 3

2010-11-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

Just an up-date on the "diggerising " of Minginui stream. After several unanswered e-mails and unreturned phone messages I got through to the Regional Council(ENVBoP). It seems that one of their staff gave "approval" for this to happen and may even have supervised it!!??. Unfortunately this person is refusing to explain his actions or rationale behind it to anyone. My phone number and e-mail address has been passed on to him but he hasn't contacted me. The person I spoke to said if I did talk to him and get an answer could I contact him again and let him know??
This is an agency empowered with advocating and caring for the environment!!??
I felt suddenly lost.
Why do we continue to leave such issues in the hands of bureaucracies?

Almost simultaneously I spoke with Fish and Game, who have heard about it, and they are going to take up the cause, given that its a trout spawning stream and this work was done in spawning season. It is in fact, because of its gravelly, shingle bed, THE main spawning stream in the middle reaches of the Whirinaki River.
It was a huge relief to speak to some one who actually cared.
The rivers and streams right throughout this area are in a very low and poor condition at present.After a very wet winter we have fallen on dry times and the main Whirinaki river is very low. It also smells and tastes almost stagnant.
It could be that the sediment generated by this work has something to do with it this abnormal water quality..

garden the planet

2010-11-19T15:40:00.000-08:00

Healthy, 100 percent organic, brocolli. Beautiful.

grow for your life 2

2010-11-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

Nathan and some of the participants on the Bio-intensive course preparing a bed for planting.

grow for your life

2010-11-19T15:27:00.000-08:00

This is our expanding community garden. Two weeks ago Nathan Foote from Tai Rawhiti Polytech came over for another, all too short, 3 day Bio-Intensive gardening tutorial. About 17 people attended and it was a good refresher on things learnt earlier in the year.
For myself,as I go further into: plants and plant cultivation the more I realise how much we have given away to live the "modern" life. Also its made me realise how ASLEEP we all are to the realities of this world we live in.
We have all been led down a path, away from the garden.
Our main garden currently has approximately 300 square metres of double dug beds. If you were to live solely off your garden produce this is approaching the area that you would need. For one person. Bear in mind also this is Bio-intensive which has the capability of growing crops in an area a quarter the size of a normal garden.
So...if you are buying all, or most, of your food from the Super Market then somewhere in the world there is an area of around 1200 square metres or more where some one, you don't know, is using unknown methods/sprays and fertilisers, to grow your food for YOU. If you add on meat, dairy products and eggs, then theres probably another two or three hectares set aside just for YOU and some animals you are going to eat through the year. Again.. you have no idea where this land is or how the animals are raised and fed. And fish too of course, how much ocean is yours?
In return for money you/me/all of us have handed over to some one else our health and well-being, given that you are what you eat.

Mostly we don't even think about any of this- it just is. Everything is provided on the shelf.
When you multiply this land area by 6 billion people you begin to see the real size of the issue.

There is an excellent DVD out called simply DIRT. Take the time to watch it sometime.

We are so lucky here in Minginui.
Mostly we are looked down upon by "outsiders" as being just the dregs of society ( Mongrel Mobsters, criminals, ne'er-do-wells, rabble rousers, etc.) which is great because it deters people from wanting to live here. ( The interest is rising) Our reputation is our outer line of defense. "Be careful when you come here" is the word that is spread around by the paranoid and the blind.
All the while..smiling.. we live in Paradise . Our garden can and does extend way beyond the cultivated land. We have nut trees, fruit trees, blackberries, raspberries, watercress etc, etc,... all growing wild, to harvest at the appropriate time of the year.
The forest beyond, provides more fruits veges and meat if we need it. The river and streams hold trout and eels.
All of these food sources are "organic" and natural.
Managed properly we have no need for the Super Market which is 90 kilometres away.
We have a ways to go yet, before that particular drive becomes irrelevant.

In Russia there is a movement, initiated by followers of Anastasia, to give every family, that wants it: one hectare of land for their agricultural use. The only conditions being they must "occupy" it for a minimum set number of days and nights a year and they must use it. If every country did this, for every family, there would be no food shortages or over population issues and a huge reduction in health problems such as obesity.
( I just read the other day that the leaders of Russia have decided to try and concentrate most of their 140 million people in 20 major super cities based in areas rich in gas and oil. This is of course the very antithesis of the above idea.)
Such an allocation would also resolve a lot of land issues around people feeling disposessed in their own country.
We could do this here in NZ easily enough. It would take much less than a million hectares and would , essentially become ,the biggest, though not contiguous, National Park. If organic methods of growing were used.

It is in fact the simple solution to one of the biggest problems of the world.
Soil conservation and enhancement.
GROW for Your life.
Garden the Planet

the axis of weevils

2010-10-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

What kinda weevil is this?
Three days later the answer comes back from Landcare - its an elephant weevil and looking at its shonoz (sp?) of course it is.
I kept Mr/s E. Weevil in a jar for two days, I don't like keeping things too long. On the third morning I woke up and remembered to check it. It was all folded up like it was dead. Ohhhh, so I thought I'll just hold it in my hand for a while maybe it will revive itself ( it looked too neatly folded to be really dead). After doing this for several minutes there was no signs of life and I dozed off again. A little while later I woke with a start and still half asleep wondered what the lump of dirt in my hand was. As I threw it, with an overarm swing, towards the nearest, partly open, window I simultaneously remembered I had been, in fact,holding a camotose weevil. oohhh number two. Oh well thats gone I thought , I'll never find it again- in the wilderness that is my excuse for a lawn. Hope it had a happy landing.
As I gazed whilstfully at the window- checking the glass for splatter marks, a movement on the curtain caught my eye-and there it was. hanging by one extended leg.
Once again I held it in my hand and it came fully to life and wandered about, so without further ado I let it go ..and a sparrow came along and ate it..just kidding. about that bit...

Is that an elephant in your room? No just a weevil pretending to be.

ghost dog 2

2010-10-17T22:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the messages to those people that wrote about Jack. Will try and get something in writing to the authorities in the next day or so.

tree person

2010-10-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

Can't remember exactly where this Rewarewa is but I am sure it said something as I walked past.

ghost dog

2010-10-16T17:58:00.000-07:00

This is Jack and this is a hard thing to write. Jack died last week from 1080 poison. Well actually I had to shoot him to relieve his suffering. He ate the meat of a deer or possum that had died from 1080 a couple of months ago.
Jack was my son Manas dog, bred from Turi, my border collie /huntaway across a boof head, aussie pig dog breed. He was supposed to be a pig dog and he did catch an occasional one or two in his short life but really, he wasn't a pig dog, he was just a neat, intelligent dog that was good company on a walk in the woods.
Last week Mana and couple of mates went for a short walk up the Mangamate steam at the back of the village. They weren't aware that poison for possum control had been laid in the area. They only walked for 15 minutes or so and then returned to their vehicle. By my later calculations they were over 2 kilometres from the "assumed" boundary line of the 1080 aerial drop and about 1.7kms distant from the village.
During this walk two of dogs disappeared for a while; Jack and Champ. When they came back he headed home.
Shortly after being tied up Jack started flipping around on his chain , frothing at the mouth and generally looking pretty stressed. He vomited up a lump of very putrid meat. Champ, still untied, started running frantically around in circles and 30 minutes later died under the house.
Both myself and another village resident recognised the symptoms of 1080 poisoning. Animals can linger in a semi-camatose state for ages after ingesting it. I have seen deer in this state; seemingly neither dead nor alive. Thats why I put Jack down.
Our theories are; given the distance that they were away from the poison area, that either a poisoned animal travelled more than 2 kilometres before dying,or having died further up, it got washed down the stream in the series of big floods we've had in the last 2 months, or alternatively some bait got dropped by a helicopter in transit to the drop zone.
All scenarios are possible.
The drop carried out by the Animal Health Board was done with a measure of secrecy as protests were occuring at the time. I asked for, but never got a proper map of the poison area boundary, and I e-mailed a DoC staff person to find out if or when the drop had taken place because no information had been relayed to people in Minginui.
In past years ,when DoC itself has run this operation, information distribution to locals has been thorough. Every house-hold got a map and explanation.
Of all the people living in the Whirinaki valley, you would be hard-pressed to find a single supporter for this poison and this method of applying it which maximises exposure of the toxin.

minginui stream part two

2010-10-16T02:07:00.000-07:00

This is the main gorge in the Minginui stream. In "2003-ish" a massive localised downpour ( I have had the figure 300mm in 2 hours stuck in my head for ages, but don't know who measured it), hit the Minginui stream headwaters. The subsequent deluge bottle-necked through this gorge wedging a massive totara log 6 metres or more above normal flow. Man y totara logs were caught up in that flood and transported into big log jams, kilometres downstream. Awesome power.

kiwi kid

2010-10-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

A blast from the past ( 2005ish). This is one of my favourite kiwi photos. It was taken with my arm fully extended down a kiwi burrow in the middle of the night, on a nest "raid". After the male had come off the nest to feed, I had removed and carefully packaged, one late development egg- ready to carry it out to Rainbow Springs for hatching and felt certain there should have been two eggs, as there most often is. Couldn't feel anything with my hand so I stuck the camera down and took a few random shots. Just out of arms reach there he was.
After a few months in captivity it was released back into the forest to carry on its journey, at 1 kg in weight a little bigger in size than the 300 gms or so it is here, and much less vulnerable to DBS- death by stoat.

nature boy

2010-10-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

This is Mark J.
Born and raised in the Whirinaki bush.
His father, TJ, was a very skilled possum trapper and hunter.
Mark has kept up the tradition and continuous, close contact with the natural world makes him one of the best hunters that I have ever encountered. He is also an amazing observer of wildlife who has a certain rapport with all animals that goes beyond the "terminal empathy" most hunters share.
For four years or so he worked on the kiwi project and as his ' supervisor' at the time I can only say some of his field observation and work skills were simply amazing. On a trip to Fiordland he impressed the higher-ups in the kiwi world with his free hand kiwi catching skills.
This photo was taken last spring. On the day he shot this he got four good sized stags in velvet, including a 12 pointer.
For the average hunter, such as I once was, a deer encounter in the forest, generally favours the deer escaping 90% to 10% . For Mark the odds are closer to being reversed. The deer has a less than 10% chance of escaping.
I have personally observed an instance where a single twig crack was a fatal mistake for a deer.
We were kiwi tracking at the time and not really in silent hunting mode. We had climbed up a narrow creek bed off the Okahu Road to a saddle in the ridge where a kiwi hung out. As we paused on the ridge to catch our breath and wave the aerial about for a transmitter signal, there was the sound of a twig breaking in the pungas/ tree ferns near-by. Mark put his hand up to signal me to stay put, high stepped-tippy toed through the leaf litter 20 paces and boom a young stag tumbled out of the dense cover ,dead, with no time to wonder what had just happened.
Just backing up this story to its real beginning, just after we left the vehicle, 15 minutes walk below, Mark was wrestling with his Ruger semi-auto 44, mindful of the direction the barrel was pointing, I asked: what he was doing?
Putting a round up, he replied, there may be a deer up on the ridge.
There was, and the gun was ready to go.
Thus proving once again Robo-Hunters saying; "Success comes when preparation meets opportunity."

Another time he tracked a large boar to its "bed of ferns" little realising he was standing on the only entrance and exit way. The 170lb boar charged from close range and two rapid shots later, from a lever action 44, the cornered pig died at his feet. Deancock who was with Mark at the time said it sounded like one BiG shot.
You won't hear any of these stories from Mark, they are just kind of routine and he doesn't dwell too long on past kills.
He probably won't thank me for posting this up.

minginui stream

2010-10-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

These photos show the recent excavations of the Minginui stream bed, from its confluence with the Whirinaki River some 3 or 400 metres upstream. Not sure how far it goes around the corner in top of the second photo. I don't really want to look.
The Minginui stream has its headwaters around the back of Tuwatawata maunga and travels down through some impressively steep and treacherous country, only to be turned into a farmers drain. Where once it meandered and relaxed from a tumultous journey it is now defined and contained.
Such is economic development in the Whirinaki. Although its hard to see much economic "gain" here apart from a "tidier " appearance.
Looks like the Horomanga, in Galatea, poor river that it is.
Having walked over pretty much every: gully, ridge and peak in the catchment several times, clambered around its gorges and waterfalls, and spent many, many nights camped out listening to the talk of its waters I feel duty bound to speak up on its behalf. Not that it REALLY needs it, it has a habit of finding its own way. Its in the process of moving a mountain.

I look forward to the day when we are all thinking along the same lines and everyone realizes that:
All things are connected.

kaipipi

2010-09-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

This photo shows layer upon layer of pipi shells where they were discarded, several hundred years ago, after a feed. This midden is 200 very steep metres in altitude above the beach. Why carry so many pipi so far? Safety?

manaia 2

2010-09-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

"Never put anyone out of your heart"
Neem Karoli Baba from Allspirit Poetry web site

Early morning at Whangarei Heads and my working holiday here is coming to an end.
Last Sunday morning I attended a DoC/community hui at Macleods Bay Hall. Approximately 50 locals attended and listened to some interesting presentations by DoC staff. Many dedicated people here are doing their own "thing" on their own land and this combined with the effort that DoC puts in their Reserves has resulted in a huge reduction in weeds, possums, rats, stoats etc. and an increase in kiwi, native flora and bird life in general. There are local nurseries producing thousands of native seedlings for re-planting and both farmers and DoC have fenced off native areas from grazing.
The DoC tracks in the Whangarei Heads area have all recently been done up and are now at a standard commensurate with their high summer use. Well drained, metaled and stepped where needed. ( Some have lots of steps)
I have walked a few of them in the last two weeks.
With everyone involved the boundaries between lands of varying tenure have been smudged to create much more of a harmonious whole than you are likely to see most other places.
Thats the key; smudging the boundaries.

Allow connectivity to flow.

Lake Minginui

2010-09-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

Arahaki Lagoon is full and beautiful. A more peaceful place would be hard to find. A long-time local told me it used to be known as Lake Minginui. I like that name. Its ephemeral in that it quite often dries out. How this happens exactly is not well understood. It has been known to be full in summer and dry in winter. This is probably the fullest i have ever seen it. Well worth a visit to get a photo of the reflections.

In the Ngati Whare Treaty settlement I see the name is to be changed from Arahaki to Arohaki. Quite a few years ago I asked a local koroua, Harry August, what the name should be. He said it was Arahaki, which ment " watchful path." Given the close proximity to Okarea Pa, a site of many infamous battles, this made sense. Be on your guard. I have never found this word in any Maori dictionary, but that means nothing. I haven't heard anything about what Aroha-ki ?? or Aro-haki might mean and since Harry had both Tuhoe and Ngati Whare tupuna and had lived in the Whirinaki all his life more or less, I have no reason to question the name any further.

Whatever its name the frogs like it. The frogs that live here are Australian bell frogs, which are becoming rare in Australia and increasingly less common in NZ. This lagoon, surrounded as it is by forest, is a refugia for them away from the sprays and the fungi that have affected frog populations everywhere.

There are also at least three very rare plants that grow on the lagoon bed when its free of water. Deer love the place and a quiet evening, sitting still when the tide is out, can often produce some vension. For deer at least it is a place where you have to Be On Your Guard.

what is conservation part 2

2010-09-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

The latest photo record one of the tragedies of the Whirinaki, which I do go on about. In the last 3 years somewhere around 300 hectares of regenerating native shrublands have been turned into grass for the almighty dairy cow. This clearance is still continuing, although there isn't much area left to do.
Apart from the devastation to native vegetation, ( loss of "biodiversity"), degradation of waterways and accelerated erosion, there are increasing world-wide concerns as to the side effects of glycophosphate the prime ingredient of Round up.
Old photos and maps of the Whirinaki valley show large areas of manuka shrubland many in an advanced stage of re-colonisation by broadleaf and podocarp species. These are now virtually all gone and there are no extensive areas of manuka left except up near the frost flats. Taho and Waione.
I used to hear fern birds near the village now we are surrounded by increasingly intensive farming.
One farmers suggestion for the future development of Minginui was to clear all the trees and scrub and grow fodder for his cattle.
With carbon trading now a reality, there is actually money in "scrub". There are also many other options to explore that have more to do with maintaining a sustainable community that cares for where it lives. Making a rich farmer, richer, at the expense of the environment, should be well to the bottom of the list.

Further to my blog What is conservation part 1.
I do recall that subsequent to sending that email I learnt that; it was at least $5,000 of public money spent on consulting an accountant to help set up a private contracting business. It also turned out that the contractor had at least $80,000, ( some said much more) in a bank account, of "advance" payments for work not done.
( Also not tendered for) Quite a bit of this work was outside the skill-base/experience of the contractor and had to be recovered, by unusual means, by individual DoC project managers. From what i understand some of the work was never done and not all monies recovered fully.

So if all this were to be seen, and could be explained away, as normal Departmental practice, ( a SOP, standard operating procedure, even) where is the line now drawn? For whom do codes of conduct and rules on spending public money apply?
Does the time elapsed somehow make it more Ok ?
I used to think that the investigation that occurred was a "smooth-over" the more I learnt it struck me as being a 'cover-up". Since I never got any proper answers I can only speculate.
Was I in fact wrong, in raising the issue?
I had thought that it was something that didn't involve me. Then I was asked to sign off some petty cash withdrawals for which there were no receipts -the rule generally being no receipt,you pay back what you took out- and there was talk of money being taken from the kiwi project, I was working on, to "forward pay" the contractor for some imaginary work. No way, I thought, should that happen.
Everyones moved on.... but somehow the stain on the table cloth won't wash out.

There is supposedly a report, stored away somewhere, on the investigation. I have never seen it . It could possibly be accessed under the Official Information Act.
Until this is done perhaps, that is it for now, on this matter.
I just wanted to record some of the" facts" ,that I know of, this important issue, in a semi-public forum.
At least its no longer under the carpet with so much other stuff.
At the end of the day just as at the start...Everything is connected.
september 2011 Requested a copy of report from DoC H.O. Request refused. Now in hands of Ombudsmans office.

manaia

2010-09-16T18:03:00.001-07:00

Manaia is an old volcanic 'plug" on the Eastern side of Whangarei harbour. I reckon its one of the most, if not THE most imposing mountains in Northland. There is an amazing energy around it. Quite different from the Whirinaki energy. All over its slopes are the remains of historic settlement. The most ancient being the numerous middens of pipi shells. It must have been a place of abundance with its forest and kai moana/sea food close by. Sadly there are no longer any maori living around this immediate area who can whakapapa back to these old times. It has also become a tapu place, with many Maori saying its a place you shouldn't go.

Notable Maori with connections to here include ; Tirarau, Te Moeranga and Wehiwehi. (WehiWehi had a kainga at Taurikura). Early settlers found the Whangarei Heads area virtually deserted. It is however recorded that prior to this time, in the early 1800s it was well populated. The people here were not Ngapuhi. During the so-called musket wars, Ngapuhi invaded here and decimated the local population. The 'locals' had themselves been musket raiding down the line so no doubt there was a lot of utu involved in what happened here.

Perhaps it is because of what occurred at these times that it still remains tapu today. More research is needed.

What is conservation?

2010-09-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your email to the Hon Chris Carter MP. It will be placed
before the Minister for
his information.

If your email contained a postal address you will receive a written reply.

If you wish to receive a reply to your email and have not provided a postal
address, please
advise us of your contact details.

Yours sincerely

Richard Marshall
Senior Private Secretary

Office of Hon Chris Carter MP
Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 470 6568  |  Fax: +64 4 472 8034
Email: ccarter@ministers.govt.nz


In response to:





      Dear Sir,
 I live in Minginui and I  work for the Department of Conservation on a part-time fixed term contract doing kiwi work in the Whirinaki Conservation Park.

The Area office I work for is Rangitaiki in Muruapra.   I am writing to you to

voice concern about the way the contacts for Recreational Development and other

work in the Whirinaki have set up . To me and many others it appears that the

boundaries of what is ethical and proper business practice have been transgressed and it would be good if someone independent of the process could have a quiet lookat what hastranspired to date.

 Some background is;

1) It has been the Area Managers  20 year dream to have a high standard multi-day walking track  around the Whirinaki

2) The 2004? Recreation review/ planning process provided the $$ for

this project to go ahead, despite no public support in the submission process.

In fact myself and several other current users objected to it going ahead.

Its not that I am anti-tourism in the Whirinaki its just that any development

should reflect and grow on current visitor experience and needs and not try to be
something it is not.

3) The amount allocated for this work is in the order of 2 or 3 million over 3 or 4 years, I am not exactly sure of the details but its a relatively large figure.

The AM initially looked to a couple of his relations to be the principal

contractor for this work. One was unsuitable and the other withdrew.  He then

looked to the Programme Manager of Recreation to take up this ro

4) This is where business ethics have got messy.

a)The Programme Manager purchased a vehicle while still in his DoC role and

leased it back to the Department for $1000 a month.  This lease continued

for sometime after he left in May this year.

b)  The Programme Manager was responsible for costing the jobs he is now

tendering for he also revisited those costs and raised them in expectation

of being the successful tenderer.

c) All the Recreation/track-making equipment belonging to the Area Office

has been handed over to the ex-PM, with no expectation of payment until

next year. This equipment includes; a one and half tonne digger , a

drilling compressor, chainsaws etc.

d) Assistance was given to the PM to set up his contracting business

including costs in the order of $2300 to consult an accountant. He also had

free use of his P card right up till the day he left and used the

opportunity to stock up on equipment and materials in expectation of the

up-coming contract work.

 e) The main contract has just recently had tenders called for and I

understand there has been a level of interest . Should the ex-PM by some

chance miss out on the contract, then his old position has only been filled

temporarily , so that he can return should the need arise.

     All this creates a "far from level playground " for potential

competing contractors.



     I will here state that some of these things are here-say and others I

have seen for myself.  This is also not a complete inventory. Everyone in

the Area Office and some further afield are affected by this in some way.

    I also realise the risk to myself in raising this issue, the AM has a

very domineering personality and is in total control of those around him. I

am on very dangerous ground but I am not known as one who sits back and

accepts the status quo. ( Seems to be a trait of some kiwi workers)

     I would appreciate however a level on confidentiallity  at this point

in time. If my concerns materialise into no more than mischief -making on

my part then I will fully accept culpability.  I expect no personal

satisfaction to come of this  more  probably  trouble.

     But to myself and  other DoC staff it just doesn't seem right ,and

this level of manipulation is actually totally unnecessary. The contracts

could have been called for in a normal straight forward manner without

exercising cronyism or whatever this is.

    Could i therefore ask that you have someone look into it. It is a

difficult and sensitive situation.  If Recreation Ranger staff and the

acting PM are allowed to talk freely they will give more detail.



  Yours sincerely

   Andy Blick

I was going through my old e-mails and came across this one that I sent of to the Minister of Conservation in August 2007. It was a bit of a stressful time going through all this, it ultimately led to me losing my kiwi contract in the Whirinaki, which actually did me a lot of favours. It helped me to move on  out from under

the oppressive regime.

I never did actually get any answers to these queries. Not in writing anyway. The actual email was on the Area Managers desk within 24 hours of my sending it. (So

much for any confidentiality). In hindsight I should have sent it to the Auditor

Generals office. ( There are no guidelines given out on what to do when reporting corruption.)

A month or so after this was sent, the whole area staff were called in for a

meeting. The "investigation", conducted by the Regional Manager of DoC. had been

largely a paper exercise.

At this meeting she had to get everyone to introduce themselves so she could

identify who I was. There had been no interviews, face to face meetings no real

interest in stamping out corruption in the Public Service.

At the end of this meeting, at which the Area Manager was present, so no one could really talk freely, the Regional Manager said anyone who had any queries could

leave the meeting and talk to her in the corridor as she left.

I did this, and that was the only time I got some answers. She basically said

everything I had written  was correct, it had however been dealt with and everyone was getting on with their work. ( Something she also said in the meeting; "Get on with your

work!!)

In the classic shooting of the messenger scenario I was some how seen to be to

blame for raising the issue. If I had gone to the AM in the first place this whole thing could have been cleared up without resorting to a Ministerial. Yeh right.

The whole exercise highlights to me the fact that there are very few checks and

balances in the Public Service. People stealing and manipulating public goods and contracts get away with it much more easily than if it were private property.

Mostly its all viewed as being "perks of the job". If you would only keep your

mouth shut you can do it too.

Three years on little has changed, but at least more people are now aware of how

the systen works in Murupara.

I have taken many lessons out of this and although I don't think of it too often I still get the feeling its unfinished. I was tempted to raise it with Politicians again recently when Chris Carter was shown to be using the system for his own

maximum benefit, just as these people were and still are.

No wonder he quickly devolved any responsibility away from himself, soon after

recieving my email.

northland spring

2010-09-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

The ko'hai are flowering in Northland. Everything is trying to grow and flower after the drought of last summer. A lot of plants especially the punga haven't made it through. Ko'hai don't flower in the Whirinaki till late October/November. This is later than anywhere else I know of.

anastasia

2010-08-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

These are volumes 2 to 5 of a series of 8 books about Anastasia and a new way of living. If you want a good, easy read try volume 1 simply called Anastasia by Valdimir Megre'. They are becoming a world-wide phenomenon (spp?) .

carving/ pou whenua

2010-07-21T17:25:00.001-07:00

This is a pou whenua carved by Lionel Grant as a koha/gift to the people and the forest for the totara he recieved to make a carved whare nui (meeting house) at Auckland Unitech.
Lionel is an amazing carver, the whare at the Unitech is an incredible work of art.
As is this pou. Enlarge the photo to see detail.
Coincidentally or deliberately, I am not sure, this pou is sited on a soldiers grave from 1870 . Macdonald Macdonald was a dispatch rider who made the mistake of dismounting from his horse to engage the enemy that had ambushed him during the New Zealand wars of that time.
Maybe he had no choice.
His companion managed to escape.
Local korero says it was Peita Kotuku who shot MacDonald.
Macdonald Macdonald was buried here and his grave used to have a fence around it. The fence had all but rotted away and been forgotten when the pou was put in place.

The logs of totara that Lionel recieved from the local iwi were out in the pine forest cutover. They had been felled and not recovered twenty five years before. The land was planted in pines which were then themselves logged, exposing the relics. Being a very durable, soft, wood makes totara ideal for carving.
If Lionel had had to buy the timber it would have cost $70,000 or more. It was gifted by Ngati Manawa. As well as erecting this carving he returned to the forest all the un-used wood and wood chips left over from the project.
This is very much in keeping with the tikakanga/traditions associated with carving. Its about thanking Tane( god of the forest) and Papatuanuku the earth mother.
Gratitude.
All things are connected.
.

2 tuwatawata

2010-07-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

A wider shot of Tuwatawata. It is the small peak top right. Although bush covered it does get snowfalls in the winter but generally the snow doesn't stay for long. The tall forest in the foreground is known as the Sanctuary. The track to the top of Tuwatawata starts there. If it were cleared all the way to the top it might take 4 or 5 hours to reach the summit. Maybe less.

Legend has it that this mountain, and its neighbor, Moerangi are husband and wife. It was a custom of old to marry mountains as a means of forging peace between warring tribes. It is somewhat unusual though to have two mountains so linked with in the same tribal area.

tuwatawata

2010-07-21T02:20:00.000-07:00

Ko Tuwatawata te maunga Tuwatawata is the mountain
Ko Whirinaki te awa Whirinaki is the river
Ko Ngati Whare te iwi Ngati Whare is the tribe

This is a telephoto lens shot of the top of the highest mountain near here. It is 1130 metres high. Not really that high but very rugged country. Over the years I have hunted, tracked kiwi, trapped possums and stoats all around its spurs and ridges, I have only once been to the top. Very few people ever go there, I might have been the last , 10 years ago or so.

There is a trig on the top - if you click on the photo and enlarge it you can see a white speck. Trigs are a symbol of land division. They were installed by surveyors as line of sight references ( the top of the mountain was cleared of trees for the trig) so they could divide up the land. With satellite mapping they are now superfluous and should be removed. This is the sacred mountain of the local Maori tribe Ngati Whare. It needs a carved pou whenua acknowledging the four winds instead of a trig.

On an old map from the 1890's it shows a traditional trail going to the top of the mountain and no further. People went up there for some purpose.

Years ago , in the early days of DoC, with a crew of local trackcutters. I started to clear and mark the track to the top. Later the Department Of Conservation used this track for access for "species management" and 'pest' control. It only goes two thirds of the distance. Time may be coming when it should be opened up all the way. Its an Ara tapu - sacred path. Well, it should be viewed as such and treated accordingly.

Earlier this year, while "monitoring possums" Mana and I got caught in a lightning storm on one of its high ridges. For more than an hour lightning crackled all around us. One hitting the ground about 20 metres in front of us. So we sheltered/grovelled under a large rotting log. The thunder was incredible. The rain torrential.
It is known as a mountain that attracts lightning.

Eventually, as it eased off slightly, we ran for it, as best we could, in a crouch. Only relaxing when we were well down off the ridge. Phew . then there was a flooded stream to contend with..hmm.

Love that mountain.
It commands respect.

Uni-verse

2010-07-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

Uni-verse / Te Ao Marama

A sentence
became a trickle
became
a rush of words
till we filled hidden valleys
with karakia
that lifted us to
the sky

was Io

As clouds we floated
horizon to horizon on
aroha, whakawhanaungatanga,
manaakitanga, tumanako, pono
Nga mea ataahua

katoa,

till the sun set
crying
and the stars swirled into being
laughing
He is one of us
and distance became time
and time became
Nothing
All was one

sentence.

Karakia = prayers
Io= supreme Maori god.
aroha = love
whakawhanaungatanga= the act of expressing family togetherness/expression of whakapapa/geneology. something like that
tumanako = faith/hope?
pono = truth
nga mea ataahua katoa= all these beautiful things

Koha

2010-06-05T23:54:00.000-07:00

What
have you in mind
for me
my hills
the shadow of the greenstone
passes
earth to hand
and conscious
yet unconscious
of your need
my bones grow up
and crumble
on this land.

Oh no...two days of constant rain.."cabin fever" has set in and I have resorted to posting bad poetry without so much as a photo. Will add one sometime.

Koha Tours- special offer of the week- to anyone- who stumbles across this blog and is coming to Aotearoa and/or intending to visit the Whirinaki Forest Park-and would like a free 1 hour guided walk need only contact the writer.
Actually Koha is a Maori kupu/word for a kind of gift. In lieu of a set price or payment you give a koha which can be whatever the giver feels like giving from nothing to something. The key is; whatever is gifted or not gifted, the recipient accepts it with gratitude.
In these days where we are captivated and constrained by money this is one small gesture to the alternative ways of doing business.
For what its worth? Money often obscures the opportunities for more valuable exchange.

Music worth listening to; Smashproof- Ordinary Life - video on Utube features Minginui kids and houses/horses (along with other places ).
Townes Van Zandt, Deadman movie soundtrack(Neil Young), Sonny Bill Williamson(Harmonica)Keep it to yourself etc., are three new bits of music I have found on Youtube today. Brilliant. There is no song that I can think of that can't be found on the Net- isn't that so neat.

Whirinaki blonde

2010-05-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

This is a blonde possum. Last year while doing a DoC contract possum block, we caught two of these possums out of a total of around 960 possums trapped. So based on that sample it could be said that approximately one in 500 possums are this blonde colour. However some possum blocks seem to have more than others and in large parts of the country there are none to be found.
There was an unwritten agreement among the regular trappers that any caught were let go, as this one was.

Possums, like this, are what the whole 1080 argument is about. "Cute" as they look they decimate the canopy of the forest and eventually the most palatable tree species die out through the stress created by heavy browsing.

While our intentions are honourable; Save the forest"!! We don't have a full understanding of the issues so, I would suggest, that the solutions we apply are not the right ones.

" We live in a false relation with our environment because we know neither the universe nor ourselves for what they really are..." The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

If we take poisoning of possums as an example. Shortly the Whirinaki Forest is to receive an aerially applied 1080 drop over some 50,000 ha. Its done by the Animal Health Board to prevent the spread of Bovine TB. It costs over $1 million. Bovine Tb is a disease of cows supposedly spread by possums. There have been no records of possums in the Whirinaki having TB.

The Department of Conservation supports this drop because they perceive it as achieving a conservation gain. i.e. less possum damage to the forest.

None of this is remotely sustainable. The possum control achieved by poison lasts only a few short years then possums are back same as they were. So what is the plan here? Are we committed to poisoning and trapping possums repeatedly for 100's if not 1000's of years.? Or do we have to look at the issue from an entirely different perspective?

Why we do all this is : because we basically have a mistrust of Nature. We are the gods of science, this is our world, we know best. Unfortunately clever as it is, scientific knowledge, is a very small part of the totality of knowing. As "gods" we like to think we have power over nature yet really we perform badly. No true gods would contemplate the mass poisoning of any creature, would they? Our ideal of a god is some benevolent entity, isn't it?

What is one of our greatest fears? To die a slow death from poisoning has to be up there. Yet we routinely dish it out to other fellow creatures on this planet.
I have seen animals die from 1080, it is not a quick death.

See where we have ended up..... from a simple picture of a possum, we are very quickly into some big questions.

99.9999 percent of all species that ever lived are already extinct, currently we are losing species from the Earth at a rate of 50,000 to 55,000 thousand species/year.

Spreading poisons is pointless in the face of the scale of of change that is occuring.

There are more reasons for this abnormally high rate of extinction than we know. Some say the next step in evolution is that of a "higher" mind. I have thought for sometime we need two quantum leaps-one in our knowledge base- the second in our actions.

Heres another thought. Setting aside species "new to science" what new species have evolved in the last 100, 1000, 10 000, 100 000 years? Other than man....

whirinaki 25

2010-05-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

This day needs to be recorded and not forgotten too quickly, Whirinaki 25 was a series of events in September last year to celebrate 25 years of the Whirinaki Conservation Park.
It was really about the self-promotion of the Department of Conservation in some kind of warped publicity project.
Spontaneously locals responded with protest, feeling that with little involvement in anything to do with the Forest Park there was nothing to celebrate. Promised jobs in tourism etc , supposedly the saviour of Minginui, have failed to eventuate.( The question has to be asked do we want tourism on other peoples terms? Numerous studies show successful indigenous tourism ventures are those conceived, created and run by locals).
It was incredible really to be part of this small protest as it arose out of individual but widespread dis-satisfaction with many aspects of DoC management and exclusion. The anti-1080 sentiment was a strong point of focus.
( My prediction has been that 1080 as a poison-of- choice for "pests" will be gone ...soon. No widespread poisoning of animals is sustainable for any length of time..its also unethical..why do it? I am speaking from own experience of working in the support of such operations.).
In some circles I was labled a ring-leader. Far from it, as I say it was very spontaneous and un-coordinated. For instance I didn't realise that in this photo I was standing behind a sign that had Minginui spelt wrong. (There seems to be a link between poor spelling and some anti-1080 people).
Hence my sign; "Bran 1080- its got to be good for you". I also had a sign the; " DoC steam roller stops here!" alluding to the steam-roller metaphor used by DoC to describe the Rangitaiki- now Te Urewera - Area management style.

The peacefulness of this protest was awesome. There was no vandalism of anything DoC , and no shouting of abuse or intimidation of manuhiri/visitors that I saw. Friendliness prevailed. The response from passers-by was also very positive. The biggest "toots" came from people travelling from Ruatahuna way and they couldn't actually see what the signs said.
The only negative action was carried out by DoC staff who attempted to remove unattended signs. A car door "Minginui Free State" sign, erected on Ngati Whare lands at the village entrance, lasted half a day before a DoC contractor painted over the words and threw it in the blackberries, later describing it to some one as being; "inappropriate".

The next day a large group of Whirinaki Mongrel Mob members maintained a ,peaceful, all day vigil at the village entrance where DoC events were happening.

Protesting on this day was also entirely fitting as it was through protest that the Whirinaki Forest Park came into being. Thankyou greenies.

I must add that...some people, once they had finished protesting, went and participated in the events put on by DoC, as did other villagers. Amongst it all, there were some good things that people had put in some effort to organise and run. Thankyou people.
The advertising slogan was Something Big is happening in the Whirinaki.
There is something BIG gonna happen -just that wasn't it. .
Watch this space..if you are not already.

the greatest loss

2010-05-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

Listening to the radio in the middle of the night I missed the name of who said it in 433 BC or some such date, but I thought this quote very relevant ;
" The greatest loss is- the loss of native land"

Every civilisation must have gone through this stage of separation. Various. often catastrophic events, cause this land connection to be severed or diminished.

In the 1860's the NZ Government dispatched troops of the Armed Constabulary to capture Te Kooti and subjugate the Tuhoe tribe that provided him sanctuary in their 600,000 acres of hinterland. It was the biggest "man-hunt" in NZ history.

Another relevant quote, from 1870, was made by Major Ropata Wahawaha, the skilful, fearless and some might say brutal, commander of the Ngati Porou contingent of the Government force. ( he recieved the NZ Cross for valour at the siege of Ngatapa)
He had just captured Horoeka pa at Maungapohatu and attempted to negotiate with Tuhoe, in the hope of gaining Te Kootis capture or surrender.
And I am quoting from a small book by Lieut-Colonel Porter written 1897 and published in 1923; "The Ureweras however remained loyal to their principles and gave a reply ordering the Government force to return the way they came saying they would not allow "booted feet to pass through their country".
Ropatas reply was characteristic and forcible; " I never return by the same track with a war party, as I consumme all the food on the way, and to return means starvation. I depend on supplies in front. If you with your bare feet get in the way of mine with boots I will trample on you." ". {Steam-roller tactics.}
These few words summarised Government action for the 6 years preceding 1870. Scorched earth, mass execution of prisoners and captured wounded, translocation of whole villages out to the coast.

By such actions are native lands lost.
I hear people say with regard to the current treaty claim process; " Lets get it out of the way so we can look to the future. Never mind dwelling in the past".

Elsdon Best, a Tuhoe "historian " was cutting down a tree at Heipipi, near Ruatahuna in the early 1900's when a local passing by called to him to be very careful as he was dealing with the realm of Tane(the atua/god of man and forest}. Elsdon Craig his nephew and Biographer notes that Elsdon Best hoped Tuhoe would never lose this reverence for nature.

Thirty or so years later, dispossessed and empoverished, Tuhoe found local employment in logging and milling their beloved ngahere/forest. A huge step given that trees such as the miro, totara and rimu were listed in whakapapa as being their elder brothers/tuakana.
A direct result of their collective loss of native land?

THe challenge for us all is to seek this respect within ourselves and apply it across the Earth and everything we do. If we don't take time to look back in history, savour the lessons and maybe, just maybe, correct a wrong or two, then the future we are in such a rush to embrace is to be found in the oil spill off the coast of America.

All things are connected...

Garden tutorials

2010-05-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Just thought I would add these photos of our Bio-dynamic (above) and Bio-Intensive courses. Thanks again to Ewen and Nathan our enthusiastic and knowledgable tutors.

John keyish

2010-05-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

"Great news Prime Minister tuhoe are coming round to chew the fat"

Why did it have to end in another broken promise. Lots of reasons apparently. The Prime Minister withdrew the return of Te Urewera from the negotiating table, then a couple of days later, whilst dining with Ngati Porou, an iwi whose soldiers were government employed-kupapa- in the 1860's war, made the comment that just as well he wasn't dining with Tuhoe as he might be on the menu not participating in it. Ha ha..
I like the joke above(thanks Tremain) and reckon that Tuhoe should create a vegetarian dish called the John Keyish to be served on its own, as a pudding with no accompaniment. i.e. John Keyish's just dessert.
Just below this joke in Rotorua's Daily Post was a letter supporting John Keys stand. It was headed Sign of Courage; one would be tempted to sub-title it; sign of ignorance.
But we shouldn't do that as we are all on the same road and this is a momentary set back. Politics is a fickle game of ;he said, she said played on tidal sands. Much of it is incredibly pointless waffle and ignored by most of us until an edict comes close to affecting us in some way.
Moving right along......

Whakamaaratia te Ao

2010-04-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is a whakatauki/pepeha I kind of made up. I think it means ; Garden the Planet. This has been a thought of mine for many years. Its what we have to do to get ourselves out of the cactus we are in. Urgent action required!!
Everywhere and in all directions a change of thinking is needed.

Here in Minginui we have started something. Thanks to funding grants from the DHB and TPK we have been able to start a community garden. These funds allowed us also to buy-in some expertise to show us how to garden sustainably.
In the last month; Nathan Foote from Tai Rawhiti Polytech and Ewen Willis from Omaramutu have visited Minginui and given basic courses in Bio-Intensive and Bio-Dynamic gardening. We were priviledged to recieve some learning from these guys.
As a result our community garden has taken on a new shape, as have our ideas around whats waste and whats resources and the way we live. ( Stop viewing plants and animals as pests and weeds and everything else changes).
Its actually been awesome to see how this project has progressed and the wider possibilities that it has opened up.
A big part of it is; bringing people together to work on a common project.
A challenge ahead is getting people to realise this way is better than relying on Pak N'Save for your groceries.
Over the summer our conventional garden producedmore than 16 different types of vegetable and fruit.
Garden the Planet

Hoatu te whenua

2010-04-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

There was a rumour in the media the other week that Ngai Tuhoe, through the Treaty settlement process, had been quietly working on the return of the Rohe Potae O Ngai Tuhoe ( Te Urewera ) This return would include the right to self-govern as well as own the whenua in some negotiated shape or form. That would be so awesome. After hearing that news I went into a realm of inspiration as to the huge new possibilities this would open up.

The Urewera would no longer be in the clutches of a government bureaucracy. It would be something more, something it was for hundreds of years; reverred, loved, cherished,sustained by the people that live and govern their own lives, within it.

Handing back land to First Nation people is routinely done overseas. Its really no big deal. Many Australian National Parks, of which there are about 600, are Aboriginal owned. As they should be, as Te Urewera SHOULD be.

As an amateur historian I have read widely on the human history of the place where I live. Since European contact injustices have been piled on injustices.

Books such as the one above or, the also recently published: Judith Binneys, Encircled Lands, tell of the futile efforts made by Tuhoe, and associated iwi, to retain their tino rangatiratanga status. Their attempts to retain their mana were ambushed time and again by force, deprivation or the stealth of simple changes to the law.

Whether you fought or trod the peaceful path the outcome was the same. Loss of land and your right to follow your own way of living.

It is time to return the remnants of what was taken.

That will be a landmark day in NZ history.

A triumph over the undertow of meaness, a mainstream distrust of others and the pervasive penny-pinching-pakeha-thinking that flows through our society. For once lets think about something more than the almighty dollar and let go of the whats-in-it-for-me attitude.

This action, though hardly generous, is true and honourable, and would go some way to re-instate a people to their rightful place in the world.

Just do it.

tree feet

2010-04-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

After after some 30 plus , gum-booted, crust-earning, years, of trundling the hills for some official reason or other I have hung-up my feet ( still twitching in photo) as far as these activities go. I have re-claimed them as my own, for now, and we will see where they go from here. The freedom of the crumbless, barefoot trail awaits.

The latest in trendy footwear is the Masai shoe. Its sole is shaped to replicate the way a Masai tribesman walks in barefeet. Supposed to emulate our true walking stance which uses muscles differently from normal shoes. Cures knee problems etc. etc.

My thinking is; why go to the expense- just wear your feet au-naturelle and be done with it. I think its been about 6 months since I last put sox on. House-hold arguements concerning sock ownership ( either smelly or newly washed) have been halved.

secret stags

2010-04-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

We started out at 6.30 this morning along the barefoot trail. 1/2 an hour late I thought, it was well and trully daylight. No time for a brew. A five minute drive, a 10 minute walk and we were in stags territory. He wasn't roaring but his rival across the creek was. We played with the wind, and tip-toed around until a hind stepped up in front of us followed by this average sized stag. I gave my pathetic version of a roar: he stopped and was left no time to consider his mistake. Shoulder shot.We removed his eye steaks , back steaks and hind quarters, thank you stag, which were carried out by the younger legs, and we arrived back home at 8.30.

One of the many great things about Minginui is living close to your hunting and all the other taonga the forest has to offer. Step out of your door, with your gun and knife, and you are hunting. For many years that was the only reason i needed to stay here. Now I can just enjoy having a korero, with a bit of plastic pipe for a roaring horn, with a worked up stag in breeding mode. It doesn't have to end in one of us dying for it to be fun.

My son Mana is more keen on the killing side of things and it took a bit of: "on-to-it-ness" on his part to get the chance of a shot.

He is like most Minginui people. Going to the forest is not something you do for warm and fuzzy reasons. You go to the forest to gather resources in order to live. Pork, venison, possum fur/bodies, pikopiko, totara, berries, watercress, firewood, puha, harore,tuna,trout.. the list goes on....Its a bountiful place and we live with an abundance that we give thanks for.

Ewen from Opotiki ways arrived at 9 to do a short course on Bio-Dynamics and we had; Murupara kumaras, our garden spuds, his avocados, store bought mushrooms and fresh backsteak for lunch. Beautiful.

Next blog will be on the garden we are building. Its gonna be awesome.

he toa riri,

2010-03-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

The whakatauki/proverb I was looking for in the last korero goes thus; He toa riri, he kai tena ma te ahi. He toa piki rakau, he kai tena ma te pakiaka. He toa rere moana, he kai tena ma te wai. He toa ngaki kai, he kai tena ma te oneone.

The warrior is food for the fire, the climber is food for the roots, the sailor is food for the sea only the gardener lives to be food for the earth.

I learnt the other day that there are now 6.7 billion humans on this earth, second only in biomass to the krill in the Antarctic, which we are now beginning to exploit.

The ideal/sustainable number of people for this world is 2 billion.

Any volunteers for getting off?

We tend to lose track of these mounting statistics on things that threaten to overwhelm us.

My simple solution.

Get rid of statisticians.

Well.. its a stop-gap measure. We're all into those.

We really must look at ways of minimising our impacts, instead of blithely carrying on in our profound, self-induced, ignorance.

The temperature in the Antarctic peninsular has risen 5 degrees in 20 years!!! We are altering the climate of this world. Even the temperature of the sand ,we have our heads stuck in, will eventually become unbearable.

Better connections with nature are the solution. We can access nature through our selves. It is not apart from us, its a Part of us.

This is the process I am trying to explore.

If watching this space { } means you are not; driving a vehicle needlessly, eating MacDonalds, sawing down trees, or excessively consuming or despoiling any product of this earth..then...please continue..to watch this space { }.

A thought provoking movie I watched the other day, at the Basement theatre in Rotorua was: "This way of Life" I think thats the name near enough. NZ made. Just out.. not long.

About a horse whisperer guy and the difficulties of living a simple, moral life. Go see. Have a think. Don't think.

Aroha nui ki koutou katoa.

He rakau rangatira o te arahuna

2010-03-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

From giant flower to towering tree. This kahikatea is encountered along the "hidden path/ara huna" . This path through the forest, is part of the barefoot trail network that takes you to places known only to a few.

Some years ago, at my request, two aborists climbed this tree and measured it. I should have written the measurements down because now I can only vaguely recall that they were something like; 45 metres to the first branch and 55 or 57 metres total height.

To climb it they used a large slingshot to fire a line over a branch then 'jummared" (spelling) their way up. They had difficulty getting the initial line over the branch because of all the kiekie etc growing on it. The reason for this growth became apparent when they got up there. The branch they were relying on was half rotten. Ye gads.

There is a whakatauki/proverb that goes something like; the bird spearers who climb tress will soon be food for the roots , while those that tend the gardens live to an old age.

Actually this tree is located quite close to a road, a road that was constructed in the 1960's by the Army, who were training in jungle road-making in preparation for Vietnam. Apparently they cut down a larger tree than this, on the roadline, and wanted to divert the road specially so that they could cut this one too. Thankfully that idea was not followed through.
( After writing this I talked to Bob Collins about this (he was incharge of the Whirinaki for 30 years under the Forest Service). He said the army only assisted his main tree faller; Denny Karape, who is still alive and well into his 80's. When Bob talked to the army guys afterwards about how it went with the tree falling they responded that they thought Denny was too slow. It would take several smokes and quite some time for him to size up a tree before starting the chainsaw. Bob's para-phrased response was ; "Thats why hes still alive and many others aren't. If you rush in things are bound to go wrong'.

Lesson learnt.
Another thing that Bob mentioned about the area where this giant grows is the spectre that was photographed by a news crew when the logging protests were going on. Apparently the photo of a group of people near the tree, clearly shows a white figure hovering in the branches above their heads. I think its mentioned in his book.

sunshine

2010-03-08T17:14:00.000-08:00

I agree with the bumble bees sun flowers are awesome.

the barefoot trail continued

2010-03-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

Just the other day..after writing the last blog we came across these "boards" in a compartment of young pine trees. Being totara and matai they have lasted and by their rough shaping must go back some time. (1800's?) They haven't been pit sawn, and would normally be passed over as just bits of wood if the ends hadn't shown distinct adzing or "pointing" with an axe.
There are lots of them and they have been raked into a heap by a digger, windrowing, after the logging that occured here 3 or 4 years previously.
The ground around has been severely disturbed by machines and tree felling and is now covered once again in fast growing pinus radiata- on its second rotation . Of what was there before nothing remains but these barely recognisable relics.
Fading memories from another time.

The barefoot trail

2010-03-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

First of all I heard back from Environment BoP about the broom mite and as far as anyone is concerned its all thoroughly assessed and 100% OK. So I am humbly stepping down off the bandwagon and hanging up my pen, hopefully never to get emotionally involved with such issues again. Yeh right...

The key to it all is; Change yourself and the world changes around you.

or ; Honour life and life will honour you.

Simple??

The photo is of an overgrown, old whare, in the Whirinaki forest . It is more than 100 years old . It has no windows, one low door and a dirt floor. Definitely old style living. Being made of pit sawn totara has helped it to last this long.

It is one of the more modern and most tangible remnants of a tribal civilisation that lived in the Whirinaki for 4 or 500 years or more.

Some of the threads of this civilisation exist today in the Whakapapa and Wharenui of Ngati whare and in the descendants of Wharepakau and Tangiharuru. Other strands are less obvious to see, there is a story in the trees.

In my travels through the forest of the Whirinaki I have come across many "wahi tapu", places of old settlements(kainga), pa ( forts) and such. Because it was a time of stone and wood the evidence has faded quite quickly. No pyramids or gods of stone. Terraced excavations, pits, stones in odd places, bits of obsidian(volcanic glass used for cutting), shaped pieces of wood, vegetation changes and topography are the clues you are looking for. Not that you need to search. They find you- if your eyes are open.

When you see how abundant this evidence is, it brings the realisation that quite a few people lived here and they used the landscape extensively.

In the1970's and early eighties the Forest Service employed archaeologists to map sites within the forest. They picked up many places but only concentrated their efforts in areas that had already been felled or were due to be logged.

Only a fraction of the job was done. There remains a huge area to study- if anyone was so inclined.

An example of vegetation giving a clue to human use of the forest is kanuka. There are pockets of kanuka throughout the lower to mid-altitude forest. Kanuka is a successional plant that generally comes after fern and manuka in the plant colonisation scheme of things. These being some of the first plants to grow after forest disturbance by fire or felling.

My theory for some of the larger kanuka areas is that they were once maintained as bracken fern(aruhe) for food. The fern was burnt every 3 or 4 years to prevent regeneration of other plants, and the very gritty, chewy, high starch roots utilised as a staple food. Once the more palatable potatoe came along, aruhe, was redundant in the diet, and so there was no need to burn anymore. Thus today, perhaps 200 years later, we have kanuka growing where once was fern.

Kanuka is often succeeded by kamahi, and there are also within the forest, extensive kamahi groves, these may indicate older places of possible residence or cultivation. Often the ramparts and trenches of forts, or levelled house sites can be seen carved from the earth on which they grow.

Ti kouka, the cabbage tree, is another halmark of human presence. Many of the large forest clearings on the western side of the valley have at least one big old Ti kouka growing on them. As well as being a source of food, cabbage tree leaves were an important material for making bird snares. The Whirinaki was a bird hunters paradise. Makes sense to have cabbage trees growing where you hunt.

I often pause at these places and try to comprehend what it was like, maera no (in days gone by). Was it hard or easy living? Things like getting firewood must been a limiting factor to staying in any place for long.

How far do you walk to get wood before you shift camp? ( How soon after the Mrs. starts complaining do you think; where next?)

Maybe as you leave, you ring bark a tree so theres wood for another time .

Wood, food, the seasons, and the forest all dictate where you dwell, and how you fare- along the barefoot trail.

swamp monster

2010-02-10T13:40:00.001-08:00

Yesterday Nigs and his dogs encountered this pig in the blackberries and such, in a swamp by the Whirinaki River.

Mark J and Craig carried it out for him. It went 240lb on the scales with the scales having to start a second time around. Mark reckoned it wouldn't be quite that but still an over 200lb beastie. Quite small hooks, did a bit of damage to the dogs, even so.

Mark Tuhuks, in the photo, helped to singe it and its gone to a tangi up the hills for Craigs baby "Hope" who died, in her sleep, at 3 months of age. Haere, haere, haere atu koe ki ou tupuna.

There is a lot that could be written about pigs and their habits in the forest. Sometime maybe.

I have a few more blogs if I get time to put them down. Watch out for; The Lost Civilisation of the Whirinaki.

what use the pen when the sword is a mite

2010-02-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

I often smile at the magic of coincidences the Whirinaki generates, even on somewhat sad occasions. ( Magic coincidences everywhere really) Just before Christmas I rode my bike to the view point on Puke Hou ( a hill just behind Minginui). It is the site of an old kainga and gardens, has been logged a couple of years back and the plantation forest /DoC boundary is a place of rampant broom. Healing the wounds.
I sat there for a while contemplating a beautiful sunset over the valley when I became aware of kereru. A "wha wha" of wings here, a subtle cooing alarm call there. I shifted my focus and in a sudden whoosh of wings around 50 kereru flew out of their precarious perches in the flowering broom. Acknowledged a false alarm. Circled and landed to resume feeding.
Another amazing moment.
We've always known they eat broom flowers as they do kowhai flowers. When there are no berries in the forest( usually more than 6 months of the year) kereru eat foliage and flowers with a preference for high nitrogen containing legumes such as kowhai and broom. They get"scours' from the richness and not fat.
Mark J. had previously observed this hill to be a kereru place, to the extent that a falcon or two was also paying some it attention .
Part of the riddle was now solved, they were attracted to the broom. Why particularly here, and in such numbers, is still unknown.

Skip along to 3 days later and I'm having my usual morning lie in, listening to 1XX ,because thats the only radio station I can recieve, and the big anouncement on local news, is that, EBoP has just released a parasitic mite onto broom at Galatea, in an effort to "bio-control" this "serious pest".

Being so short a time after seeing the biggest flock of kereru anyone is likely to see here, I was stunned.
What are we thinking?
To condemn a plant as a pest is to take a very narrow view of it. Some such as old mans beard maybe worthy of the name. I don't know, I haven't observed it enough.
But broom has so many redeeming qualities.

And why do we as a Noahs Ark of a country isolated in the Pacific so willingly import new greeblies to colonise the land? They may serve a purpose now? What about in ten or a hundred years or a thousand years? If kereru can transfer their feeding habits from kowhai to broom whats to say a little mite can't do the opposite?.

And to who is broom a problem ? If its forestry the why release it at Galatea and if its farmers, how much broom do you actually see on dairy farms? The land is too valuable to tolerate such intrusion and broom is easily controlled by other means.

Should all plants be only measured on their economic benefit or otherwise? I did hear once that broom was being considered as a crop for biofuels.

I had a similar arguement with ERMA some years ago over Buddlea, another much maligned plant that really does no one any harm, and is known in some countries as the butterfly tree. ( After reading my submission, DoC withdrew their support for the release, but it went ahead anyway) Red Admirals here in NZ, love the flowers. They released a weevil, imported from China, to deal to that one.

By itself one greeblie, generally, won't deal with a plant on its own. Its considered that five different bugs are needed for Buddlea and maybe its the same for broom. Maybe the mite won't take or maybe it WILL transfer its attentions to other plants. We just don't know and in nature there are no guarrantees.

WHY even bother to have to consider these things. Just learn to live with what we have and at least learn something from; the stoat, the rabbit, the possum, the hedgehog etc etc.. that have all been imported for "economic" reasons and turned out to be economic burdens.

I have written by e-mail to EBoP twice now pointing out some of my concerns and got a standard; "your query will be replied to within five days." As yet no other response. Five days is now 30.

The photo above was taken yesterday of a kereru feeding on broom flowers in the garden across the road from my home. Its one of the last to flower. Click on the photo to get a better view.

Scientific evidence based on knowledge gained from research is used to justify these introductions. For broom did anyone bother to look and gather observations of a positive or even unbiased nature ,or was it just a case of paint it in a monotone light then we can do what we like? Its a terrible plant that deserves all we can throw at it. YEH.

How often do we do this.... with all sorts of things?

And Kereru, well they have no voice... after-all even their alarm call is a barely audible coo.

COO!!!??

local knowledge

2010-02-08T16:37:00.001-08:00

"Coming for a walk?" says Dean-cock, " we are skinning our line down the Okui today." What better to do on a fine day in spring. The chance to walk up a ridge I'd never been before. An imposing ridge, fringed by waterfall streams and skirted with sheer bluffs into the Whirinaki on one side, and the Hangarau, on the other. For someone like me, not all that enthused about high places, a little bit knee-jittering.
Him , Mark J. and Cave Man had sussed a way up. Steep but easy as. Into possum heaven they reckoned. Coon sign everywhere. Hasn't been trapped or poisoned for years. Bound to get a big kill.
Along the not-so-productive-as-imagined line, we spotted this. A truly trophy Rusa stag head stashed some long years past.
Wow.
Why it wasn't carried out was quickly resolved. Theres no antler on the other side.
And then Cave Man remembered, Terry Robinson, telling him of a stag he had shot with an injured leg and only one long antler.
Terry was probably the last person to to do possums here, and had been working his line when he encountered this stag.
I haven't seen Terry yet, to get the full story. At least 25 years ago Caveman reckoned it would have been.
You can't move it now. The skull and the kaikomako tree are fused together.

This happens quite often, you find a set of antlers at some random place in the forest and an enquiry or two later you've got the story behind it being there. This would have to be the furthest back, in time though, if not in distance.

A month or so after this Mark J. shot a 12 point red deer in velvet in the same area. Maybe I'll tell you about that some other time.

B U 2 the full.

2010-01-11T14:12:00.000-08:00

I have been neglecting my blog and a year or more has gone.. bye. This is one of the Abbey Caves near Whangarei. Awesome place. If you go to Whangarei visit them. Its how tourist attractions used to be, no fees no guides , no OSH BS.
Just unexplored darkness. Unexplored by YOU that is. Worth a look.

The three unwise men, with some of their associated dogs and children. Proving there is still life here in Minginui. Actually things are really happening in our little kainga. We are getting a new water supply. From pumps to pipes, its great. Our old pipes are severely corroded after 60 years of contact with slightly acidic h2o.
We are gonna be water millionaires in the sense that, we have two deep wells in different aquifers and an ample supply of very pure, beautiful, water. Something that is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity.
We are grateful to Government funded TAPS scheme that has allocated money for upgrading rural water supplies and to the contractors/supervisors/managers /nga tangata katoa that are doing the work.
Awesome, really, really neat.
This is paradise here, if we let it be. Its a very special place.
I can hear a long tailed cuckoo, kokoea, calling. Soon they will be winging it back to the Soloman Islands. Years ago, people here, used to wear their tail feathers in their hats/hair. This place was known for its "cuckoo people." Perhaps it could be said: "Not much has changed in that regard"..

piece of darkness

2008-09-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

Its been a while. I have to change the title of this blog. I am no longer a kiwi tracker. I am now plucking possum fur to survive. Using around 100 traps myself and my son Mana have been trapping possums for a few months now. When the weather allows. The fur is worth $105/kilo. It takes between 10 and 20 possums to make a kilo of fur. In the last week we have collected 12 kilos.
Though you ahve the freedom of being your own boss, it is not an easy job. For one thing it involves killing things, namely possums. A hammer is the weapon of choice and once they have been quickly dispatched you have about 15 minutes to pluck their fur. In that time, just after death, it comes out easily. Some sources say the NZ possum fur industry is worth $100 million. It has to be up there somewhere.
Possums were introduced from Australia to New Zealand. Conditions here are to their liking and they have proliferated in New Zealand forest lands. They are deemed a pest. I don't like that word. Once an animal, or plant, is labelled a PEST anything can be done to it. It gets no respect and little compassion from the human mind. Yet if we are handing out PEST labels we would be top of the list. We are the greatest wreckers of this world. "Animal of concern" might be more PC than PEST, if you really want a label.
I am grateful to the possum for the food it puts on my table and the bills that I am able to pay.
Long live possums.

Recently I learned we share 75% of our genes with dogs and 35% with daffodils- which expains a lot of abberrant behaviours. Somewhere between these %'s perhaps, or is it more?, lies our shared gene pool with possums.
All things are connected.
In the last few weeks the pine trees have been producing pollen. Pollen has all the nutrients necessary for survival. Possums are drawn out of the native forest to feast on pine pollen cones. It makes it easier to trap them when they concregate at a food source. We caught just over 100 possums in along a 200 metre boundary between a pine plantation and a native forest.
Pine trees are another introduced species that we have little respect for. They have genetically engineered a pine tree so it has no reproductive parts. This means no pollen and no seeds. Many animals, both native and introduced rely on pine pollen and seed. It will be a sad day in a saga of sad days when neutered pine trees are grown in our forests. Not just because I will no longer be able to trap possums so easily, at a certain time of the year.
All things are connected.

last day of work

2008-04-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

This is a mushroom. The fish in the previous blog was a Koaro. Slightly more boring than a GIANT kokopu but no less tasty. Just kidding. This mushroom is the biggest I have seen and is the width of a phone book. It has been an incredible autumn for mushrooms which have been popping up the paddocks for the last two months or so. Yum. Farm fertiliser has helped this one grow big.
Friday the 18th of April was my last day of work. Although I have a few days of tidy-up work to do tracking some wayward kiwi.
Not sure what is happening from here, theres talk of contracts /tenders/ no money to do anything, who knows?? In the mean time, I am in survival mode and looking forward to the challenge. Becoming more self-sufficient and living more sustainably. Being free. Is it possible? If it is anywhere its here in Minginui.
I have been re-reading Aldo Leopold stuff just lately such a wise man for his time, for anytime. The world could do with a hundred "Aldos" right now.
We have made a mess and seem to be blindly carrying on as if its someone else's problem to fix. A radical change in thinking and action is in order. Old times are gone.
Food is getting short and oil is diminishing.
Grow your own- stop driving.
That these two things are impossible to do, for most of us, says something about where we are at.

blogfish

2008-04-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

Half the battle is baffling the boffins- try saying that 10 times. Anyway the fish of the previous blog has yet to be identified . Markings don't kind fit either a koaro or a giant kokopu. Have to wait and see.

kokopu dreams

2008-04-10T18:15:00.001-07:00

The fish in this photo is a "native trout" /kokopu/ Gallaxidae spp. It is probably a Giant kokopu and if it is would be a first recording , as far as I am aware, for the Whirinaki Conservation Park. It was caught, photographed and returned to the stream last night while on a kiwi catching expedition with Lance Dew. He had seen it in the stream the night before.
These fish migrate upstream from the sea spend their lives in streams and rivers and return to spawn in the estuaries.
The streams are very low at the moment which fish such as these have become more visible.

This photo gives an idea of the size.

in da hills

2008-04-09T00:36:00.001-07:00

In the middle of this photo is one of the huts I stay at when doing kiwi work. It takes about 2 and a half hours to walk from the road to this hut. There is no track as such you just have to know where you are going. Very peaceful place. There is no trouble there except what you bring with you.

While staying at this hut I caught up with this kiwi.His name is Titoko, well thats my name for him. Took 4 hours of radio-tracking to locate him and change his transmitter in preparation for the start of a new breeding season.
Apparently kiwi have very poor eyesight, but good hearing and sense of smell. This makes them more like mammals than night birds. Think of owls, they have large eyes.

Hunting season.

2008-04-08T23:01:00.001-07:00

This photo is of a kereru /wood pigeon, one of two found dead close to each other beside this creek. It has probably been killed by a wild cat. Kereru eat miro berries. They get thirsty eating these berries and land by streams to drink. Thats when cats ambush them. Sometimes falcons kill kereru too. They do this by knocking them out of the sky with their feet then killing them on the ground.
By amateur forsenics we figured these bird deaths to be cat kills. 1) They were both beside water under a shrub canopy and 2) some of the bones had been bitten through, not a trade mark of a falcon as it tears meat off its prey with its beak.

This photo here if you click on the middle and enlarge it, shows a 6 point stag. Its the roaring/mating season for deer in the forest and for about 2 or 3 weeks stags like to roar . This one gave a 'roar" when I was close to it so I roared back. After some time of exchanging insults he came even closer to check me out. He was only about 30 metres away when I took this photo.
The dead branches, seen here, are the result of a snowstorm that happened in the forest nearly 2 years ago. It was a very heavy fall and caused a lot of damage to the trees.
This "snow damage" debri makes it very difficult to travel around the bush( for deer and people) and it will be several years before it rots away.

click on this photo

2008-04-06T13:56:00.001-07:00

This is a photo of the place I live and love. The Whirinaki. It shows the inter-mixing of exotic forest plantations and native forest. The planted trees radiata and douglas fir have a huge role to play in the Whirinaki ecosystem. One example is if you look at the round hill in the centre, which has D.fir growing on it, you will see many dead tops. This is caused by kaka who use the exotic forest as a food resource. Female kaka bark strip the branches of D.Fir in spring and eat the nutritious cambium layer found below the inner bark. When they ring bark a branch it dies.
Male kaka have a larger , stronger beak and they prise open pine cones and eat the high protein seeds found inside.
As I explained in my previous blog, the large native trees only fruit infrequently. Birds such as kaka utilise the exotic forest to supplement their diet in what would otherwise be lean times. My guess is the high numbers of kaka still remaining in the Whirinaki can partly be attributed to the presence of exotics nearby.

The lesson of fruit

2008-04-06T13:24:00.001-07:00

These are totara fruit. We are experiencing a fruiting autumn in the forest. It doesn't happen every year. Many of the podocarp trees only fruit sporadically. No one knows what triggers fruiting. Several hundred years of close observation by Maori could only come up with the explanation; "they fruit when they want to". Modern science says two good years in ten is the average.
The last time we had a good berries like this was 4 years ago. It could happen again next year or not for another 4 years or more.
Some birds like kaka(forest parrot) only nest when there is good fruiting. What is not known is how they predict when its going to happen as they start nesting in September/October in preparation for an abundance of food in the autumn.(March/ April)
There is an underlying current of knowledge we haven't yet tapped into. I have always said that we need to make two quantum leaps .. First is the discovery of new information and the second leap is what we do about it. Interestingly "quantum physics " seems to have some of the answers. (Watch "What the bleep do we know" its on the right path)
When we can" see " it will radically change our understanding of our environment and our part in it. EVERYTHING is connected. Absolutely. In the Maori world its called WHAKAPAPA. Thats the connectivity between all living things. From trees and animals to man there is no seperation except in our conscious minds.
Science now tells us 95% of our genes are the same as found in mice and the biggest difference in the other 5% is that mice have a better sense of smell. Thats whakapapa. When you trap or poison a mouse you are doing it to one of your distant -but not that distant-relations.
Going back to these fruits. Although small they are very delicious to eat and are reputed to be high in antioxidants. Many of NZ's birds are very long lived perhaps what they eat has something to do with it.
I used to think the forest spirit was neutral now I know I have confused neutrality with a great forgiveness. WE know not what we do.
If want to see abundant birdlife come to the podocarp forest of the Whirinaki now.

2008-04-01T19:35:00.001-07:00

This is another photo of the area that is to be cleared for farmland. This photo shows tall kanuka that is probably 60 to 80 years old. Underneath this kanuka is kamahi and regenerating rimu, totara etc. The whole hill is a mosaic of succession types reflecting its past human use over several hundred years. Areas were cleared, by fire and adze( hard work) for cultivation of crops such as kumara and later potaoes but probably primarily for aruhe or fern root. A staple part of maori diet in pre-european times.
Just down of the top of the hill is a spring which even in the drought conditions we have been having( driest in 100 years they are now saying) is still producing good water.

2008-03-31T22:05:00.001-07:00

This is a very sad picture and not just because I'm in it. These trees are 30 to 40 year old(my estimate could be older) kamahi trees on privately owned land next to the Whirinaki Conservation Park. I trespassed to take this photo. Some months ago they were sprayed, with dessicant spray , and the area is to be burned, cleared and converted into farmland.
In these global warming days where emissions from farmland account for some 40% of NZ's contribution to green house gases many farmers still ain't got the message and continue to indulge in environmental vandalism. Short-sighted, pure greed prevails. Thing is this forest may be able to earn its way as carbon credits.
Near this site is an old pa which has recently been bulldozed.
All done with the approval of the local manager of the Department of Conservation.

Sad picture alright. Anyone got a $100K to spare to save this land?

Te ariki o te ngahere

2008-03-31T21:19:00.003-07:00

Paramount chief of the Forest; This is the hollow base of a totara approaching 1000 years in age. It has been carbon-dated to 850 + or minus 50 years but the sample was taken from inside the hollow where the oldest timber has gone.
Many of his similarly aged brothers and sisters nearby have fallen over. Wild Pigs sometimes use the hollow base to sleep in .
When this tree was a seedling the first people arrived in Aotearoa/ New Zealand.

2008-03-19T14:38:00.001-07:00

Above is a Tarata tree. It has lemony scented leaves which were once used as a perfume.
Mamaku ferns in early sunlight. We are experiencing very dry conditions here in the Whirinaki. Most days are like this- cloudless blue. Some trees, on drier sites are dying off. Streams have dried up. It must have been a long time since it was last this dry.

2008-03-19T14:02:00.001-07:00

Just spent a lovely week on Moutohora Island. Its a 143ha. pest free wildlife reserve 5 or so kilometres off the coast at Whakatane.
Over the summer people are stationed on the island to watch for fires and unauthorised landings. Groups go over for a week at a time.
Its a great place to have time out and relax.
This fish was washed up on the beach while we were there. Very eel like. I think its a Frost fish.

This island is part of an old volcano and still has active thermal springs. Not so long ago it was mostly grass with a only few trees . Many years of active restoration effort has made it how it is now. Tino ataahua/beautiful.
There are something like 50,000 pairs of Grey faced Petrels on the island. Their nesting burrows are everywhere. Titi is their Maori name and they used to be harvested here. The chicks prior to fledging are very fat. In the sixties, introduced predators, mainly the rat, caused the numbers of birds on the island to decline and maori voluntarily stopped their traditional harvest. Now it is controlled by a Government department ( DoC) and even though they are plentiful once again it would be very difficult for the tangata whenua/local tribe - Ngati Awa, to get permission to resume the sustainable harvesting which occured here for hundreds of years. During this time other neighboring iwi such as Ngai Tuhoe were also given access by Ngati Awa.
Maybe one day it will happen again but now, possibly, one of the bigger problems for these birds is disturbance to fish stocks and over fishing, by man, of their food resource.
" Footprints in the sand are not made by sitting around!!??"

2008-03-19T13:38:00.001-07:00

These are huhu "grubs" . Larvae of the huhu beetle. They live in the soft/sap wood of fallen or standing dead trees and are an important recycler of forest nutrients. Like many native insects Huhu have an appetite for pine wood in exotic forest plantations and are found in far greater abundance in "cut over " forest compartments than they are in native forests. It takes 2 to 3 years for them to reduce a pine log or stump to dust.
To animals that prey on them they are a delicacy . Wild pigs will spend many hours breaking open logs to get these larvae. ( they are part of the reason why pigs are always generally fat in the pine forest but quite often skinny and in poor condition in the native forest).
When they hatch into the beetle and swarm in their thousands, in summer, birds such as the falcon also feed on them. It would be interesting to calculate their biomass in cut over pine forest a year or so after felling.
Kiwis love them too. When juvenile kiwi come out from Kiwi Encounter I go to the pine forest and collect a couple of small jars of huhu and as I am "doing the rounds" of tracking and checking their locations I drop a handful of grubs to each one. I feel it helps them to adjust from captivity to living in the wild.
Huhus are neat . The ultimate recyclers of soft wood.

2008-01-05T23:30:00.001-08:00

Blue duck/Whio

2008-01-01T13:00:00.001-08:00

This is a photo I took the other day of a blue duck. I like it because the border between duck and water is blurred. These ducks like to live in fast flowing water, rapids etc. They feed on invertebrate larvae that cling to the rocks.

2008-01-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Great I'm back in the picture. This is "Tame Iti" the kiwi chick, as opposed to Tame Iti theTuhoe activist. On the day he was arrested i recovered this newly hatched chick from a nest and took it into to Kiwi Encounter in Rotorua. ( Without rescuing it has something like a 5% chance of evading predators) It is doing well and will return to the Whirinaki in a month or so.
Its 2008!!! Though I've tried not to notice.

nest robbing

2007-09-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

Its been a while, a busy while. Courses and other distractions have have shifted my attention from kiwi work a little You have to be focussed. I am now.
Its been a late nesting season for kiwi in the Whirinaki. No eggs have been recovered yet. Thats about to change with a nest raid planned for tomorrow night. I did a 5 hour walk today and managed to locate the nest after following the transmitter signal up the wrong ridge. Nice view from the top anyway.
The name of the bird is Manu Rau which means "100 birds". This was the nickname given by Maori to Von Tempsky during the New Zealand wars of the 1860's. He was an officer in command of the Bush Rangers and so named because he would pop up here there and everywhere unexpectedly. Manu rau is also my objective : to return 100 juvenile kiwi to the wild. We are 17 away from this tally.
Thats that one. Last week I staked out Nohotoas nest. Noho/sit, toa/warrior. "Sitting warrior" is an apt name for him. I waited all night for him to come off the nest. At daylight we were both still sitting. This is behaviour is normal for him and not for me- I like my sleep.zzz. He must actually starve himself when incubating eggs. Last year it was four nights before I managed to get the eggs and they were two small duds. Saved him a lot of wasted time, when next I caught up with him he wasn't at all grateful.
I am hoping for better this year. There has to be a return for all this sleep deprivation.
Spring is creeping into the forest. From frosts and snow last week we are have now acquired some mild weather. In Rotorua the kowhai are flowering. We are always about a month behind.
Ka kite...