Three Veils Falls in the Lenz Reserve. Photo: Supplied
Three Veils Falls in the Lenz Reserve. Photo: Supplied
Tis a grand thing to roll up (quietly) to your Forest and Bird hut in a Tesla. Grand and kind of counter-intuitive. It's altogether too money-bags, too techno-boastful, frankly too bloody flash for people about to spend the night in a sleeping bag.
But that's exactly what we do in Lenz Reserve in the Catlins and it's okay because the Tesla is driven by a former chair of the local Forest and Bird and he's only bought such an extravagant car because it's electric and he doesn't even fly, not even around New Zealand, any more.
We do. We fly to Dunedin from Auckland, spraying money and compliments like cheap champagne - how reasonably priced everything is, how much better quality, how nice the people. Honestly, we're that abjectly euphoric, we sicken ourselves. The truth is we'd never live anywhere else but Auckland.
But being Kiwis of Southern origin means we know people so we hire a small thrifty car and drive to friends' hazelnut farm outside Balclutha and park our nothing brand next to the Tesla. Here everything we eat comes with hazelnuts, which feels luxurious since we've already learned that they're not that easy to grow. Well, they are if the site is sheltered, and our friends do live in a basin but the wind has sneaky ways of tossing trees around even here. It is windy when we arrive and windy when we leave the next day for Lenz Reserve. Windy and rainy as it turns out.
On the way Nugget Point robs us of the ability to speak, it is that gusty. Our breathy superlatives are blown out to sea and likely end up somewhere beyond the exposed promontory where a lighthouse once kept active watch. Here, amid the smashing sea and wave-eroded rocks (the nuggets), wheeling seabirds find purchase in a place so inhospitable at least it keeps humans out.
Nugget Point in The Catlins.
Purakaunui Falls is apparently the poster child of The Catlins. The three-tiered veils of water found at the end of an easy 20-minute walk through beech and podocarp forest deserve the admiration and top calendar billing they regularly get. Honestly, I've walked entire days to see less overseas. This time we don't need to shout to be heard above the wind but the only decent response to such green watery beauty is silence.
Finally, 72km south of Balclutha and a kilometre from the coast, we arrive at 550ha of regenerating kāmahi/rimu/rātā forest named Lenz Reserve, after a woman known only as Mrs Lenz. In 1964, Mrs Lenz gifted money to buy the land. Bless.
The raw beauty of Lenz Reserve in The Catlins. Photo: Supplied
Over the years local conservationists built the cabins and planted natives around the property, including the row of small Kōwhai being merrily stripped by a fat kererū. Lurking in the vicinity, I'm told, are the rather too well-camouflaged forest gecko, green tree frogs and 16 types of native fish. Also bats. During December and January, bat-watching gatherings are held nearby. More visible are birds such as the brown creeper, grey warbler, pipit, grey duck and bellbird, though, frankly, that's not saying a lot. A sign in the reserve describing the sounds the birds make is a better bet and fantastically specific it is too. The brown creeper/pīpipi says 'chi-roh-ree-roh-ree-ree' while the tomtit/mirmiro goes 'ti oly oly oly oh.'
The sharp-eyed might even spy (or hear) a fernbird ('tchip tchip, tchip') hiding in plain sight in the Tautuku estuary, not strictly part of Lenz Reserve but close enough, and, god love DoC workers, offering a boardwalk. Even better that it winds through boggy saltmarsh containing russet-coloured reeds overlooked by distant gloomy stands of rimu and southern rātā.
The raw beauty of Lenz Reserve in The Catlins. Photo: Supplied
Those reliable wreckers, homo sapiens, also altered this landscape by milling, then farming the land. Lenz sawmills were just two of 182 mills to lay waste to 70 per cent of the reserve. Once thick with mighty rimu, miro, mataī and tōtara, it is now mainly populated by medium-sized kāmahi and the odd podocarp pocket, just enough to give you an idea of what's been lost and what's bound to return if we leave well enough alone.
Also left behind was a tramway locomotive engine and bogie as well as a Fordson farm tractor converted to work on wooden rails by an ingenious chap called Frank Traill in 1924. We marvel at it all while eating gooey sandwiches in a soft drizzle.
Enough of nature and the damp outdoors. There will be moss between our toes at this rate. We forgo cooking in our hut, well-appointed though it is, and decide to drive to The Whistling Frog for dinner. The food is of course, great, and yes, so much better value for money than we're used to. There we go again, floating away in an updraught of euphoria. There's not even time to come to earth on the return drive in the Tesla because suddenly there's another Tesla up ahead so we race to catch it because we can. And then we're all parked on the side of the road admiring our respective vehicles and our joint great taste, all the better, we think, for being viewed against the lush verdigris backdrop of regenerating native bush.
