Outdoors: On the trail of true enjoyment

By COLIN MOORE

My first editor at the Herald, O.S. Hintz, was a large and lugubrious man whose only communication with lowly cadets was something between a grunt and growl.

Hintz' was at least passionate about trout fishing, and years after I had heard his last growl I found his book on Taupo trout fishing in a secondhand bookstore in Queenstown.

I bought it to read in front of the open fire in the bar of Eichardts hotel while the rain beat outside and the Coronet Peak skifield stayed firmly closed. And there I read: "A good half of true enjoyment is the pursuit of pleasure that can be happily shared."

Perhaps because I was on my own or perhaps because of my surprise that the sentiment was from Hintz, I marked the passage, which has been on the front page of my diary ever since.

Hintz was a trout fisher, not a tramper, but his observation on true enjoyment was never more appropriate than on a mid-week ramble in the Goldie Bush and Motutara Scenic Reserves in the Waitakere Ranges.

A quartet of the retired, semi-retired, self-employed and self-indulgent, we have the good fortune to be able to sneak away while others are hard at their labours. We might have had golf clubs in the boot of the car or trout-fishing rods, but on this day our pursuit to be shared required tramping boots, a walking staff, water bottle and packed lunch.

I have passed the entrance to Goldie Bush in Constable Rd, near Muriwai, several times, because the Te Henga walkway - that wonderful trail along the rugged west coast to Bethells Beach and a link between the parkland of the Waitakeres and Muriwai Regional Park - also begins in Constable Rd.

But I had never previously stopped to investigate the reserve, which is a sort of outlier of regenerating native bush to the north of the bulk of the bushclad Waitakeres.

Its recent history lies in logging and while that may, for a few generations anyway, mean that its kauri stands are a long way short of deserving the title magnificent, it does give the reserves an additional dimension.

The logging tracks and skids are easily discernible. So is the base of an old kauri dam in the Mokoroa Stream, whose pent-up waters would once have sent logs rushing downstream.

There is a loop track through the two reserves totalling about 6.4km and taking a comfortable 3 1/2 hours to complete. You can join at Constable Rd, as we did, or at the other end of the loop at Horseman Rd. Or, if you organise shuttle transport, you can go just one way.

From Constable Rd the trail winds downhill until it reaches the Mokoroa Stream. I love stream bashing. It is quintessential New Zealand tramping - wading up and across streams, in strong and well-oiled leather boots, the water intoxicating your senses with its many colours and its tonal range. Ferns and flax overhang the banks and often as not a fantail, hoping your passage will disturb some tasty insects, will follow you, darting ahead and then slipping behind.

The Goldie Bush trail is more alongside the Mokoroa Stream than through it, but while traversing it is not strictly a stream bash, you do have to make sufficient crossings to get that feeling of an adventure into the unknown.

Now and again the stream bed has been dropped by the forces of nature into large steps that the water cascades down and that you must cross over - with care if you don't want to slip to an unwelcome swim. In summer it would take very little persuasion to cool off in the waterholes.

About 2.5km along the stream is our goal, the Mokoroa Falls. They are framed by bush and tumble into a large pool.

It's a delightful spot and would be superb for a summer picnic, but this is winter and the stream is in shade, so we climb to a lookout opposite the falls where the sun warms a large rock on which we stop for lunch.

I don't think us oldies in Goldie have stopped talking since we set off. We are catching up on a lot of gossip and news of recent adventures and this sunny, mid-winter day in the tranquillity of the Waitakere Ranges bush has us drunk with the satisfaction of our good fortune to be in this spot. We babble along like the stream below us.

Our route back to Constable Rd is along a ridge, through regenerating kauri and kanuka.

Some stands of kauri rickers are as thickly packed as a maize field. Not all will survive the coming centuries to become forest giants, but there is no shortage of candidates from which nature can choose the fittest.

It is reassuring. Our happy quartet won't be around to see the forest return to its former glory, but we have seen its promise and shared the magic, albeit briefly, of the New Zealand bush.

It was, as Hintz so rightly wrote, true enjoyment, happily shared.

* Colin Moore.