Jurassic jewel of Fiordland

CAMERON WILLIAMSON takes in the breathtaking beauty of Hollyford Valley.

The fourth footstep of the Hollyford Track is neither the time nor the place to be dizzied by vertigo. The first three have brought us, by way of wooden steps, to the root of a 30cm-wide suspension bridge strung across a bouldered gully. Whitewater rushes below and beech forest rises from the river's sheer side walls to meet Fiordland's highest peaks, towering above us into a cloudless sky.

"I'm not entirely comfortable with this," offers Ilene, the Californian psychotherapist who is one of our posse of trampers on this wilderness valley walk. With encouragement from behind, Ilene confronts her phobia, grasps the handholds and takes the next wobbly step, and the next, until she reaches solid ground on the far side. She turns with a beaming smile on realising she has stepped into a primal paradise, into the Jurassic jewel that is the Hollyford Valley, Fiordland.

By the end of the four-day tour down the 57km Hollyford Valley, our posse of five will have dealt with solitude, adrenalin overdose, urban withdrawal, fear of flying in small aeroplanes, and too much good food and wine. We will be dog-tired but relaxed.

My guide is Marty Sharpe, a red-headed, bearded South Islander, lean from winters on the skifields and summers on the track. He has bussed us to the head of the track on the morning of our second day after a first-day briefing in Te Anau. He shepherds us across the suspension bridge, points us north and I start walking.

The single-file trail threads under a canopy of black-trunked evergreen beech trees whose confetti-sized leaves filter the light into a dense undergrowth of fern.

The bush smells damp and peaty, but thankfully the day is dry. In an area deluged with 7m of rain each year, it is a blessing. It is cool in here. I'm wearing gaiters above my boots to ward off barbed seeds and scratches, short pants but long sleeves. Despite the summery December day that will warm to 25C, my fingertips feel a nip in the air if I stop swinging them.

We're carrying modest packs for an expedition into an area so isolated. Te Anau is 100km behind; our wilderness lodge is still 17km and five hours' walk away. But a luxury of the Hollyford Valley Walk is that you carry only your essentials. Everything else is provided.

We walk three hours before lunch. I set my own pace, wandering with private thoughts as civilisation and all its baggage falls further behind.

We come together only when Marty stops to introduce the mighty forest trees or strikes up a whistling dialogue with one of the native woodland birds.

The sound of water is all around as it dances through tumbling creeks in a race to join the curling, gin-clear Hollyford. The water is sweet and eminently drinkable.

It's the way the world was before man, before dinosaurs, but not, unfortunately, before bugs. Clouds of little black sandflies can drive the unprepared to unspeakable acts. Marty turns down the offer of a squirt of insect repellent, saying, "Three more bites and I'll be immune."

A gentle breeze and the shade of a tiny musterer's hut keep the sandflies away as I eat a packed lunch.

Marty tells us the sad saga of the havoc wreaked by mammals introduced to New Zealand, from the rats and dogs that came with the Maori 900-odd years ago, to the goats, deer, rabbits, possums and mustelids (stoats, ferrets and weasels) that came with the Europeans early last century.

Marty also relates the legend of Davey Gunn, who built this hut. Gunn was a cattleman who grazed stock here until the 1950s. He relished the solitude of the bush.

One December evening in 1936, a plane crashed trying to land on the coast. Gunn found six passengers badly injured, one mortally. In his dash for help, Gunn rode 15km to his dinghy on Lake McKerrow, rowed 15km up the lake and, despite the pitch-black night, covered 40km on foot to raise the alarm.

Gunn set up guided tramps through the area, and his son Murray runs a museum, a library and a bush camp near the top of the valley, teasing tourists for sport.

At Murray's museum, one of our team popped $2 on the counter. "What's that for?" he asked. "The museum," she said. He looked hurt and said, "That's not enough. I want two million for the museum."

With a pause at Hidden Falls and a rest at Little Homer Saddle - 186m above sea level, the track's highest point - my 8km afternoon amble leads me to a riverside glade to the wood-clad Pyke Lodge.

Marie, the happy hostess, cooks sumptuous meals with the same skill as she traps possums. She has one of the furry marsupials trapped by the neck each morning, her contribution to conserving the forest, and shocking the tourists.

The A-gabled lounge looks straight across the river to Mt Madeline (2537m), which shelters Fiordland's tallest peak, Mt Tutoko (2746m).

After a quick sortie to spy on glow-worms and feed the wild eels, I take to my sandfly-proof bunkroom, where a hot shower and comfy bed soothe tired limbs and send me into a deep, untroubled sleep.

On the second day a warm-up hike to Lake Alabaster and a bounce across the longest suspension bridge in Fiordland lead us to Gavin, the jetboat driver.

Gavin transports us an hour down the sparkling Lake McKerrow, skirting the rigours of Demon Trail, and stopping to point out a pod of dusky dolphins which have swum up the estuary into the fresh water to rid themselves of sea lice.

We land on the beach at the site of Jamestown, dreamed up and established in the middle of last century, now just a lonely plaque and a footnote in history.

We're tramping the podocarp trail now, where 1000-year-old hardwood trees drip with epiphytes.

I catch a whiff of the sea as we arrive at Martins Bay Lodge.



The lodge host says we've just missed seeing the rare crested penguins, which head off to sea before Christmas, but by rock-hopping for an hour to where the mighty river meets the Tasman Sea we find a colony of fur seals and their pups.

So the last evening we spend at Martins Bay Lodge, suffused with the velvet light of a West Coast sunset, is poignant.

Day four is my last in the valley and I take a bird's-eye review of my journey from the windows of a Cessna as I fly to Milford Sound.. I know we are rejoining the well-beaten tourist trail and keep to myself during the boat cruise on the Sound, a little island of protest against mass tourism.

Ilene is standing by the gangway as we leave the ship, and in an inexplicable rush of chivalry I offer to help her on to the wharf. "Forget about it!" she says. "I can do this all by myself."

Hollyford track

CASE NOTES

The area: Fiordland National Park's 1.2 million ha of coastal forest make it the seventh largest national park in the world. It was gazetted as a World Heritage Area in 1986.

Costs: From the end of May (new season) prices are three-day tour $1290, child $970.

Day walks from Queenstown in to Pyke Lodge are available. Other options can be arranged with Hollyford HQ in Queenstown.

Contact: freephone 0800 832 226, ph (03) 442 3760, fax (03) 442 3761, email info@hollyfordtrack.co.nz

Accommodation: Charlie's Place is another reasonably priced lodge on the track. Charlie's Place