Pure bliss in the back of beyond

Where in New Zealand can you hunt, fish, explore nature and encounter endangered native birds, then finish the day with a massage and a sauna? COLIN MOORE discovers the delights of Paparangi Station.

Brian Crawford describes the bird call as the screech of a rusty gate hinge. It is a North Island
kaka, heard but not seen as we climb a bush ridge on the edge of the remote Raukumara Range, near the headwaters of the Motu River.

The apt description was coined by an uncle of Crawford's who introduced him to the bush many years ago, when kaka were still plentiful in the rugged forests of the Ureweras.

This rusty hinge is good, because it means a pocket of kaka have survived in Crawford's private patch of regenerating native bush - against overwhelming odds.

Over nearly four decades, the bush was ripped apart by loggers, who took with them any salvageable dead or dying trees in whose lofty hollows kaka built their nests.

Possums compete with the birds for food and wasps compete for honeydew. And the few birds that find somewhere to nest face the threat of stoats climbing the trees and cleaning out the nests.

Help is at hand for kaka survivors on about 400 ha of bush at Paparangi Station.

Crawford and his partner, Yvonne Skudder, trap stoats and possums, and protect dead trees as zealously as live ones.

It is a labour of love, but the public will mostly enjoy the fruits of it.

Crawford milked cows for 25 years before deciding there had to be more to life than dawn and dusk in a cowshed. So three years ago he and Skudder left the tidy pastures of a dairy farm at Reporoa for 800 ha of ridge and ravine that was advertised as a "remote Motu station" and was in their price range.

The idea was to escape to a lifestyle closer to the bush and hunting expeditions that Crawford loves and run stock that make fewer daily demands than dairy cows.

But as the couple walked over the property other ideas began to intrude.

"When we climbed to the highest point on the station and looked at the bush and the Raukumara Range we saw the station's tourist potential," says Crawford.

Paparangi Ventures was born, and with limited finance but a lot of hard work, a
resort as distinctive as the Raukumara bush was created.

It's raining when I reach Matawai, in the middle of the Opotiki to Gisborne highway, and telephone Paparangi for final directions. They're simple enough: follow your nose to Motu - and keep on going.

This is an area rich in history for Maori and Pakeha. Here the Motu River, protected as a wilderness zone by a special act of parliament, begins its 90km journey to the coast between Opotiki and Te Kaha, carving its way through some of the wildest bush in New Zealand.

The river is placid, almost brook-like, on the river flats at Motu, where early European settlers harvested the forest to feed a clutch of sawmills and create tidy farms.

They sent their cream to Gisborne by rail - across a wooden bridge that now stands alone in the middle of a paddock as the Motu bubbles along beneath it.

Around here, the redoubtable fishing guide Frank Murphy takes his clients to hidden pools to
catch and release huge brown trout, fat with green beetle and almost tame.

My destination is further downstream and into the hills, through eight gates that cross the road as it runs through an adjoining station. The trail is partly a legacy of a foolish investigation of the river for hydro-electricity generation and provides handy access to the Motu hinterland.

The first Pakeha to farm Paparangi reached it by canoe. Now you can make it all the way by
four-wheel drive, so long as the Motu is not running too high, which makes the crossing to the homestead impassable. When that happens a flying fox will get you in or out.

About 400 ha of Paparangi is slowly being developed as a deer breeding unit - as finance for fencing permits. But increasingly it is tourism that most excites Crawford and Skudder. And their dreams of its possibilities are boundless.

I spend the night in their homestead after feasting on home-killed roast lamb. The loggers who rav
aged the property for years did leave one useful mark of their passing: the roads they bulldozed
into impossibly steep terrain to drag out the logs are now useful trails through the bush.

Most of the roads have been softened by regrowth, but the major artery of the logging road network follows high above the Motu River and is still passable to four-wheel-drive vehicles.

In a flat area once used as the loggers' headquarters and a wild deer trap, are the Paparangi Ventures cabins. Crawford and Skudder extended an old logging hut into their first bush cabin,
which they call Vision. Then they built a second, which they call Courage, and a third, with a painted interior, which they call Reality.

Another small building has two flush toilets and gas-fired hot showers. For the moment these, and one more isolated hut, are the extent of their enterprise, though not their vision. The cabins sleep six and
have gas-fired cookers and all crockery and utensils.

From March until the end of September Paparangi is a controlled hunting area which, with the inclusion of a large block of the adjoining Raukumara Forest Park, is managed as three large blocks, rotated among the hunting parties staying in the cabins.

With advice from fish and game consultant, Cam Speedy, Crawford has begun a deer quality management programme that, in time, should see trophy red deer stags taken from Paparangi. Trout fishing and pig hunting are also catered for.

Word has got around the hunting fraternity of a safe and comfortable place to hunt without problems of access, and the Paparangi Ventures hunters' newsletter now goes to 150 clients.

Hunters are prepared to pay for the security of operating in a block free of the danger of other hunters, and with a hot shower to come home to at night.

When the hunting season is over, Paparangi becomes a place for families and other groups to enjoy the outdoors in a solitude not always found in public parks.

Two rough bush tracks have been cut to link with the old logging roads and create two five-hour loop walks. Many further walks are possible in the adjoining Raukumara Forest Park, while the Motu
lies waiting for kayakers.

The most striking feature of the Paparangi bush is the vigour with which it has regenerated.
Trees that were left as too small are now quite large, while beneath them are healthy
colonies of young rimu, matai and totara .

Crawford, who guides the walks, points to the regeneration with enthusiasm. He walks with the quiet, measured pace of someone who has spent most of his time in the bush hunting deer - rather than the
racing stride of some trampers - so there is plenty of time to admire just how resilient this New Zealand bush is.

We climb higher and higher on a ridge until mountain flax appears in the under growth. Our destination is a stand of huge beech, rimu and rata that fortunately lay out of reach of the loggers. A rusty gate hinge screeches again.

Back at the cabins Crawford and Skudder have invited a few locals to enjoy a barbecue and some poems from bush bard Terry Sleator around a roaring log fire.

There is a crew from Opotiki researching a four-wheel-drive tour that will go over forgotten bush trails off the old Motu road and include a night at Paparangi, and a station owner's wife with a cultured English accent who came to New Zealand to visit a friend, got side-tracked to a ewe sale at
Matawai, and never left.

I drift off to sleep in Courage to the sound of moreporks and wake to the sound of tui. Unlike most backcountry huts, I have this one to myself or, had I brought them, my family. That's worth as much as a hot shower.

That experience would be enough to make a few days at Paparangi blissfully relaxing, but there is yet another treat in store.

Skudder learned deep, aromatherapy massage from her Tongan grandmother and used to run a clinic in Tauranga. Her strong, sensitive hands have an uncanny ability to seek out and massage away old
aches and pains.

I receive the full treatment, including a facial massage that clears my sinuses and a spell in a mini sauna.

I have stayed at more luxurious places but never at any that were more relaxing.

CASENOTES:

Getting there: By road to Opotitki, then to Motu via Matawai.

Things to do: Bush walks, bird watching, kayaking, eeling, fishing, hunting , four-
wheel driving, white-water rafting.

Costs: Cabins, $80 a night for families; $30 a person for groups ($20 a person mid-week). Sauna, $20 a half-hour, aromatherapy, $45 an hour, $25 a half-hour. Guided walks, $30 an hour for a group. Motu River raft from the homestead to the cabins, $55 each. Hunting, $70 a night a hunter.

Contact: Paparangi Ventures, ph (06) 8635 882, send an email or visit Paparangi Ventures