Channelling the golden age of riverboats

JOURNEY STALLS: The crew of the Wairua try to find a channel to get upriver at the Ramahiku rapid.

Tourism on the Whanganui River could be greatly boosted if a navigable channel could be created in the upper reaches. JIM PARNELLbelieves we are missing an opportunity to make better use of the river.

ON A recent weekend, I joined Sam Mordey and some of his friends on a trip on his Wairua up the Whanganui River.

The aim was to see how far up the longest navigable river in New Zealand we could get, with the optimistic aim of getting 8km upstream from Parikino. But alas, it was not to be.

The river level was inadequate for the shallow draught (40cm) of Wairua to go as far as we wished. At the Ramahiku rapid, which is just below the summit of Gentle Annie on the River Rd, we found that the usual channel alongside the true left bank had shoaled up.

We had to try several times to find the new channel, which we found was now close to the shingle on the right bank.

As we looked for it, we several times were treated to the almost unbelievable and fascinating sound of the steel hull sliding over a shingle bank.

Having got past there, we continued on, but were stopped just below Parikino at the Huia Rere rapid. This one has a shingle island in the middle of the river with the navigation channel on the true left (the other channel is too snaggy to use). The recent floods had filled the head of the navigation channel with an impassable shingle bank with shallow channels for the water to flow on either side of it.

So having ventured further upstream than the Wairua had been since 1938, we returned to Hipango Park, set up camp and had a barbecue evening meal and sleep. Overnight, it rained heavily but, in the morning, it cleared somewhat and allowed us to return to Whanganui dry.

The experience showed us that there would be no way of running a dependable upriver service unless a body similar to the old Whanganui River Trust was created to clear shingle and snags from the shallow parts of the river and create a year-round navigable channel up the river.

The existing tourist routes in the area are becoming crowded and it would be logical to open others up to relieve the pressure on them.

So why not open up the Whanganui River for tourism as it was a century ago?

Bikers using the River Rd from Pipiriki find the Gentle Annie daunting, and it is also unpleasant when they get on to the final stretch, which is State Highway 4, to get into town. A riverboat service, picking them up at Parikino or Pungarehu and dropping them off in town would give them an interesting finish -- one steeped in history -- to their journey.

When Mother Aubert, who founded the Little Sisters of Compassion at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River, becomes a saint (I am assuming that sainthood is inevitable), many pilgrims will want to visit Jerusalem, where a huge shrine in her name will develop.

Some pilgrims will want to go by river -- by waka in the same way as Mother Aubert and the Sisters did when they first moved up river in 1883, and others would want to go by riverboat as they did after Hatrick had started his riverboat service on the Whanganui over 100 years ago.

So here is an opportunity to capitalise further on our river in the name of tourism.

The riverboats are there, but they cannot go far. Opening up the channels on the river for them to go at least to Pipiriki would make good sense for tourism, as it would allow so many more people to experience the river's delights.