Landings Read online

  THE WHANGANUI RIVER AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IS A BUSY THOROUGHFARE, TAKING SIGHTSEERS THROUGH THE SPECTACULAR LANDSCAPE BY PADDLE STEAMER AND ACTING AS HIGHWAY FOR THE SPARSE SCATTERINGS OF SETTLEMENTS ALONG ITS TWISTING LENGTH.

  The people who have made it their home are a diverse collection, from Samuel Blencoe, trying to forget his past life as a convict, to the hoteliers at Pipiriki, the nuns at Jerusalem, the Maori families, the Chinese market gardener and the farmers, like Danny and Stella, trying to tame the wild bush. There’s also Bridie, the strange, silent girl, who haunts the banks of the river where the accident occurred that robbed her of her mind. Like the tributaries that trickle down the mountains and join the mighty river, so the lives of these people come together in this vivid and moving tale of a stunningly unique place.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Truth and Fiction

  Winter 1907

  The River

  Samuel Blencoe

  Wanganui to Pipiriki: 55 miles, 42 rapids

  Maraekowhai: 114 miles upriver

  Downriver through the Gorge

  Ruvey Morrow, Pipiriki House

  Pipiriki to Houseboat: 59 miles, 107 rapids

  Reports of the Accident

  Houseboat, Maraekowhai

  O’Dowd’s Farm

  The flood

  Police Station and McPhee Sawmill, Raetihi

  Summer 1908

  Danny’s Obsession

  Samuel Blencoe

  O’Dowds’ Farm

  Ruvey Morrow

  The Wairua and the Houseboat

  Ruvey Morrow

  Maraekowhai

  Samuel Blencoe

  The Anti-Asiatic Meeting, Pipiriki

  Samuel Blencoe

  Aboard the Wairua upriver to the Houseboat

  Ruvey Morrow

  Raetihi

  Autumn 1908

  Sly-grog

  Railway towns and bush camps

  Ruvey Morrow

  Hatrick’s Landing, Wanganui

  Jerusalem (Hiruharama)

  Samuel Blencoe

  15 December 1908

  The World-Champion Rowing Race

  Danny and Stella

  Douglas McPhee

  Pita Morrow

  Ruvey Morrow

  Danny and Stella

  Samuel Blencoe

  Some historical dates relevant to Landings

  About the Author

  Copyright

  To my sister and brother, Dinah and Nigel

  Acknowledgements

  I WOULD LIKE to acknowledge the advice and help I received from the Whanganui Riverboat Centre, especially from David McDermid; also from Carla Perdue, archivist at the Whanganui Regional Museum. The Raetihi Museum provided excellent material, as did the Alexander Turnbull Library. The website Papers Past (paperspast.natlib.govt.nz) was useful in locating relevant newspaper items.

  Several fine books were invaluable to my research: Arthur P. Bates’ excellent Pictorial History of the Wanganui River; David Reid’s memoir Paddlewheels on the Wanganui; David Young’s Woven by Water; Merrilyn George’s Ohakune: Opening to a New World; and Charles Spicer’s Policing the River District are some of these.

  I salute the canoe party who paddled downriver from Taumaranui to Pipiriki with Laughton and me over five challenging and wonderful days — Jan Bolwell and John Schiff, Delyse and Paul Kitteridge, Andrew Mason and Jim Austin, and John and Liz Lee.

  Thanks again to Harriet Allan and the Random House New Zealand team, especially sharp-eyed Claire Gummer, and to my editor, Rachel Scott.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for the photographs used:

  • cover (girl) — Georgia Nickless; cover (‘Manuwai’ with ‘Waione’ in the background at Pukitarata [sic], 279/5, WR/C/125a) — Whanganui Regional Museum

  • inside front and back cover and page 5 (staff of Wanganui Sash and Door co. on their annual picnic, with Trinity Young Mens Institute, WR/C/125) — Whanganui Regional Museum

  • title page (Pipiriki house letterhead) — Whanganui Regional Museum

  • page 13 (boat on the Whanganui, F-140001-½, B Webster Collection) — Alexander Turnbull Library

  • page 133 (Captain Kenny Stuart aboard a steamer on the Whanganui River, 1900–1910, C-8847-½, McIntosh Album) — Alexander Turnbull Library

  • page 221 (People aboard the steamer Ohura alongside a bank of the Whanganui River, F-4 9536-½, Field Collection) — Alexander Turnbull Library

  • page 263 (Bill Webb sculling near Upokangaro and onlookers, 1908) — Whanganui Regional Museum

  Truth and Fiction

  Author’s note

  THIS IS A WORK of fiction. The fabric of the novel, however, is laid over a framework of real events, places and situations (the excerpts for the chapter headings, for example, and from historical records).

  In 1907, the time of this book, Alexander Hatrick’s fleet of shallow-draft steamers and motor vessels battled their way up and down the Whanganui River between the town of Wanganui on the coast and the inland railway town of Taumarunui. They encountered 239 rapids in the 144-mile journey. The government-sponsored River Trust had the responsibility of keeping those treacherous rapids navigable — no easy task.

  Hatrick, a brilliant entrepreneur, marketed the three-day scenic trip to the world as ‘the Rhine of Maoriland’. Posters and postcards trumpeted the beauty of the scenery, the tranquillity and elegance of Pipiriki House, the picturesque novelty of Maori settlements. The many thousands of tourists travelled by train to Taumarunui, then by small screw-steamer to Hatrick’s forty-berth Houseboat moored downriver; next day to the modern hotel, Pipiriki House, at Pipiriki, and finally, on the third day, by paddle-steamer to Wanganui. The reverse journey upriver was not quite so popular with tourists, but the steamers also, most importantly, served the many river settlements with a mail service and a means of transporting wool, stock and supplies. The river service was a gateway into the hinterland of the King Country, in the days when roads were few and the north–south railway line not quite completed. Scenic coach trips from Pipiriki via Raetihi to the Volcanic Plateau were also a popular route made possible by Hatrick’s river steamers.

  Hatrick himself, Captain and Mrs White at the Houseboat, Father Soulas at Jerusalem (Hiruharama), are historical figures and appear as minor characters in the book. All the main characters — the staff at Pipiriki House, the river captains, the farmers and sawmillers — are fictional.

  At the time this novel is set, both river and town were spelt Wanganui in all books, articles and posters. I have chosen to use the more correct Whanganui for the river, as this spelling is commonly accepted today.

  Winter 1907

  The River

  SAMUEL BLENCOE HAD lived on the river for fifty-odd years. His hut stood on a flat bank just above high flood level, looking out onto a calm stretch of river, below the fearsome trio of rapids — mighty Ngaporo and its two lesser neighbours. Samuel came upriver on foot, in 1856, walking day after day, the plod of his feet gradually stilling the chaos inside his head. When he was sure no sound of the sea would ever reach him again, he stopped, built his hut, scratched a small vegetable garden and, over the years, became rooted himself. He had a certain reputation among the river people — for wisdom perhaps; certainly he was respected. He could always be found near his hut or down at the river. People would sit with him and begin to talk. Samuel offered no advice, seldom even spoke unless to himself, but the river people went away eased from their unburdening, and so the old man was labelled wise.

  Before coming to the river, Samuel had been incar
cerated in the dreaded Norfolk Island prison for hardened criminals. To casual observation that island was idyllic — sandy beaches, towering pines, gentle climate. But to poor Samuel, the treatment was so harsh; the dank stone cells by the sea were so crowded, so foul, their guards so insanely cruel, that the sound of crashing surf brought back, ever after, the horrors of that time. Samuel, deported at fifteen to Australia, sent to Norfolk Island for insolence at eighteen, was released when the penal colony was closed in 1855. He was twenty-five years old then, looked twice that, no longer insolent or spirited, wanting nothing from life, hoping for nothing.

  Samuel’s river — the Whanganui — rose in the great mountains of the Volcanic Plateau. Everything about this river was momentous: the names of the mountains whose snows and glaciers fed it rolled off the tongue like an incantation — Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, mighty Ruapehu. Even the tributaries incited awe. Maunganui o te Ao, named Great Mountain of the Dawn for the volcano Ruapehu that fed it, ran through a deep and beautiful fern-lined trench until it poured off the plateau and flowed, wide and smooth as oil, into the Whanganui River.

  From the mountains in the east, from the convoluted folds and peaks of dark bush in the west, rain filtered through the spongy soil, gathered into small streams, ran swiftly down steep valleys into the many tributaries until finally all this water — sometimes clear, often clouded by the soft papa clay of the banks — spilled, or gushed, or rolled, or fell in long silver fingers to swell the one great river.

  UPRIVER OF SAMUEL Blencoe — a day’s journey by river steamer or three by foot — Danny and Stella, loved and pitied by all who knew them, farmed land beside the Ohura River, close to the place where that river joined the Whanganui. Or tried to farm. The land was sulky and strong-willed. You could imagine Danny and Stella being successful farmers: energy radiated off them in waves. Danny’s gurgling laugh had anyone in range joining in, and Stella sang whenever she had the breath; knew all the river songs — Pakeha and Maori. You always knew when Stell was on her way up the track. But after five years of backbreaking work Danny still could not wrench a good living from his farm. The sharp hooves of his sheep broke up the soft soil, destroying his newly planted grass and opening the way for pig-fern and tussock, which the sheep would not eat.

  ‘You must get in cattle to settle the land,’ said older and more successful farmers downriver. ‘Cattle will eat the pig-fern.’

  But Danny was too proud — or too shy — to admit that he could not afford to buy more stock. (Mr Feathers down on the River Trust block might have offered a heifer or two, maybe even a bull calf, had he known.) So Danny worked harder, laughed a little less often, and endured the heartbreak of seeing Stella, the love of his life, go to work on Mr Hatrick’s Houseboat to earn the money for the flour and sugar and tea that his effort should have been providing.

  Much closer to Samuel, a few minutes upriver, Charlie Chee grew vegetables in neat, prodigiously successful rows. He supplied Mr Hatrick’s establishments — the Houseboat and Pipiriki House — and anyone else who had money to pay for them. No one knew his age or where he came from or even if Charlie Chee was his correct name. Charlie Chee kept to himself. He dressed strangely, in loose trousers and tunic, and even in winter, when the tracks were deep in mud, would never put on a decent pair of boots. As Charlie Chee trotted upriver and down with his baskets of vegetables slung at each end of the pole across his shoulders, his long black pigtail would swing from side to side. An odd sight. Sometimes children from the kainga or the farms along the bank would run along beside him and tweak the swinging tail and shout: ‘Chow! Chow!’ Charlie Chee would frown and shout back sometimes, but never break stride. Those heavy baskets of beautiful vegetables kept their steady bobbing rhythm in time with his slapping dusty feet.

  ON THE RIVER itself, captains of the riverboats earned their fearsome reputation. Theirs was a tough life. Hundreds of rapids to navigate, wild white water around every snaking bend, with no help for miles if trouble struck. Down they would charge, past Samuel Blencoe’s, then, once they had navigated the treacherous Paparoa rapid, they brought their travellers to Pipiriki. Here was a settlement. Maori whares, a store, a church, the clanking, groaning water-operated generator, a landing with several canoes and usually a river steamer or two tied up. Also that great marvel — the jewel in Mr Hatrick’s empire — beautiful Pipiriki House.

  Ruvey Morrow lived here — cook and sometimes housekeeper at Pipiriki House. A plump, kind-natured lady on a good day, but strict with her kitchen staff, and sharp-tongued with any who took a drop too much. Ruvey Morrow and strong liquor were not to be mentioned in the same sentence. Ruvey had come upriver from the town of Wanganui to marry Albert Morrow, her Maori husband, and learned to love the river and to respect not only her husband but, in particular, that fine entrepreneur Mr Alexander Hatrick.

  Three times a week, and sometimes more often, you could take Mr Hatrick’s paddle-steamer downriver from Pipiriki on the leisurely trip to the coast. You would stop at Jerusalem to collect wool, maybe, or cherries from the nuns’ trees, or to buy their secret herbal remedies. Perhaps Father Soulas himself would come aboard, off to visit souls in need further down. This was a busier part of the river — farmers’ settlements thick and fast — the steamer zigzagging from landing to landing. As you neared the sea the views widened, the river slowed, the rapids lacking the bite of those up near Danny and Stella. Here the river captain would shout and joke with the people on the landings, then back his steamer away, easy as driving a dog-cart, and be off.

  Down past Upokongaro you would thrash, usually with some kind of shouted altercation between the paddle-steamer captain and the captain of the cross-river ferry, who was generally accused of holding up a more important service with his creeping and antiquated flat-bottomed barge. Down at last to Mr Hatrick’s own wharf, above Taupo Quay, where all was bustle and noise, goods piled up ready for the next trip, sightseers marvelling at the black-belching monster that had arrived safely at the modern port-city of Wanganui from the wild bush-clad reaches upriver.

  Danny and Stella upriver, the Morrows at Pipiriki, Samuel Blencoe and Charlie Chee in between, the nuns at Jerusalem, the heroic river captains — all had their place on the river. All lived their lives, in some way or another, according to the orderly timetable of Mr Hatrick’s river steamers. And all suffered a disruption to that order the day red-bearded Angus McPhee, with his narrow ways and his sharp nose for a bargain, came upriver with his family.

  Samuel Blencoe

  OUR BRIDIE WOULD often sit with me. Would pad up silently, bare feet and bare head, her shift loose, for she could never bear tight dresses. Even the Sisters at Jerusalem had given up trying. If I were down by the river, which mostly I was, she’d smile and sit close for warmth or comfort, and the two of us would watch the water making its quiet way past. Sometimes I’d point out a floating branch or a reflection.

  ‘Clouds in the water,’ I might say, and if she felt like it she might echo me.

  ‘Clouds.’ Or ‘Water.’ Never more than the single word.

  Mostly neither the one of us spoke, though. I’d had more than enough of all that long ago. And our Bridie didn’t know no better, poor sweet soul.

  She were a McPhee before. Bridget McPhee, so the Sisters said. But when the Sisters took her in they called her ‘our little Bride of Christ’ and she smiled and seemed to like the sound of it. Later, when her belly swole and the name didn’t fit like, it were too late. Bridie she was.

  Always she knew when the riverboat was coming, her ears much sharper than my old ones. Upriver or downriver, morning or evening, she always knew. She would clamber to her feet, the smile slipping a mite but not in any panic. In those early times I never saw our Bridie in a fluster. She’d walk, sure-footed, away up the bank to my little hut. Round behind of it she’d sit with her back against the rough planks, fernery leaning low over her and she’d hum. Generally I’d go up too; the sight of that beast, black smoke billowing and engine racketing,
is not pretty to me, though some think it a marvel. If I would go round in back to see where she hid she would smile at me through the green ferns, humming the while. She would not show fear, like, nor cry out, but there must have been some shadow of memory in that empty head. I never once saw her and any riverboat in sight together.

  I reckon she liked the quiet stretches of river, same like I did. I would never live next to rapids. The rushing water reminds me of the hell time. Here the water lies calm and easy, a greenish-yellow colour like a woodpigeon’s back-feathers. Below a ways it boils all to white over rocks, casting itself down the narrow passage in a trice. Sometimes I can hear the riverboat grunting and churning to get up over all that madness. For hours sometimes if the river is low. I would give in, turn back downriver, but the river captains would never. When the boat finally comes puffing up my quiet stretch you can see the captain — Jamie usually — standing high and proud on the top deck, hands firm on that giant wheel, grinning like he knows he’s won the game. The gents in their smart hats looking up at him there as if he were some god, and the ladies peeping out the windows at the sights, their pretty faces pink with all the excitement. Then they are all gone, grinding up around the bend and we are left in peace again.

  Me and my hut were on our Bridie’s beat, if you like, as she walked upriver and down. She stopped with me more than any other, though. I were the favourite. Charlie Chee might say different.

  Sometimes you’d find her with the river Maori. They were kind to her, like unto me. Fed us both when in need. Often she’d be with the Sisters at Jerusalem — Hiruharama I should say but I can never get my tongue around the Maori, even though I seem to understand most what they say these days; the language has finally wormed its way in through my old ears but the tongue knots up and won’t let it out again. The Sisters wanted our Bridie to stay put with them but she wouldn’t. She’d walk the six mile up to Pipiriki House if she had a mind, and then on up to me. Or stop on the way. But she were never in any danger, or none I saw, except the once, though the Sisters worried.