Overnight rain had swollen and discoloured the river and the morning was filled with low cloud and drizzle. Atmospheric pressure sat at 914 hPa and wasn’t moving. We were packed and ready to go and had cleaned and tidied the hut but we both doubted the helicopter would arrive as scheduled to fly us out, so I’d prepared myself mentally for another night, perhaps even two, trapped at the hut. That wasn’t such a bad prospect; the difficulty was the uncertainty and it took some effort to prevent that from turning into a low-level anxiety. Still, I remained weirdly optimistic and didn’t know why.
Robb was struggling. He went for short, slow walks in the drizzle to check the river and store more memories of the river flats and the bush and the mist; he sat on the bench on the porch, tapping his feet and staring at his hands. I was writing at the table inside the hut and heard him singing quietly to himself and I guessed he was trying to convince himself he was relaxed.
But he wasn’t.
He came into the hut and sat on the bunk next to his pack and said, ‘ It’s kinda like being between two places — you’re all packed and ready to go but you can’t.’
He paused and said, ‘You’re beholden to the weather, and …’
He let the thought trail off.
‘I don’t like it, Pete. I don’t like it at all. I need to get rid of it.’
He stood and said, ‘Being outside probably helps.’
He went and sat on the porch again and tapped his feet and looked at his hands. The drizzle kept falling and the watch still said 914 hPa.
...
Robb was looking forward to the evening’s wee dram and some snacks on the verandah and I had no objection when I found him assembling the essentials when evening still seemed a little way off — it was still winter, after all, and one can’t be careful enough not to be caught out by the early disappearance of daylight. The decision was sound, at least because, as wonderful as it was to sit outside with the river and the beeches and the riverbed’s boulders and big tussocky toetoe[1] and Astelia, the temperature was dropping and the temptation of the hut’s warm interior where Robb had got the wood-burner going grew stronger. Later, Robb cooked steaks with mushroom sauce and multi-coloured gourmet potatoes. Neither of us was entirely comfortable with fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) Ruahine trips but Robb’s deteriorating artificial hip had left no safe alternative and the advantage — a huge one — was that we could bring food and gear we’d never consider if we had to walk in or out.
...
At first light on the first full day of the trip a pair of whio visited the river by the hut. I heard the whistle and took the camera and binoculars out and we watched them feeding upstream, getting closer, in the dim pre-dawn light. Robb and I had both hoped to see whio but had deliberately tempered our expectations even though the likelihood of a good encounter was high; now, having had plenty of time to watch this pair, I relaxed a little, knowing I couldn’t be disappointed unless I adjusted my expectations unreasonably. I’m pretty sure Robb felt the same, but we were prepared to be grateful for more time with whio if that eventuated.
Eventually I came to a narrow section of the river blocked by a loose slip and small bluff on the true right and a log jam on the left. I thought I could sneak past the log jam but wasn’t sure whether Robb’s hip would let him through safely.
He came up to where I was waiting and said, ‘My feet are cold.’
It was an observation, not a complaint, but I guessed his feet were more uncomfortable than he admitted. I pointed to the log jam and suggested it was too risky.
‘I’m good, Pete,’ he said.
With the prospect of a warm hut waiting, we could fully enjoy the walk back. The whio pair delayed us when we met them again, but watching them feed upstream along a small backwater, eventually passing just a few metres in front of where I was crouching behind the tripod, made the extra time in the bitter wind well worthwhile.
That afternoon I made bread on top of the wood stove in a makeshift oven: a billy sitting on stones inside a larger pot, the whole arrangement covered with a large lid. Initially I’d been pessimistic but the loaf turned out to be excellent. It was eaten within a day and only lasted that long because we exercised some restraint, but that evening we ate the first slices with Robb’s planet-sized meatballs. Life could have been better but not by much.
...
We’d abandoned the idea of an overnight trip to Otukota hut after Tony had warned us about a badly overgrown section of the track where stepping into an unseen hole or tripping on something hidden beneath the crown fern might have had disastrous consequences for Robb’s hips (or mine, for that matter). Robb was still keen to walk a few hours up the track towards Puketaramea one day, and we did that on the second full day. I’d stepped outside at dawn to see a pale blue sky behind the drift and swirl of mist. The whio were elsewhere that morning but we’d had marvellous encounters the previous day so we were content. Robb set off up the track and I followed some time later, crossing the river in Red Bands and changing into trail runners on the far side. I stashed the gumboots upside down in case it rained and started up the track. Robb had been walking slowly but steadily and waved me past when I caught up, but I stopped at the lookout point and didn’t have to wait long for him. A clear sky would have revealed the spur leading to Top Maropea hut but cloud had closed in, limiting the view, and the weather had turned bitterly cold. Even Robb, usually impervious to extreme cold, later admitted feeling it. He was happy to turn back, and although his hip had been OK, he didn’t want to risk aggravating it. We’d been aware that the descent might prove more demanding for it than the climb, but it seemed OK. However, after he’d had a nap back at the hut he began to feel the effects of the walk. He took some ibuprofen and wandered slowly around the riverbed in the afternoon sun and the discomfort eased.
He’d also seemed set on the idea of climbing the track to Point 1450 at least as far as the section where it levelled out not far from the upper bushline. His great friend, Jeff, had, years ago, waited there for Robb when one of Robb’s hips was almost at the stage of being disabling. Robb had struggled through the pain and arrived at that spot to hear the sound of Jeff’s harmonica, and the thought that Jeff had waited for him brought him to tears. Years later, I’d waited for Robb at the same place, not knowing its history, and had brewed coffee for him. The place had special significance for Robb, particularly since cancer had taken Jeff, and I understood his desire to visit it again. He suggested it on the morning of the last full day of the trip and therefore the last opportunity.
I had misgivings, though. I pointed out that a section of the track soon after it leaves the riverbed is very steep — so gnarly that hands become useful and a slip would have dire consequences. Robb might get up it but would he be able to get down it with a painful hip?
He shrugged and grimaced and said, ‘Well ...,’ and left his reply unfinished.
I didn’t press him and we moved on to other topics but later he returned from a slow stroll to the river, ostensibly to check for whio.
‘I’ve been thinking about the track to 1450 and how there’s a steep section where you have to pull yourself up by your hands,’ he said, ‘and I’m not sure I could get down it safely with this hip the way it is.’
I agreed and commended him on his careful thinking.
‘Would you be OK if we just had another walk along the river looking for the whio?’ he said.
‘A great one to dive into!’ he said.
‘Feel free, Robb.’
He laughed and shook his head. Neither of us had forgotten we were still deep in winter.
Several of those big, blue-green pools held trout that drifted in the current then darted off into the shadows in the deepest part of the pool when we came too close. On our return in sporadic drizzle I stopped at the edge of the water before crossing the shallows at the tail of one of those pools, and I saw two trout side by side in the shallow water, wavering in the flow. One swam upstream into the body of the pool and the other followed and I saw the pale grey patch where the algae-filmed substrate had been cleared away. I’d been watching a hen and jack rainbow spawning.
That was the one day we saw no whio. Most days we met them more than once, often in the river close to the hut. They’re strongly territorial so the pair we met most often were almost certainly the same pair, and that was supported by their behaviour — feeding methodically as they worked their way past us, sometimes only a few metres away. They seemed unperturbed but we took care to move slowly or not at all and I like to think those repeated encounters helped them learn that humans are not a threat. We did find one other pair, further down the river on the day before I watched the spawning trout. Those two were resting at the base of a small rock face that entered a slow backwater pool. They stood, each on one leg with their bill under a wing. The male stretched and whistled several times at first before returning his bill to his wing — but twice I heard him whistle softly, still with his bill beneath his wing. I’d never seen a whio do that before. You learn things when you spend time watching quietly.
You learn things when you make time to watch, too, and sometimes I think you learn best when you’re simply watching without the expectation of seeing something new and surprising. It would have been easy to stay warm and dry in the hut at first light on the last day, when the sky was heavy with drizzling cloud, but I’d heard the whio and knew this would be our last opportunity to watch them. We found them easily: they were directly opposite the hut, on the far side of the now-swollen, discoloured river. This time the two birds were separated and although I could hear the male whistling, I could see only the female. She was walking quickly downstream over the rain-slicked stones a few metres back from the water’s edge, calling from time to time. I set up the camera on the little tripod and watched her through the binoculars while Robb stood nearby, storing his own memories. She paused to snatch something from the ground, carried on, picked up something else. Something big and long — a native earthworm, driven to the surface of the sodden ground. The male called from somewhere upstream; she answered and turned around and began hurrying back past us, towards his call. I filmed her[2] — not easy because she was walking fast — until, almost directly opposite us, she picked another earthworm from the top of a wet rock and gobbled it down. I wasn’t sure Robb had seen what she’d been eating.
‘She’s eating earthworms, Robb — the big native earthworms. I don’t know if that’s been recorded before, but I got it on video.’
We talked a bit about it; how an earthworm that size must be the equivalent of an awful lot of tiny caddis larvae and how a few of those worms (I’d seen her eat three in the space of just a few minutes) would set her up well for laying a clutch of eggs. North Island whio can start nesting as early as August and if we’d been a few weeks later we might have seen only the male as the female spent most of her time incubating the eggs in a well-hidden nest. We’d been lucky in almost every respect throughout the week; now we needed just a final bit of luck to let the helicopter fly in to collect us in a few hours.
...
Everything was packed and ready and I wandered a little way from the hut to look at the beech forest and the mist-enshrouded tops, to listen to the river, to feel the prickle of light rain on my face, to remember everything. I walked back to where Robb was sitting on the verandah and I’d almost reached the steps when I heard a faint hum. I looked at Robb. He’d heard it too, and within seconds it was unmistakeable.
The sound of a helicopter drawing closer.
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Notes:
1.Austroderia sp., probably A. fulvida
2. You can watch a short (25s) clip here. Quality would be acceptable as evidence that it did happen 🙂
3. Here's Robb wading the river.
Photos (Be sure to click them to see them properly):
1. Whio in the main branch of the Maropea river a few hundred metres upstream from the Forks.
2. The best weather all week: Maropea Forks hut.
3. Robb takes a break in the lower reaches of the Maropea's north branch.
4. Whio in rough water, Maropea river.
5. Robb scribbles notes on the porch at Maropea Forks hut.
6 & 7. Downriver from Maropea Forks.
8. The female whio, eater of earthworms at first light on the last day.
Photos and original text © 2026 Pete McGregor
