Hunting of the Snark
The next morning we rose at what I considered to be an inordinately early hour (I was suffering from the effects of ‘the swill’) and we had soon left Auckland behind and were driving through the English-looking countryside, with the usual depressing glimpses of blackbirds, thrushes and starlings to enliven the landscape. Brian drove and did it, as he did all things, extremely well. Over the weeks that we were to get to know him, my liking and respect for him grew daily. He was quiet, resourceful and, above all, knew his job backwards. His chief concern was that what was left of New Zealand’s indigenous wildlife should not become extinct owing to sloppy or insufficient conservation laws or measures. As we drove along he explained to me the problems facing the Wildlife Department in its efforts to salvage what was left of the New Zealand fauna.
The first thing to remember, he explained, was that New Zealand – geologically speaking – is a very young country and so the majority of the rock formation is extremely soft. In places you can, literally, crumple the rock up in your hands. This soft rock is covered by a thin layer of topsoil, held in place by forests in most areas, and on the hilltops by various grasses. The first to come to New Zealand were a race called the Moa Hunters, so called because they appear to have existed, to a large extent, by killing and eating the now extinct gigantic ostrich-like bird called the Moa. The Moa Hunters did not do tremendous damage to the forests, though they burnt and cut a certain amount. Then the Maoris arrived and proceeded to exterminate the Moa Hunters. The Maoris did considerably more damage to the forests and grasslands by burning and cutting. Then came the European and he carried on the good work with such thoroughness that soon vast areas were denuded of forest and grass, and great bald patches of erosion started to appear. One of the first things the early settlers did (and certainly one of the stupidest) was to start introducing animals and birds, mainly from the ‘Old Country’. Up until then nature (who, by and large, knows her job pretty well) had worked out a nice balance of the fauna. There were no mammals except a few bats, a few species of small, colourful and harmless reptiles, and a host of lovely birds. New Zealand, before the coming of man and particularly the European, was a paradise for birds: thick forests, grasslands, abundant insect life and virtually no predators. Into this harmonious paradise the European introduced blackbirds, thrushes, starlings, mallard, Mute Swan, skylark, pheasant, greenfinch, hedge sparrow, house sparrow, chaffinch, goldfinch and yellowhammer, to name only a few European species, together with more exotic ones like Indian mynahs, white-backed magpies, rosella parrots and black swans. Not content with this act of criminal stupidity, they introduced the following mammals: red deer, fallow deer, Japanese deer, Virginia deer, bush wallabies, chamois, moose, sambar, possum, thar, wapiti, javan rusa. In the meantime, of course, the settlers continued to cut down the forest and overgraze the hillsides. So, with their habitat being decimated, and faced with competition from strange, introduced creatures with which they had never had to contend before, it is small wonder that a number of wonderful New Zealand birds became extinct and that all the other species, by and large, started to decline. Many unique bird species inhabited small islands off the coast and, even when unmolested, their total population could never have been very high. Many of these were exterminated by the deliberate or accidental introduction of cats that ran wild, or of sheep and goats that also became feral and devoured the vegetation, thus destroying the birds’ habitat. Even now, Brian told me, the Wildlife Department was having an uphill struggle to try and rid the islands of these pests before some species of bird life gave up the unequal struggle. As we drove along Brian kept pointing out to me various examples of the sort of thing he meant, to underline his points.
‘Look at that,’ he would say, pulling up by the side of the road and pointing at a hillside, which, denuded of grass and in consequence of topsoil, had started to avalanche the soft rock into the valley below, ‘that’s a bit of overgrazing. They’re not supposed to graze sheep over a thousand feet, but they do. Then you get that: grass goes, topsoil goes, rock crumbles and swoosh! Straight down into the valley. This causes a flash flood further down which rips the topsoil off the valley surface where it should have been safe.’
Or again, he would stop by the edge of the forest and show us where the young saplings had been ‘ringed’ by the introduced deer, that is to say they had nibbled the tender bark off right round the trunk of the tree, thus killing it. But probably the most ironical sight he showed us were the telegraph and electricity poles, each wearing, halfway up, a sort of collar of zinc nailed to the pole.
‘That,’ said Brian, ‘is for the possums. Some bright cove thought that possums had nice skins so he’d start up a fur business. He imported his stock from Australia and started. The business failed, of course, so he let the possums go. They’re now a major pest. Not only do they eat hell out of the trees – they eat the buds and new shoots as well as the bark – but they took to climbing the electricity poles and getting themselves electrocuted and plunging whole towns into darkness. So they had to fit these metal collars on the poles so they can’t climb up.’
By ten o’clock we reached a small town that lay on the edge of Lake Whangape, where we were supposed to meet Chris Parsons, the producer, and Jim Saunders, the cameraman. But as we drew up outside a small café near the lake there was no sign of them and Brian scowled at his watch.
‘Can’t understand it,’ he said worriedly, ‘they should have been here by now.’
‘Perhaps they’ve gone down to the lake?’ I suggested.
‘They may have done,’ said Brian doubtfully, ‘but I said we’d meet them outside this café. Anyway let’s go and have a look.’
We left the Rover and made our way to the top of the grassy hillside that looked out over the lake, and in the bright sunlight, under a clear blue sky, it was a gorgeous sight. The lake itself was really like two or three large lakes, joined together by fairly narrow ‘necks’ of water and dotted with a variety of tree- and reed-covered islands. The gently undulating countryside around the shores of the lake was vivid emerald green, studded here and there with stands of poplar trees that were just starting to be toasted by the sun to a rich gold. But it was the surface of the lake that caught and held my attention, for on it floated such a vast concourse of black swans that I was speechless at the numbers. Some swam singly, others in great flotillas, and periodically a group of them would take wing in a leisurely fashion and fly after their reflections across the smooth surface of the water. There were so many of them that it was impossible even to try to make a rough count of their numbers; everywhere you looked there were swans swimming or flying, so that the whole surface of the lake was in constant motion. How such a vast concentration of birds found enough to eat, even on such large stretches of water, was incredible.
‘We reckon,’ said Brian laconically, ‘that there are about ten thousand swans on this lake. Periodically, of course, we organise shoots to keep their numbers under some sort of control, but it’s an uphill struggle.’
‘I supposed if it wasn’t for such vast quantities of these Australian interlopers the lake would be full of New Zealand duck?’ I asked.
Brian shrugged.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would be a good lake for duck, but that’s the trouble with New Zealand, as I told you. We introduced these damned things and now they’ve got out of control. This is one of the department’s biggest problems.’
The first black swan had been imported to New Zealand from Australia in 1864 and, judging by the surface of the lake lying below us, they had done no mean task of establishing themselves in their new environment. The main trouble with these beautiful and graceful swans is that they feed close to the shore – mainly on aquatic plants – and naturally they can reach these at greater depths than the ducks can. So, by starving the ducks and by fouling the water and the shoreline, they drive the ducks away. On the lake below us there was not a single duck, nothing but black swans as far as the
eye could see.
My meditations on the stupidity of mankind were interrupted by the sound of an engine and when we scrambled down the hillside to the road, we found Chris and Jim just decanting themselves from a car.
‘What ho! What ho!’ shouted Chris in an unprecedented fit of exuberance, as he hurried down the road to meet us. He is a man of medium height with dark hair, green, rather heavily lidded eyes, and a nose that makes that of the late Duke of Wellington pale into insignificance. Normally of a quiet, self-effacing nature, he was now flushed with enthusiasm at this, his first major trip abroad, and he wrung our hands vigorously. Jim, the cameraman, was short and dark, with one of those rather handsome, finely etched faces you see on Roman medallions, and the most mischievous and disarming grin imaginable. He spoke with a faint, pleasant West Country burr to his voice, one of those attractive English accents that reminds one of comfortable things like drowsy beehives at dusk and cool apple orchards on a hot summer day.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Chris, still beaming with a self-satisfied air, as though he had created New Zealand himself. ‘If anyone had told me eight weeks ago that we would meet on the shores of Lake Whangape, in the middle of New Zealand, exactly on time . . .’
‘You aren’t on time,’ said Brian sternly, ‘you’re half an hour late.’
‘We weren’t,’ said Chris indignantly, ‘we arrived half an hour ago but as you all weren’t here we’ve been up the road, shooting some wide angle shots of the lake.’
‘Oh,’ said Brian, slightly mollified, ‘well, let’s all have a cup of tea and then we can go down to the lake.’
Over a pot of tea and a huge pile of toast, Chris and I discussed what shape the filming should take when we went down to the lake. The theme of the programmes we were going to try to make was, of course, conservation. We wanted to show what was being done to preserve wildlife in the countries we visited, and try to point out the necessity for conservation, not only of the animals but of their environment as well. As all the countries we were to visit were new to me, this presented quite a problem for as soon as we arrived I had to try to get as much information about conservation as possible so that I could work out a rough shooting script for Chris and Jim to work from.
‘In the trip down from Auckland I’ve tried to pick Brian’s brains fairly thoroughly and as I see it the problems we ought to try and present are these,’ I said: ‘firstly, the incredibly stupid introduction of foreign animals to New Zealand, most of which have become major pests – the black swans down there are a good example – and secondly, the altering of environment so that it affects both man and animal – the wholesale cutting down of the forests, as has happened in the past, and the overgrazing of the grasslands, as is happening now. I’ll rough out a script of some sort on those lines tonight, but I think we ought to get some stuff on the swans because they are introduced, they are a pest and, at the same time, they’re very spectacular and extremely graceful. What d’you think?’
Chris, as he always did when he was thinking, lidded his eyes like a hawk, retreated behind his nose and adopted an expression like a dispeptic Llama.
‘Um,’ he said at last, ‘I’d like to see the script first but obviously, as you say, the introduced species which have turned into pests are going to play an important role, so I think we should get as much stuff on the swans as we can.’
‘They’ve got black swans at Bristol Zoo,’ said Jim through a mouthful of toast, ‘we could have filmed them there . . . no need to come rushing out to New Zealand . . . waste of money. . . . quick trip to Bristol Zoo and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘Take no notice of him,’ said Chris with dignity. ‘Cameramen are, by and large, an uncouth lot.’
‘Ah – ha!’ said Jim, ‘but at least I know I’m uncouth – that’s a saving grace, that is. Know yourself, that’s what I say. Look at Chris here, goes through life full of faults and doesn’t recognise one of ’em. What I say is, enjoy your faults while you may. Who knows, tomorrow someone may come along and reform you and then where would you be?’
‘They’d have an uphill struggle tying to reform you,’ said Chris crushingly.
Presently we drove down a rough track to the edge of the lake where the warden was waiting beside a large boat driven by a powerful outboard engine. We unpacked the camera gear and the recording apparatus and piled it into the boat; Henry started the engine and we were away, skimming swiftly across the smooth waters of the lake towards the biggest concentration of swans. The first shots we wanted to get were of the swans taking wing, as we thought this would show their impressive numbers to advantage, so Henry headed the boat towards an area of the lake surface where the water was scarcely visible for the thick mass of swans, revved up the engine to full speed and then, when we were about a hundred yards or so away from the nearest swans, shut off the engine and let the boat plough on under its own momentum. The great concourse of birds were all swimming away from us as rapidly as they could, but they could not compete in speed with the boat and very soon a few of the more nervous ones took wing. This spread panic and within a few seconds something like five or six hundred swans were all desperately trying to get off the water. With their ash grey and black plumage and their sealing-wax red beaks and feet, they were a splendid sight as they churned up the still waters in their take-off and then, as they rose and circled over us, the noise of their wing-beats was like the applause of an immense audience in a gigantic, echoing concert hall. They flew over us, necks stretched out, like hundreds of black crosses in the sky, their white wingtips flashing against the dark plumage of their bodies like lights. Soon the blue sky above the lake was full of wheeling swans, like a great burst of black confetti, and it was frightening to watch this pageant of birds and realise that they were the outcome of the careless introduction of just a few pairs a little over a hundred years ago. As an example of how man blunders when he starts interfering with nature, it could not have been more impressive.
We zoomed to and fro over the surface of the lake and came across several younger swans who were quite determined that we were not going to panic them into flight. They would swim along in a sedate and correct swan-like fashion, wings folded carefully to show the curious, scalloped ruff of feathers where they lay along the body, neck curved in just the right elegant S shape. But gradually, as the boat began to overtake them, they would start to get nervous: they would hold their wings further and further away from their bodies and their necks would gradually droop until they were stretched out in a straight line. Then, as the boat got nearer still, they would utter honks of dismay, churn the water with wild wing-beats, and take off at last in a welter of foam, trailing their brilliant red legs as they became airborne.
At last we had got all the film we needed and we headed back to the shore. We had hardly moored before the whirling black clouds of swans were settling once more on the surface of the lake, arrowing the dark waters as they landed. We packed up the gear, feeling reasonably happy at the shots we had managed to obtain, and then, after another enormous pot of tea, and toast, started on the next leg of our journey. Our destination was a town called Rotorua and it must surely be one of the most curious, as well as one of the most unsafe towns in the world, for the whole town is built on what is, to all intents and purposes, a breeding ground for volcanoes.
The town, as you enter it, looks – as so many New Zealand towns do – like a Hollywood set for a cowboy film. You feel that if you went round the backs of the wooden houses fronting the main street, you would find that they had no backs. But the most noticeable thing about Rotorua as you enter it is the smell, a smell that you first attribute to a million rotting eggs but which, after the first two or three glorious lungfuls, you realise is pure sulphur. To anyone with a sensitive nose the smell is so strong you almost feel you can touch it. Then other rather ominous signs show you that this town is different from others. At various points along the pavements, or even in the middle of the road, you will see a crack in the macadam through
which a jet of white steam is puffing merrily, as though it were the site of the premature burial of a small steam engine. This adds a certain macabre attraction to the street scenes but it can have its dangerous side as well. Shortly before we arrived, Brian told us, a man was trying to do some renovations to his cellars when a swing of his pickaxe unleashed a jet of boiling steam that killed him. In his enthusiasm he had punctured what might be called a major artery of a volcano and had died in consequence. Jim, on hearing this story, voted loudly and vociferously that we press on to the next town and not stay overnight in Rotorua as we had planned, but he was overruled.
‘You’re all mad,’ he said with conviction, ‘you mark my words, we’ll all wake up in bed tomorrow like boiled halibut. And the smell – how do you expect me to eat with this smell? Everything will taste the same.’
I must say that he was perfectly right in this contention, for all the food we ate in Rotorua had a strong but unmistakable flavour of rotting eggs. But then, as I pointed out, the food in the average New Zealand hotel would, if anything, be improved by the flavour of sulphur.
When we had found our board and lodging for the night, Brian took us down to what he kept calling the ‘thermal springs’ and I can’t say that I was particularly keen to see them, for the term – for me at any rate – conjured up some of the more frightful places I have been to during my life, where ancient and decrepit men and women propel themselves from spring to spring in bath chairs, hawking and spitting and imbibing the most revolting water that well (or so it smells) from the very bowels of the earth. To anyone who thinks that witchcraft is dead, a short sojourn in one of these watering places is extremely instructive. However, Brian’s idea of thermal springs and mine, I soon found, were totally different, and I would not have missed it for anything, for what he showed us was quite incredible. We drove to the edge of the town, left the Land-Rover and made our way down into a valley Immediately the smell of rotting eggs intensified a thousand-fold and the air 20 seemed to be damper and warmer. Then, round a corner of the path, it was as though we had suddenly been transported back millions of years to the days when the earth was still young, unformed and uncooled. Here the rocks had folded and twisted into strange shapes, and through holes and splits in their surface, jets of steam – some small, some six or eight feet high – gushed forth at intervals, as blood spurts out of a cut artery, obeying some strange pulse in the earth’s depths. Through every little fissure in the rocks tiny wisps of steam curled sluggishly, so the air was filled with moisture and you viewed everything through a shifting veil of steam. Some of the bigger geysers – twelve or fourteen feet in height – would keep up a steady column of steam for some ten minutes or so, mysteriously die away and then, after a pause, suddenly shoot forth again with a strange hooting, whistling sound. If you happened to be standing over the blowhole at that precise moment the results could have been fatal, since even the spray from these columns of boiling steam was well above average bath temperature.
Two in the Bush (Bello) Page 2