End of the track
It’s a sub-alpine section of the Heaphy Track that Derry Kingston loves most. Trickling creeks and southern ratas cover grassy valleys and jumbles of giant granite boulders line the route.
The 73-year-old veteran tramper has even affectionately named one of the ancient boulders Dino, after the Flintstones’ pet dinosaur.
But it’s as he’s hoisting his pack on his shoulders at the old Lewis Hut that the strongest surge of emotions arise: he may never see the old structure again.
The 20-bunk hut, at the junction of the Heaphy and smaller Lewis rivers, is where trampers heading to the West Coast encounter the first Nikau palms, luxuriant bush and sandflies marking the coastal part of the track.
The hut is likely to be demolished and replaced soon, as the river encroaches.
But Kingston, who has walked the track more than 400 times – probably more than anyone else – might not be back to see it.
Over three days this week, with his wife Helen by his side, he farewelled his spectacular day job on the longest of New Zealand’s nine great walks.
The 78-kilometre Heaphy Track snakes its way across stunning scenery in the rugged Kahurangi National Park, in the north-west corner of the South Island, connecting Collingwood to Karamea.
Since 2003, Kingston has relocated hundreds of cars every year for trampers through his business, Heaphy Track Help. He drives a client’s car for them from one end of the walk to the other, and then walks the track back in 19-20 hours, a journey that would normally take a tramper four days.
Kingston has just sold his business to a young family man, new to Golden Bay.
‘‘I always said I would stop at 75, but it felt right to do it now,’’ he says.
Kingston likes to set himself challenges.
He once walked 130km in just one day, leaving the Karamea pub at 10pm and arriving at the Collingwood Tavern exactly 24 hours later. He took a kitchen timer for 10-minute naps on the track.
He’s also walked from Bluff to Farewell Spit in 22 days, and from Cape Reinga to Wellington in 33 days. He’s walked from Land’s End to the Northern tip of Scotland, and the Appalachian Trail in the United States.
Originally from Cape Town, Kingston met his wife Helen, a medical doctor, while working as a soil scientist in Malawi, Africa. When he proposed, he said to Helen: ‘‘how would you like to be wife of a New Zealand sheep farmer?’’
That was always his dream. They married in Malawi, and later drove a car inland from London all the way to Calcutta, with the highlight being trekking in Nepal.
But back troubles meant his dreams of sheep farming never eventuated, and he took to the back country instead.
During a December 2010 flood, Kingston remembers waking up alone early one morning in the Lewis Hut to wet socks.
When he realised the river had broken its banks and floodwaters were steadily flowing in under the door of the hut, Kingston decided to sit on the kitchen bench to watch.
‘‘I was just so curious to see how far the water would come up,’’ he says, recalling the event with amusement.
Kingston watched as mattresses were lifted off bunks, and buckets bobbed around.
He wondered if the hut would float like an ark down the river.
Outside, the water level had already reached chest-deep.
But just as Kingston thought he should probably evacuate the hut and head for safer ground, it finally started to recede and he was able to give the floor ‘‘the best clean it’s ever had’’.
Originally, the Heaphy was one of the routes used by Golden Bay Maori to travel to the West Coast where they collected pounamu. A century or two later in the mid 1800s, gold prospectors built the current track.
After the gold rush the Heaphy became overgrown and seldom used until the North West Nelson Forest Park was formed in 1965.
Kingston says he’s been in a ‘‘privileged position’’, having witnessed the development of the rugged track ‘‘like a movie’’ since he first walked it in 1972.
‘‘Quite a few people have done it and they have these [memories like] snapshots and photos, but mine are much closer together, like a movie,’’ he says.
He’s watched it develop from its Forest Park days, when pack horses were still used by the rangers, through to now, when DOC workers use motorbikes and helicopters on the West Coast side.
He says he’s enjoyed watching the changes in the track’s vision since DOC took it over, and eventually turned it into a Great Walk which involved pumping money into the track upgrades and building new huts and bridges.
Kingston says it’s ‘‘tamed and manicured now’’. As a Forest Park it was famous for its muddy sections, especially on the West Coast side.
He remembers that you just made your way from marker to marker through puddles and mud, and the track had a ‘‘wild’’ feeling.
Among the changes has been the opening of the track to mountain bikers in 2011, accompanied by concerns about the impact on walkers and the track itself.
‘‘There was a lot of perceived conflict between mountain bikers and walkers ... but I was walking the track more than anyone at the time and I had a better handle on what was happening with mountain biking than anyone. I could see that it wasn’t damaging the track. Some people needed a lot of convincing.’’
Although it ‘‘feels a bit like a highway’’, Kingston says the birdlife, vegetation and geology has remained ‘‘constantly wonderful and exciting’’.
Kingston feels honoured to have had about 30 kiwi sightings.
On his second to last walk, he was leaving Mackay hut just before sunrise and he could see something in the distance on the track.
He wondered if it was a possum, but as it approached, he realised it was a kiwi.
‘‘He came right up to me, sniffing my boots and my legs, and then after a while he carried on running on to the turnoff to the Mackay Hut. It was a wonderful farewell.’’
Kingston says he’d like to give a message to trampers walking the Heaphy, who usually start at the Collingwood end.
Often the track is described as starting in Collingwood, but it’s just as nice – if not better – starting from Karamea, he says.
‘‘You are more fresh for your spectacular coastal views if you start there. I see a lot of people limping out with blisters down the most spectacular coastline, waiting for it to end.’’
He says the prevailing westerly wind is also at your back from the Karamea side, and the uphill section is split into two days, instead of one.
‘‘Plus you get finish in Golden Bay, which is a great place to be.’’
Kingston will be spending more time on he and Helen’s threehectare Ligar Bay property now, and with his granddaughter who lives nearby.
But he doesn’t intend to put down his tramping boots any time soon – quite the opposite, in fact.
He would love to do more backcountry tramps around the South Island, and later this year he will walk the 1000km Bibbulmun tramp in South West Australia alone, which will take about six weeks.
‘‘I won’t be putting my feet up at all. It frees me up to go elsewhere.’’