Trapped hunter down to last Moro

DOWN to a Moro bar and a bottle of water, a Canterbury hunter admitted things got desperate when a flooded river blocked his path home for three days.

Terry Austin, 53, went into the hills behind Lake Coleridge on August 1 and was expected home the following Tuesday at the latest.

Hungry, tired and with a worried son at home, he waited till Thursday before making river crossings to eventually hitchhike to safety and halt preparations for a search and rescue effort.

It was not the first time Austin had been faced with adversity. In 1997 he and three others were seriously injured in a helicopter crash near Taupo.

On August 1 Austin had ridden a quad bike into the hills to meet two hunters, who left the area next day. He planned to stay longer alone, but wet weather forced him to pack his bags on Sunday night for an early exit on Monday.

‘‘I walked down the valley to my quad bike and the Harper River was flooded. Usually it’s like a trickle. I reckon it came up close to a metre, it came up over the banks. There were trees floating down the river.’’

With the steep, bluff-like banks, any hope of escaping on Tuesday vanished as Austin watched the river continue to rise through rain and snow. He made a radio call from a hut to the Department of Conservation, asking them to tell his 19-year-old son he was stranded. He had a personal locator beacon if the situation became dire.

He considered a six or sevenhour trek on an alternative route leading to State Highway 73, but with dwindling food stocks and poor weather, he decided to stay put. A break in the weather came on Wednesday, but the river was still in flood, so Austin rationed his remaining food – three Moro bars, a dehydrated-food packet, two puddings, tea bags and milk powder.

He decided to make an exit attempt early Thursday, discovering the river had dropped a foot – ‘‘still not quite enough’’. He got two thirds of the way on his submerged quad bike before the river flow because too strong.

‘‘I managed to shimmy down the side of the river to reach Glenthorne Station on the other side of the river.’’

‘‘I went round hills and up-streams, got to a shingle road called Harper Rd, and then I hitched a ride.

‘‘I survived the Thursday on one Moro bar and a drink bottle. I was starving.’’