In memory of Brian Turner.
Around four in the afternoon, one day in early December, I rest on a bank of the Taieri River, a kilometre or two upstream of the bridge on Loganburn Ford Road.
I feel a light breeze on my face and hear it rustle the tall grasses on this otherwise calm day. The grey cloud is high, and to the south there are patches of blue. A couple of aircraft have flown over, reminding me of the days when I flew over this plain, and the dark river that snakes its way north, as though it has all the time in the world. In winter it often looked like a partially frozen lake, and during most summers the only water visible was in the serpentine Taieri itself, as it headed towards the northern edge of the Rock and Pillar Range before arcing southeast, towards the coast. It’s from the air that the maze of the river, with its ox-bows, cut-offs, back-waters, and old braids is obvious.
It is a rare landscape, being the only scroll plain in New Zealand, and one of the few in the Southern Hemisphere: the Styx Basin, bounded in the south by the Lammerlaw Range, by the Rock and Pillar Range in the east, and Rough Ridge in the west. In the north, the basin is completed by land that rises towards Paerau. The high country is turning brown in the early summer wind, the only green showing in south facing clefts and gutters in the hills and on the verdant floor of the basin.
Strength and frailty
It has been a challenging day. My natural rhythm and confidence deserted me. I landed a nice fish, close to six pounds earlier in the day, and I almost kept it for tomorrow’s dinner but didn’t because I thought I’d catch another, smaller and fatter. My technique lacked finesse, my muscle memory still convinced I am on a saltwater flat casting crab-flies at permit.
We need your help
READ MORE
I did much stumbling about on the rough ground, and the calmness I usually feel while fishing was replaced by a touch of melancholy. I wonder if the early surveyor of Otago, John Thompson, felt the same way when he named the area after one of the mythical rivers of the Greek underworld.
Apart from the sound of the wind and aircraft, the only noises heard have been from my walking and the birds that live on the wetland—the squawks of Canada geese and the honking of Paradise ducks as they warn me to stay clear of their fluffy young, and the sharp call of the stilts and oystercatchers that wade the shallows. Earlier, an arrowhead of Canada geese passed overhead. The land was so quiet I heard the whoosh of their wings before I saw them. They reminded me of the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, which I look up later. The poem moves me, particularly these lines:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers
itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in
the family of things.
Deer run behind the fence to the east, but no cattle or sheep feed on this part of the wetland. As a consequence, these banks of the Taieri are intact. The mute, tannin-stained water glides by. I sit with my feet in the river while looking at the passing array of insects drifting across my distorted face in the surface film. Spent mayflies float by, delicate wings splayed flat on the surface, along with tiny black beetles, the size of a pinhead or two, the shucks of damsel fly nymphs and chironomids empty of the life forms they clothed.
In the muddy shallows corixidae scamper about. A mayfly-shuck pushes against my boot and a small brown caddis fly floats past. I watch the water as though in a trance and begin to forget my incompetence with the fly rod. I picture myself as a boy beside the Waikaka Stream, near the end of the street I grew up in, looking at the tadpoles and waterboatmen that swam in the weedy water, and the water striders that walked on top.
A pied stilt flies past, and white feathers drift by on the languid flow. Red damselflies skim along, close to the slick surface of the Taieri, touching the water at times—laying eggs, I imagine. Earlier, I saw them newly hatched, hovering above the reeds.
As water will
While walking upstream in the morning, I found a number of trout rising, but only intermittently—big fish, which I never got good shots at. Eventually I spotted a trout feeding in a back water. I crouched on my knees, peeled off line, and waited for the fish to circle back. While the fish moved away, I made a cast to land the fly where I thought it would be intercepted by the trout. It wasn’t perfectly placed, so I made another, although this time the fly caught seed heads at the water’s edge, and there it stayed as the trout swam by while I laid low in the tussocks, cursing. I wasted several minutes replacing my fly, while the trout continued to feed. When I was ready to make another cast the trout had gone. I grunted myself up from the mud, muttering at my incompetence and the stiffness of my knees.
In the middle of the day I rested close to the river between tussocks that covered me like a tent, leaving me breathing air infused with grass and peat. In the moments before I drifted towards sleep I was transfixed by the spiders, grasshoppers and beetles that forage and hunt under the canopy of vegetation.
He could catch a fish
The oystercatchers squawk again, and a male paradise duck returns to honk at me. These ducks are such diligent parents I think we could all take a lesson on child rearing from them. My father who died while I was a teenager and I think about how different my life would likely have been if we had been together longer. I miss him, but given the chance, there is little I would change about my life.
A skylark climbs from the grasses on the far bank, its summery chirp lifting my mood. Hundreds of flies about the size and colour of specks of dust hover in front of me. Sometimes they touch the water, and I wonder if I’m looking at the beginning or the end of something? Are they newly hatched, or are they involved in a mating dance that signals the end of their lives, and the beginning of others?
After around half an hour sitting, I begin my walk to the bridge, following the river rather than heading east to the deer fence which offers a straighter route back. The Taieri follows a slow sinuous path across the almost flat plain, as though it is a moving lake. The surface is lignite brown in the subdued light, but a meter below bronze aquatic plants dance in the currents. The wind briefly picks up, flicking at the grasses and rattling in my ears. Ahead, on this mostly treeless wetland a remnant willow clings to the bank, dead branches bleached grey by sun and frost.
Downstream, where the river bends, a trout breaks the surface and adrenaline rushes. I walk towards the fading rings of the rise, crouch in the long grass and wait. A dragonfly heads downstream above the water, and I hope the trout tries to take it, but the surface is unblemished by the fish. Minutes go by before the fish rises again—this time within casting distance. I peel off line and make the cast. The fly drifts on the surface for a couple of meters before the unseen trout takes it as if it is an illusionist and darts upstream with a power that makes me think I might have hooked it in the tail. For a jangling moment it tangles in a weedy forest and threatens to break free. But soon I have it back in open water and eventually slide my net under its speckled flanks. It is the ideal fish to keep and share with friends tomorrow evening.
It’s small by the standards of this river. Less than three pounds, but fat and perfectly proportioned; ideal for my smoker. I lay it in the grass and look at its dark olive head and back, its operculum an almost iridescent green, and a buttery yellow below the eyes. A mosaic of fine silver scales and black spots cover its upper flanks while below the lateral line its black spots intermingle with tiny splashes of strawberry red. I kill it, watch thick red blood pump onto the green grass, slice open its belly, admire its flesh, and pick my way through the contents of its stomach where I find the remains of damselflies and stick caddis which form the bulk of its last meal.
The river curves away to the west—a long detour for me, so I leave it, and walk through a partially dried out bog. I step from one clump of tussock to another, while sometimes sinking into soft mud that releases a gush of bubbles as I sink, thigh deep, into it. Eventually the Taieri curves back around to me, and I walk the last few hundred meters beside it through areas dotted with yellow flowers, and sometimes through chest-high grasses heavy with mauve seed-heads, releasing a haze of pollen as I go. Close to the bridge I move through a section in which native grasses have been planted as part of the Tiaki Maniototo Project, which was established by the catchment group Upper Taieri Wai to support biodiversity, ecosystems and freshwater quality. These are people who care about the river and this important wetland.
Perhaps it’s the opaque surface that makes it a mystery. I can usually read rivers like a book, understanding from the eddy lines and surface texture what lies below, but the soul of the Taieri remains hidden in the slow flow.
It’s progress. What do you do?
I reach the car, tired and breathing hard, but with my mind refreshed by a day in this remarkable landscape. I remove my sodden boots and think about the first time I fished in the area, more than forty years ago. This part of the plain hasn’t changed much since then, but downstream in the Maniototo, much has. There, the once arid valley has turned an emerald green following the advent of a huge dairy farm and the fertiliser and irrigation that came with it. The river paid the price, and I choose not to fish there now.
In the evening light the land upstream looks like a meadow, but unlike a meadow this is a challenging place to walk. When I’m away from these places I often say how good it is for my balance to be walking over uneven surfaces. I even think that it is good for my brain, receiving and sending so many signals to and from my legs and feet as I walk in these rough places, but when I’m doing it, I rarely think of this upside.
In the west a plume of dust rises behind a tractor working on a paddock, and during the day I saw perhaps half a dozen vehicles on a distant road—but not another person. I like the solitude, and being in a place where my phone isn’t connected to the outside world. The cool evening air that begins to pool in the valley floor will, by morning, likely turn some of the river into shoulder-high mist.
I spend time in these places thinking I’m engaged in the almost subversive pointlessness of catching trout but leave reminded that the fish are like the white pebbles left on the ground by Hansel in the fairy tale— shiny things lighting a path to another place.
Words and photos: Dougal Rillstone
Postscript:
The Ministry for the Environment gave the Otago Regional Council until July 1, 2025 to implement suitable provisions in its regional plan to manage grazing in this internationally important wetland. While the ORC appears to have made progress with the plan, the current government have directed all councils to delay their draft plan notifications until revised National Environmental Standards have been issued. This is not expected to happen until 2027. New Zealand has less than 10% of its pre-colonisation wetlands remaining.
