Good evening and welcome to Horizons and another colourful walk with the world at your feet.
Tonight we travel New Zealand's best known walk, the Milford Track in the Fiordland National
Park.
As wind blows over the ocean, it gathers moisture.
The westerlies of the southern hemisphere blow ceaselessly round the world with few
obstructions. One challenge to the wet winds is the islands of New Zealand.
Reaching land, the moisture rises, cools, forms clouds, and then it rains.
Fjordland is one of the wettest places in New Zealand. Fjordland, its very name is
derived from water. But during the last Ice Age, it wasn't cloud but ice that
set over this land, pushing out huge glacial chisels that sculptured its
valleys. Then the ice retreated.
The wilderness of Fjordland is now a national park and a world heritage site.
Travelers from all over the world have long enjoyed its walks, especially the
final for track. According to publicity, it's the finest walk in the world. It can
also be the wettest walk in the world.
Well I hope the weather improves for us. It couldn't get much worse. Mind you, this
is all some walkers of the Milton Track ever see in their four days on the track.
The gloom and the rain framed in their rain hood. It's summer down here in New
Zealand. The forest trees are coming into flower. The rata tree, it's just coming
into bloom. Now it and its relatives are our Christmas tree. This is a glassier
carved lake, very steep-sided and very deep, in parts more than 400 meters deep.
And the boat trip takes us to the tip of the longest finger of this glacial lake.
For the first two days we'll be traveling up, which is essentially a forest walk,
up a valley following the path of a river before emerging out of the forest
and going over a mountain pass. Then for the next day and a half we travel down
another valley following another river till we emerge after we pass a long lake
to the sea at a fjord. Between the lake and the fjord we had a four-day walk
ahead of us and I sensed an air of anticipation on board Tauro as we
neared track beginning. Perhaps a few were having second thoughts about their
fitness over 60 kilometers. We're getting into sand fly country now. We've got some
fairly big ones up here at Clayton. In fact, it was just yesterday we seen one on the wharf here
standing on his home legs drinking about a 44 gallon drum.
Just shows you how big they can get.
In all the 90 years that the old ferry has delivered walkers to the Milford
track, I'll bet all its skippers have been building on the legend of fjordland
sand flies.
So amid the usual confusion of finding your backpack, stowing gear and putting on boots,
it was the all-important ritual of anointing with sand fly repellent and to
forget is to become a sort of human pin cushion and then endure the itch.
In our group was musician John Gibson and Maria Tini of the Kaitahu Māori tribe.
Many people are of this part of New Zealand, yet it was her first time on the track.
Each day of summer, 80 walkers begin from here and hopefully the same number
reach the other end four days later. I was also traveling with Craig Potten who
was photographing this and other New Zealand walks.
Andy Dennis on the right was writing about this walk and Maria Sankoro had taken time off school to be with us.
A short distance from the jetty is Glade House, first night accommodation for guided walkers.
From there the track follows the Clinton River up valley and first night for independent walkers is spent at Clinton Forks Hut.
The price of independence is to be weighed down with food and bedding.
At Glade House guided walkers receive prepared meals, clean sheets and hot showers.
We scorned their luxuries as we went past, but deep down I think we were a little envious.
The Glade House lupins belonged to a New Zealand we were leaving behind.
Bracken fern seemed far more suited to this place.
The wetness of Fiordland is of course ideal for ferns and it's a lovely place for ducks.
Ten Paradise Shell Duck chicks were being led down to the river by their white headed mother
and a black headed father looking rather concerned.
Craig Potten and Andy Dennis became constant tail-enders.
Their impressions of the track would appear in a new book of New Zealand's finest walks.
We're going to enjoy walking up the river today into the evening.
It's a really nice feel about it, just the gentle pace that meanders down this valley.
I think it's going to play quite a prominent part in the feelings I have about this next couple of days of the walk
until we start to climb up onto MacKinnon Pass.
Andy and me are trying to get together a book that gives some images for people
and enthuse them to do walks like this and also to take away after they've done a walk
their relationship to the landscape as they move through it rather than as a guide book.
I've eaten the puff balls.
Have you tried those?
They're great, just slice them up, fry them in a bit of butter.
For Maria Tene the journey had added significance.
Not only a place of awe but also a place of her Māori ancestors.
This time in my life is a good time to be here.
It would have been a hangover task if I'd come in another 20 years' time with my mokopuna
and my grandchildren having to lug this old quia over the mountains.
Peach trees were our constant companions.
Their leaves were our carpet and filled our socks.
Peach forest is ancient.
It links New Zealand to Australia, New Guinea, South America, even Antarctica
into a long lost supercontinent called Gondwanaland.
Even in death, peach trees are with us.
And at a place called Black Forest, many trees seem to be of the same height and girth.
And I think what's happened, which has happened with a lot of this forest,
is that they're all the same thickness, so they're all grown up at the same time.
There's a great calamity that's happened here, I don't know, maybe 60, 70 years ago.
They all started off as little seedlings to get them grown up to the light.
Look, they're still chasing the light. It's a very even canopy.
That's what makes it so good.
Like Cypress Avenue or something like that.
Cypress Avenue. Another song, isn't it?
John wasn't just along for the walk. He was also writing the music for our film.
It seems funny to be walking through a film that I'm going to have to write music for.
I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to actually get any of this into a piece of music.
Impressions that you get here at us, just so many, can hardly locate them.
They're buzzing around your head all the time.
And also, the strongest impression is the feeling of your legs at the end of the day,
which is something that I'm not used to, sitting at home watching TV.
There's no TV, no electricity or hot water at Clinton Forks.
Fjord and National Park provides just the basics.
At least the sand flies are free.
We received a warm Māori greeting from the Hutt Warden.
Tīhei Māori Hora!
Nga mate o tēne marae, nga mate o tēne marae, nga mate o tēne marae.
Haere, haere, haere!
Bill Beattie welcomed us on behalf of his tribe, the Tūhoe, from the North Island.
It is right in our culture that when Māori people meet each other, we do so in the correct manner.
Bill was adhering to Māori protocol.
Protocol also demanded that Koro, as the eldest male, make the reply.
Tīhei winiwini, tīhei wanawana ki tūwaetangi a kūpe.
Tīhei he toa, he toa, tīhei he tāua, he tāua.
Tama whakaputa, kato ki te wahu, ki te whaia au, ki te aumārama.
Tīhei mauri ora.
The first part, respect and acknowledgement, is always made to our ancestors,
and especially here, I mean, look around us.
Every Māori tribe has its own wayāta, which are songs of greeting in a place.
The wayāta takes you up to the mountains and beyond,
and then you look down over the whole area, and it sweeps right across our area,
Murihuku, and right up here to Piuopiuatahi, right over this place too.
On the first night, guided walkers show where on earth they've come from to get to this place,
and by season's end, there are very few countries not represented on the Gladehouse map,
and another tradition of the getting-to-know-you gags.
The first night, guided walkers show where on earth they've come from to get to this place,
and by season's end, there are very few countries not represented on the Gladehouse map,
and another tradition of the getting-to-know-you gags.
Oh!
The weather forecast was not good.
It was fitting that John and the hut warden played the blues.
First night on the track, I always liked to get out and go for a walk,
and just 400 metres from the hut, there were glowworms.
Fairy strings of pearls that hung down with the glowworm's sticky fishing lines
used to ensnare small flying insects.
The glowworm's own lights, which shines from their backsides,
goes out when torchlight illuminates them.
There's definitely kiwis about.
I've seen their probing like this all up and down the track.
Just like the glowworm uses light to attract prey, the kiwi uses smell.
I mean, it has a bill, something like this, with nostrils set right in the end,
and it uses its bill to probe deeply into the ground for insects and worms.
The kiwi, as well as being a bird of the night, is also flightless,
like many old New Zealand birds.
And in days when New Zealand was a land of birds, that was, well, it wasn't a problem,
because birds' only enemies were other birds, and they didn't need to fly.
But these days, with predators like cats and rats and stoats,
not being able to fly is quite a disadvantage.
But they're still pretty hard to find.
Fiordland is to New Zealand rocks what the kiwi represents among birds.
They are both ancient.
These rocks of ages have been under the sea, uplifted, folded,
remelted, injected with volcanic lava, then covered with ice.
On the second day, the track follows the Clinton River as far as Clinton Forks.
From there, it heads up the left branch toward McKinnon Pass.
The pass is still more than a day ahead of the walkers.
We're going to wish you a good trip up the track this morning.
I know we've overcast at the moment.
The forecast is for an improvement in the weather.
It's going to become fine.
So you're free to wander off ahead of the guide from here to Pomolona,
and he'll be at the back of the party if you need any assistance anyway.
I think it'll get better for you.
The size of backpacks is the one sure way of telling guided from independent walkers.
And with more distance to cover on the second day,
it's the guided walkers who are away earliest.
But not before Craig Potten and Andy Denner.
I suppose it's a bit late in the morning to be hearing in abundance.
I suppose I call myself a writer, not a journalist,
because I write kind of from the heart rather than to order.
A nice shiny Lichnum Capense in the bank.
I hope at the end of it that something comes out of the experience
which doesn't guide other people through,
but opens the doors of their own imaginations.
Looking at what I'm taking in photographs in this lower section of the river
is what people see as they pass along that track
and trying to make a composition out of the immediate trees in the foreground
which are forming the frame, if you wish,
around these little windows looking through into the forest and the creek beyond.
In every pool we passed, there were big trout cruising up and down.
And Hick Thompson told us why there were so many.
Well, it's such a big body of water and so quiet, placid and mirror-like.
And when you put a fly on it, a line, a fish can see that for a long way off.
His experience has taught him that stealth can do the trick.
He's had 50 years in these parts, so there's no reason to doubt it.
There's so many tourists that aren't good fishermen
and they thrash the water and do all that sort of thing.
But if they see the fish, they go back happy.
They saw great fish, they got a good shot, they got a good shot.
They're happy.
They're happy.
They're happy.
They're happy.
But if they see the fish, they go back happy.
They saw great big things that were six-pound weight,
and they're ten-pound weight.
Music
Water continues to shape fiordland.
At a place known as the Nine Mile Slip, rain had caused the forest to pull away
from the valley wall and slide across the bottom, inundating the old track.
What do you think of this, Maria?
Well, it's like standing in the middle of some great sculpture,
something that's been carved out a long time ago.
The Nine Mile Slip was quite recent.
It came down in the winter of 1982.
But for Maria, it brought to mind a legendary shaper of the field and coastline,
the god Tuturaki Whānauā.
When you stand in the middle of his work and think, good grief,
it started, it happened out there, where he stood this way,
and the ads came down.
Tuturaki Whānauā's work is always unfinished.
This has been happening for a long time,
and it takes me back to the wayata that Koro knows,
and that's that,
There you have it, the mountain has come down.
The river has dried up.
Tu ana te mana, tu ana te whenua.
You can see it coming through here, the little plants.
The new growth.
New growth seemed most prolific near the slip edge,
where seed had been spread by birds as well as the wind.
Toward the centre, it was sparse,
and lichens, herbs and a few shrubs were doing their best
to reclose the barest surfaces.
Out on the slip, we also met some locals.
It seemed that this was a highly favoured site
as they hijacked the walkers.
Keers are mountain parrots that live their whole lives up here.
You can't blame them for accepting handouts.
Mountain living must be particularly tough for the Keers.
They'll eat anything, unattended boots, packs,
even tents can be literally destroyed by their sharp beaks.
But I love them.
They're forceful and intelligent,
and the mountains would be a much poorer place without them.
Most of the track is over the surfaces of old landslips,
but the nine mile was a large slip.
It had dammed the river and created a lake behind it.
It was still being affected by this big landslip
that we'd just passed through,
and the water had backed up,
so it had actually killed quite a few of the trees.
It's the sort of thing that must be happening all the way up this valley,
these slips just tumbling off the side of these mountains.
It's not a typically pretty thing,
and therefore not something that people immediately pick on as pretty
and worth photographing.
Stopping here, I could see what I think was some nice compositions
amongst those corned-head, skeletal-like trees.
From tracks beginning to tracks end, we were never far from ferns,
and I doubt we ever lost sight of the prickly shield fern.
To me, it's new life.
It's come from the parent leaves here.
It grows. It goes in on itself.
And it's just the same way as when a child is conceived,
and it stays like that.
When it's born, it'll open.
The new life will form.
The new ideas will evolve.
And, you know, I see my own children here.
It's one of the first things they've even learnt to draw
and to trace it themselves,
to actually touch the plant, to feel it.
And, of course, once it has blossomed,
the new life will begin again.
Another fern, Blacknum, also featured more varieties
than I'd ever seen before.
Music
Not only ferns, but fungi, mosses, liverworts and lycopods
all grow thickly on every surface.
They give the field and forest a distinct, wet-suited look.
I'm sure many people miss seeing the orchids.
Quite forgivable, though.
Some of them are very small.
More obvious were the trees and shrubs and flower.
At best, the New Zealand forest offers a fairly modest show
of small white flowers.
On the site of an old hut grew European creeping buttercup.
It certainly put on a brighter show than some of the little native buttercups
we saw on the trackside.
But there was a good chance we'd see the biggest buttercup in the world,
the giant mountain buttercup, next day on the pass,
which we saw for the first time from a clearing about midday.
The clearing wasn't the result of a landslip,
nor regular event in these parts.
Hidden lakes is a water-filled depression caused by an avalanche,
and avalanche had created the clearing.
And as the lake edge was littered with snowgrass from a recent avalanche,
it was a potent reminder to keep moving.
Avalanches closed the track during winter,
and before each walking season,
each of the 50 known avalanche piles on the track are checked.
The second night stop for guided walkers is Pompolona Lodge,
a new complex which had sudden beginnings a few years ago.
It was erected in five weeks in time for the 1983 trekking season.
During the previous winter, a huge avalanche upstream
dammed the river but later breached,
sending a torrent of water downstream,
all but demolishing the old building.
Nowhere is totally safe in this vigorous landscape,
and unused tracks have unexpected destinations.
Every winter there's a big snow or ice coming down through here,
and so we've just got like a fuchsia called tukutuku.
Tukutuku and the makamako and the koheri.
And then of course you'd have to take that one.
That's used for sore stomachs.
Oh, is it a handy one that?
Yeah, very handy.
You just take the center leaves and chew them.
But when it's boiled, it's used as an infusion,
as a gargle for babies.
Good to flush out the kidneys too.
As we got closer to the pass,
we crossed more avalanche paths,
clothed in different trees and shrubs,
and how frequently the avalanches came down.
On one side, advanced growth of fuchsia trees
indicated perhaps 20 or more years free of avalanches.
This is the biggest fuchsia in the world,
yet its flowers are small and delicate.
It was Andy Dennis who drew attention
to the pair of rare blue ducks.
I was looking for them all day,
all the pools up the river here,
and just heard them from the track,
that sad whistling.
It's such a pity that you see them so little these days,
because 100 years ago they were probably
one of the most numerous ducks in New Zealand,
and they're just so friendly.
Blue ducks have disappeared from most parts of New Zealand,
due mainly to loss of protective forest along riverbanks.
They're insect feeders,
with soft membranes on their bills
for feeding on the underside of rocks.
A stop of more than a few minutes on the track
is usually the cue for a wekka to appear.
Another bird with an eye for a handout,
wekkas are flightless swamp hens.
After several hours walking across avalanche paths,
it was comforting to see our hut settled in old beach forest.
It meant avalanches don't come this way.
I hope you'll stay here as a safe and enjoyable one.
Basically you've got a 9-mile walk from Mantaro
over the pass to Dumplin tomorrow.
That's going to take you approximately 7 hours,
just depending on how fit you are.
That's for a person of average fitness.
Well, the easy part was behind us.
From the hut we could see the next day's route,
and it seemed more like a wall.
Fitness was to be well tested on the way up to the pass.
The next day we were woken by the Kias
and Craig and Andy at 5 a.m.
Our companions were keen to take photographs
before it rained again.
The Kias arrived at Mantaro Hut at 5 every morning,
ready for mischief.
They poked the fittings for anything loose.
They probed the weak spots for anything not secured.
Even the radio aerials and solar panels,
which are supposedly Kia-proofed, won't be safe for long.
It promised to be cold up on the pass.
We'd need plenty of fuel.
Hut warden Neil Matheson and ranger Hugh Wooderson
were off climbing, leaving Craig and Andy
at the bottom of the pass in cloud forest.
I call it cloud forest because obviously the mosses
that just droop over every little piece and branch and twig
are there because there's a lot of mist,
and that's because we're right under a mountain pass
and in a very, very damp and wet area.
It's not the type of forest that you normally associate
or find in temperate countries.
In fact, it's the sort of forest that you find
in tropical countries at high altitudes
where there is lots of mist and cloud gathers.
Something a little bit eerie, even mystic,
about a place like this, it's almost as if it belongs
in the realms of myth and fairy tale,
and it's not too hard for me to see how some people
coming through here in certain moods
find it quite a difficult place to linger.
Down valley the day appeared to hold little promise.
It was bucketing down at Pompalona Lodge.
Of the over 70s already for the big climb.
It was a long Rio Bamba in Peru
and then caught in avalanches in South America,
so this is quite a day for me as well.
I think I'm looking most forward to getting to the top of the pass
because after that I've got to make.
The downhill is trivial.
The uphill is tough.
Walkers follow a route over the pass
that was pioneered more than 100 years ago
by one Quentin McKinnon.
I'm sort of exploring how Quentin McKinnon discovered this pass.
Following the river was the obvious first step.
And then where did he decide to go however he went
is kind of the approach that I'm taking to the whole thing.
So I want to see if I can figure out what he saw
when he first discovered the route up over the pass.
In earlier times the route had been used by Maori traders,
then forgotten.
In the 1880s the government offered a reward
for an overland route to the fjords,
so it became a race,
with Quentin McKinnon the Shetland Islander
exploring valleys from inland
and Donald Sutherland a Gruff Scotsman
coming at it from the fjords.
Sutherland may have lost the race,
but as he and his wife lived at Milford Sound,
their reward was accommodating all the walkers
who soon began to use the new track.
It still draws travellers here like a magnet.
Many have never walked off pavement before,
but McKinnon's route is successfully traversed
by 8,000 walkers every season.
There are 12 zigzags on the way up.
Most of them are in beech forest.
Only the last few zigs and zags are out in the open.
The wind was picking up swirling mist and cloud,
and it had the view of the huge glacial cirque,
the source of the Clinton River.
I think we should put our jerseys on here.
Hot beverages.
Hot beverages, hot toddies.
Beyond the protection of the forest,
even the exertion of climbing
wasn't enough to keep us warm.
Although they might get a bit windblasted,
we should look out for good ones.
Got your hat?
Although New Zealand rocks are old,
the mountains are so young they're still growing,
still being pushed upwards.
Better we were walking this year.
Next year the pass would be a few millimetres higher.
Finally we met the giant mountain buttercups.
But up here they seem so out of place.
The leaves look more like a pond plant,
and the giant buttercup flower
seemed more suited to a suburban garden than a mountaintop.
New Zealand mountains have many daisies,
about 60 species, from field daisies to daisies
which look like a bunch of little
daisies to daisies which look like a cushion.
Cushion plants are made up of hundreds of rosettes
crouching shoulder to shoulder,
ready to face virtually whatever nature might throw at them.
What nature threw at our party as we neared the top
was pea soup.
There was little else to do but pose beneath McKinnon's memorial.
He does this on a daily basis.
He's got a great market for cameras down the bottom of the mountain.
But as we waited, a breeze sprung up which drew back the mist.
I couldn't believe our luck.
The high point of the track became a high point of our enjoyment.
We were so high up there looking down at everything.
Everyone is there.
Ranginui, sky father, Papatūanuku, earth mother.
Kohutea, the mist.
Tānei, god of the forest, god of man, god of light.
It's a nice peaceful feeling up here.
Every time you move your head a few centimetres or inches or something,
you get an entirely different view.
For any artist I think it must be the most extraordinary thing
to realise that nature is a master.
One of the things that happens to me quite often in high places
is I kind of try and relate to the landscape.
One of the little tricks I've got is trying to condense a period
of geological time into a more manageable span.
Something like 30 minutes, which is the time you'd sit in front of a television film.
Only in the last 30 seconds have the great ice tongues
gone out at the Clinton and Arthur Valley.
And with a second of that film to go, herds of giant moors still crossing McKinnon Pass.
The first European crossing the pass, construction of the track,
the whole tourist tradition of tramping the Milford Track,
a kind of brief blur before the final credits,
which is perhaps appropriate because it shows how insignificant
our human schemes are on a landscape like this compared to nature's grand designs.
The more I walk on the Milford Track, the more I notice the track itself.
And almost surprisingly I've come to the conclusion that I really like
the way that it flows through the landscape, especially here on the tops.
Perhaps this is how lines flow through the landscape in Nepal and South America
and just as something that's been created by people's feet over a long period of time,
creating a line through the wilderness.
And now it's become very much a part of the landscape.
It's become very much a part of the compositions that I'm trying to create in the photography here.
In a place of such immensity, I was drawn to something very small,
a rock wren collecting insects for its young.
They're one of the smallest birds in New Zealand and one of the more mysterious.
It's not known how they survive winters here when thick snow may cover the pass for months.
At the pass lunch shelter, the kias were waiting.
They must view human activity up here with some confusion.
Every day close to midday, the people arrive.
Some go in one door of the shelter, others go in another.
The separation of guided walkers and us independent types is preserved even on top of mountain pass.
Hi. Hi.
It's a bit spartan, isn't it? What's it like next door?
Three earlier shelter buildings have blown off this pass.
I think it should qualify as neutral territory.
And then I looked at the front green.
You can pass the rock on. Yeah.
Just up off the pass beyond the monument there.
On a day like this with the humans inside, the kias received few handouts.
They feed mainly on plant material but are always willing to experiment with new flavours.
I'm not sure who got more fun out of the photographic session.
But after lunch, like every day, the kias watched us leave the shelter and begin our descent.
It's incredible.
It's an incredible trek over an incredible pass.
It is even in the rain.
I could see that it is the most unusual place in the world.
Where two enormous glaciers on both sides chewed away and chopped these tremendous cirques.
It may be parallel to the
It may be parallel to somewhere else but I doubt it.
We descended from the pass in perfect weather, which brought out many alpine insects.
The New Zealand mountains support an array of colourful day-flying moths.
They're sun-seekers beyond compare.
All insects that live in the mountains must take full advantage of its warmth
because it might not last very long.
In the late afternoon, we were engulfed by a storm of great fury.
To Tautair, or southern Australia,
we were forced to leave the shelter.
To Tautair, or southern Australia,
we were forced to leave the shelter.
We were forced to leave the shelter.
It's like being fly underneath a cold water tap turned full on.
It's just so much power.
It's just so much power.
The falls are fed by a large glacial cirque named Lake Quill after its discoverer.
Ever since young William Quill scaled up the falls to find their source,
climbers have been rewarded and challenged by Fiordland's mountains.
But you don't need to climb to be strongly affected by them.
Some walkers are recharged, others are humbled, but most just stand in awe.
Crossing the pass is by no means the end of the walk.
On the fourth and final day, the track follows the Arthur River as it hurries to the sea.
The walkers too must hurry if they are not to miss the 3pm boat at track's end.
Oh yeah.
This would have been one hell of a landscape here, could it?
You can see where some of the trees are still stuck onto the cliff up there.
And all Fiordland would have been like this after the last glaciation.
Just smooth like this.
West of the pass is the wettest region of New Zealand.
There are even more ferns and for the first time we saw giant tree ferns.
The Prince of Wales fern also appeared.
Ferns brushed our faces, they constantly tapped us on the shoulders and ankles as we hurried on down valley.
For most of us, the journey did not include a boat ride.
Peter Lewis's boatman on Lake Ada thought to have been formed by a slip about 600 years ago.
Below water, the drowned forest still stands.
Long dead beach trees have been preserved below lake level and they can pose real problems for inexperienced boaties.
The rest of us took the track around the edge of Lake Ada.
Journey's end, the sea was less than 10 kilometres away.
Below Mackay Falls, there lies a victim of its immense power.
Bell Rock has been hollowed by water to the size of a huge cathedral bell.
And having created it, the river has hurled it aside.
Near the lake, the track is suspended over wetland, too fragile to withstand 80 pairs of feet daily.
Even where it's quite artificial, like the boardwalk, it's still fitted into the bigger context of the beautiful sort of sculptural manner.
But obviously if you stand back from it, climb away from that line and look from a long distance at it.
It's not a big feature in the total framework that you're looking at.
The Milford Track is a line through the wilderness that offers the remote feeling of a truly wild land to walkers without experience and who would normally feel terrified in such a place.
Giant Gate Falls was our last chance to rest. The journey was almost over.
Who knows, perhaps it won't be tomorrow that the light will dawn for Koro.
Perhaps it might be when he's my age, but he'll never forget.
And this is what these places do to us.
They help us not to forget who we are and what we are.
It seemed as if we'd known each other for ages, yet three days earlier we'd started out as strangers.
It's something that I've picked up from my old aunt's way, you know, all over the country.
When flies, sand flies, mosquitoes buzzed around you, you didn't attack them and start killing them off like that.
You just wave them away gently and say, Hoki atu ki to tupuna.
Hoki atu ki to tupuna. Go back to your ancestors.
How many k's left now?
Ah, a couple I think.
How are you going?
Pretty good, sir.
How are you?
You're at a pretty good pace for four. Couldn't keep up with you.
The last day is pretty tough.
In some ways I think it's just as tough as the day of the past.
We covered 18 kilometres on the last day and had to be at Sandfly Point on time.
You feeling buggered?
Yeah, absolutely buggered.
It must be pretty radically different than the old Wellington thing.
Auckland, yeah.
Three days, I still haven't moved in.
What have you made?
Taking cameras and all.
I think today has been the most lovely experience in the sunshine and we've appreciated it so much more.
Not having had it all along.
Nobody would have convinced me I was going to wade through water breathing deep for fonds before I set out.
And here we are.
We've made it.
I never thought we'd ever do it.
Journey's End. Wonderful.
Journey's End, legend has it, is where a god placed a pair of breeding sandflies to bite those who stood too long gazing at the scenery.
Sandfly Point or T'Namu is well named.
And I was glad that we were viewing Milford Sound from well beyond the range of T'Namu.
Actually when we left T'Namu and I looked back, I quietly waved.
I never said goodbye though because I know I will come back.
The End.
The End.
I think it is some of the most dramatically beautiful scenery that we could tramp through.
Ordinary people straight off city streets can for four days travel on their own two feet through this wild landscape.
It was a fantastic walk. We saw Fiolan in all weathers, picked a good time of year, and it was a good bunch of people to walk with.
And I think that's one of the most important things about an experience like this.
Next Saturday come with us to Canada for some outstanding natural beauty along the West Coast Trail.
Next Saturday at 6.30. And later tonight we will find out who will receive the ABC Sports Award of the Year when we cross to Melbourne's Hilton International tonight at 8.30.
Shortly on ABC, Upstairs, Downstairs.
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