1. Departing Lake Wanaka
Our Avon inflatable raft was well-loaded on the early February morning when our team of five set off from the Lake Wanaka outlet. From this scenic, alpine landscape the Clutha begins its arduous 338km journey to the Pacific – our distant destination.
Domo: Stevenson, Lewis: Verduyn-Cassels, Mark: Samways, Chris: Riley, Noel: Williams.
Few people have travelled down the Clutha to the sea. Mao-hunters and Maori greenstone traders once rafted it. Inland explorer Nathaniel Chalmers, led by Maori guide Reko, became the first Pakeha to raft the great waterway, on a mokihi, in 1853. A log-raft expedition in 1982, undertaken by myself, took several weeks to complete the journey on a four tonne pioneer log-raft. Such rafts, from the western forests, were once guided down the Upper Clutha to the barren interior, supplying the goldfields of the 1860s with much-needed lumber.
The river has more than one name: The Maori name, Mata-Au, is a reference to its colour and speed, and in a deeper sense it acknowledges the mauri or life-force that it possesses. When Captain Cook first sighted the river mouth in 1769, he named it Molyneux after the Master of the Endeavour. While the name Clutha, Gaelic for Clyde, is the forlorn token of homesick gold-miners.
It is a river which has swept away entire settlements, destroyed numerous bridges, and claimed countless lives. It is New Zealand’s largest volume river, and is ranked as one of the swiftest rivers in the world. With a catchment of 21,960 sq km and an annual discharge of 614cms, it has a prodigious flow in comparison to its watershed – nearly as much as the Nile’s 650cms. Famous for its gold, it is characterised by swift and turbulent currents, clear turquoise-tinted waters, and dramatic riverscapes. Despite its strength and deadly reputation, Otago’s river of gold – the Mighty Clutha – is often underestimated.
From the beginning, the Clutha passes among towering bluffs, sweeping rapids and wooded islands. The current soon attains its famous, deceptive pace, and the water is crystal clear, tinted bright turquoise by glacial minerals.
Chalmer's Reach, looking back toward the Southern Alps.
The log-raftsmen of yesteryear left colourful names on the river map. We negotiated a section called “The Snake”, a series a swift ox-bows near Luggate. Ox-bows usually form only on meandering rivers, but in the Upper Clutha they careen from one escarpment to another, carving into the ancient glacial moraine.
In the Upper Clutha "Snake".
Near Luggate, we entered the remarkable “Devil’s Nook” – a log-raft trap for the early log-raftsmen, and a magnet for every drift log and uprooted tree that comes down the river. Here, the full force of the river runs against a cliff, forming a violent eddy about 60 metres in diameter. Giant whirlpools rotate continuously toward the cliff.
A Devil's Nook whirlpool.
