Show Me a Huia!

by Chris Barfoot

  “What kind of discovery?”

  “A formerly extinct bird,” replied the tourist party leader.

  “Which one?”

  “The huia.”

  This new shock was too much for Stan. He reeled away muttering “Huia! Huia!”

  “Congratulations!” said Bill, and offered his hand to the man with the ginger goatee. “Who were the lucky ones to spot it?”

  “We have two wildlife consultants with our party,” the leader replied. “One is a member of the Ornithological Society. They came back here immediately, and Kevin Carr – he’s the member of the Ornithological Society – went in the helicopter to Rotorua to put a call through to the Director-General. Then he flew down to Wellington to show him the photos and the sighting reports.”

  “Kevin Carr!” Stan seemed to have difficulty with the name.

  “I expect they got into the Waitoa with the helicopter,” Bill continued coolly. “How many have you got?”

  “We have only one helicopter.”

  “What kind?”

  “A Squirrel.”

  “Just the job.”

  Stan couldn’t offer his hand. It was his valley they were shutting him out of. They had violated it with a helicopter and travelled there in obnoxious comfort in under an hour. He would have taken three days down that terrible gorge. And they had discovered a huia, the Maori royal bird, a bird extinct for over sixty years. He would never in his wildest dreams have thought that a huia could be found there. But the cruellest thing of all was the man who had discovered it – Kevin Carr – a person he knew in the Ornithological Society and intensely disliked.

  To hell with him!

  The party leader was handing him the hut book and a ballpoint pen, but he pushed it away. “If I can’t go to the Waitoa, I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  “Let’s have a look at the map,” said Bill.

  Stan, a little surprised, produced the map from his pack. Bill studied it carefully. “What about up Mt Waiwawa, along the ridge to Devil’s Peak, then down the Raukawa and out to Mangaorongo Station.”

  “Oh, all right,” he said. “One, two, three, four, five, six days, plus two for safety. That should get us out before January 7th – unless the river floods.” He began to write in the book, then paused to read the names of the silent party, but the man with the goatee motioned him on. He finished his entry, including names, proposed route and estimated time of arrival at Mangaorongo Station.

  They were ready to go. The leader stood waiting and there was no conversation. They heaved up their sixty-pound packs.

  “Good shooting!” said Bill, as they lumbered off slowly up the hill.

  The man with the ginger goatee didn’t reply but continued to watch them as if he wanted to make sure they chose the route that they had indicated.

  The route rose steeply up the open tussocky ridge of Mt. Waiwawa. Stan, still seething, was beginning to feel the heat of the climbing sun. They stopped for a rest and a handful of scroggin a thousand feet above the hut. Not a word had been spoken since they had left it.

  “You know, it strikes me as curious,” said Bill, speaking in his slow way, “that the leader of the tourist party didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t really listening.”

  “That flash in the sun I saw. What is metal and moves?”

  “Kevin Carr – that creep!” he continued to seethe.

  “Think, Stan.”

  “Oh – ice axe, binoculars, rifle?”

  “Most likely to be a rifle as they were doing some shooting,” said Bill. “Did you notice anything unusual about the party in the hut?”

  “Bloody arrogant dollar-toting tourists – but what can you expect in that ‘hotel’?”

  “Would you say they were unusually quiet for adventure tourists?”

  “That officious, slimy character behaving like he owned the whole shebang,” he seethed again.

  “He didn’t smile at lot, did he?”

  “Tried to make us feel like petty crims.”

  “But all the same he was extremely efficient.”

  Stan eyed Bill in surprise. His casual, easygoing companion could on rare occasions, usually on sighting a deer, move fast and in a totally unexpected direction.

  “Too efficient not to keep a watch out last night,” Bill continued. “And that rock was the nearest point to the hut where you can get a view down the valley. We went past it on the way up and I saw signs that possibly two people had been kneeling behind it. Yet for some reason that leader bloke didn’t want to admit that they’d been watching us. And it couldn’t have been anyone else because I also checked the valley for other campers as we came up. Another thing I noticed this morning was someone with binoculars standing at the lounge window, watching us approach.”

  “I thought you were watching out for deer as we came up to the hut.”

  “I don’t mind watching, but I don’t like being watched. I also checked the helipad. Two helicopters had been using the pad in the last forty-eight hours. One was small, the Squirrel that he mentioned. The other had larger skid marks and was probably bigger and heavier. But the leader said they had only the Squirrel, which would have taken Kevin to Rotorua.”

  He had a healthy respect for Bill’s opinions, partly because they were so seldom voiced. But the way Bill had acted in choosing the route was totally out of character. “That route. How did you work it out? You never even look at the maps.”

  “Stan,” said Bill very deliberately. “I wasn’t thinking of going on that route.”

  “Wha-at?”

  “Would you like to keep to your original route?”

  He looked at Bill incredulously. “To the Waitoa, you mean? But why? It’s a huia sanctuary.”

  “I’ve just got a hunch.”

  “About that party?”

  “That bloke was hiding something from us. I don’t believe his party were adventure tourists.”

  “Who were they then?”

  “I don’t know, but he looked as if he had been in the military.”

  “SAS? They always train secretly.”

  Bill shrugged.

  “What about Forestry?”

  There was no answer.

  Stan did not repeat the question. He couldn’t understand Bill’s suspicions and normally he wouldn’t dream of violating a sanctuary. But at this moment the suggestion fell on fertile ground. He hated being prevented from achieving his ambition; he hated being worsted by a man like Kevin Carr. His anger overrode his judgment. All he wanted to do was to get to the Waitoa.

  The thrill of discovery came flooding back, but with it came something else, a feeling which he tried to stifle. Was it defiance, or was it a vague premonition of danger?

  Two days after leaving the Waiwawa Hut they compass-crashed through matted leatherwood on the eastern slopes of Devil’s Peak, then descended rocky bluffs by rope. As mist gave way to darkness, they made camp on the banks of a small stream running through the fuchsia forest. It was the headwaters of the Waitoa.

  CHAPTER 4

  Kate Fairweather was so excited over the morning’s Herald that she forgot breakfast. There it was – the bird itself in the middle of the front page and the bold type splashed right across the next two pages of the first edition of the year:

  WELCOME BACK, ROYAL BIRD!

  The almost legendary royal bird of the Maori people, the huia, lives again! Deep in the heart of the Raukumara Ranges, New Zealand’s largest and most impenetrable forested mountain system stretching from the Urewera to East Cape, a huia has been sighted. The discovery was made by Kevin Carr, a member of the Ornithological Society, on a special expedition to the Waitoa Valley on December 29th and has been confirmed by Dr Gerald Holcroft, recently appointed Director-General of the New Zealand Forest Service.

  Dr Holcroft said the description tallied in all respects and was from a reputable source. “In view of the significance of this discovery, the Department in conjunction with the whanau
Apanui upon whose land the huia has been found has closed the valley. It is now taking steps to gazette the whole of the Waitoa Valley as a permanent huia sanctuary to come under the most rigid scientific classification of reserve with public entry completely forbidden. Now that the huia has been rediscovered, we want to give it every chance to live and breed without interference. It has sadly to be admitted that the presumed extinction of this magnificent bird has been mainly the result of human greed,” he concluded.

  “That’s for sure!” Kate read on.

  The huia is larger than a tui, but smaller than a magpie. It is glossy black with beautiful white tail plumes. An interesting feature is that the beak of the female is three times the length of the beak of the male, an example of division of labour between the sexes. After the male has broken up a log with his strong, short beak, the female inserts her longer beak to extract the grubs. The sexual differentiation in the beaks makes the sexes mutually interdependent, and they mate for life.

  The officer in charge of the new sanctuary, Dick Burton, wildlife ranger at Rotorua, stated: “I have been on several expeditions to the Huiarau Ranges in the Urewera, and never saw a huia, though we once saw a log that could have been pecked by one. The only reason the huia have survived in the Waitoa Valley is quite simple. Probably no humans have ever been in there. The huia have just kept retreating to the inaccessible ranges of the east, as man has advanced with his burning, logging, hunting, making tracks, huts and National Parks. The only way to keep the huia there is to keep people out.”

  “Absolutely right!”

  The huia was greatly prized by the Maori for its decorative tail feathers. These plumes were worn by rangatira on ceremonial occasions, and hence the huia has often been referred to as the royal or sacred bird. This very fact became the undoing of the huia. With the coming of the Pakeha, two things happened. The old tapu which restricted the hunting season for the huia were weakened. At the same time the huia feathers became more commonly worn, and began to command a very high value on the market. A large-scale slaughter commenced. This reached its height round the turn of the century. In 1902 when the Duke of York visited New Zealand, there was an insatiable demand for huia feathers by all Maori of chiefly rank. Another factor was the reduction of the natural habitat of the huia by the clearing of the bush in the lowland areas of the North Island. By the early 1900s protective measures were too weak and too late. The last authenticated sighting of a huia was in the Tararua Ranges in December 1907. Since then there have been many reported sightings, but none have been authenticated.

  She got up from the breakfast table, unhooked the phone in the hall and dialled a number. “What a great way to start the New Year, John! Forestry have got their priorities right at last.”

  John McTaggart was the chairman of the Auckland Branch of the Ornithological Society. “Yes, the new Director-General comes from a different camp than the last.”

  “They mention the Duke of York but not Andreas Reischek. Didn’t he have a special studio in Auckland just for stuffing huia which he sent back to Austria?”

  “It was all a case of supply and demand. They were a world-class bird and there was a huge demand by European museums and big money being offered. The trouble was in the 1880s there were cameras but they were too cumbersome to lug into the bush. You had to have either a stuffed bird or a painted one. Even Sir Walter Buller shot or captured a few and got Keulemans to paint them when he brought them out. Keulemans’ paintings are as good as photos.”

  Mentally Kate made a note to have another look at Keulemans’ painting of the huia in the 1967 reprint of Buller in the Society’s Library. “I suppose it was the sexually differentiated feeding habits which made them unique.”

  “Wouldn’t suit you,” John chuckled. “You’d have to have a husband to do your foraging.”

  Kate at 29 was probably the youngest secretary the Society had ever had. Because she was enthusiastic, intelligent, attractive and efficient, they could hardly believe their good fortune when she offered her services. She was not put off by the lack of eligible young men in the Society. Her career and birds were her passions. “If I had to rely on a man like that, I’d never get married.”

  “Husbands are sometimes useful for paying the food bills.”

  She snorted. “You’re living in the past, John!”

  “Like the huia, you mean.”

  “Seriously though, if I recall, wasn’t Stan headed for the same valley?”

  “That’s the one, the Waitoa.”

  “Poor Stan!”

  “Best thing that could have happened. He and Bill are getting far too old for that sort of country. I wish Stan hadn’t got this ridiculous bug about discovering a forgotten valley. All part of his crusade about keeping the wilderness. Now Forestry have done it all for him.”

  John was an accountant, hardworking, conscientious, honest, but a little unimaginative. He was a person to whom you went for balanced and careful professional advice. Kate wondered how well he understood his considerably older brother. “Pity the huia had to be found by a type like that, though.”

  “Who? Kevin you mean? Don’t be catty. I know he’s rather shy and not all that well known in the Society. Probably hasn’t been on enough trips.”

  “Only one interest, that’s why,” she said. “Only birds he wants to look for are those heading for extinction.”

  “That’s right. He was on the trip to Little Barrier when we were looking for kokako. Though strangely enough the thing I remember most about him then was his argument with Stan.”

  “What happened?” asked Kate. “I’m sorry I missed that trip.”

  “Stan was on one of his political raves, going on about rare people being just as important as rare birds. Only by rare people it turned that he meant the racial minorities of this country, especially the Maori.”

  “I agree with him about the Maori,” she said quietly.

  “Do you really,” he said quizzically, “even with the hold-ups?” Then he went on quickly without waiting for an answer. “Well, Kevin, like so many other people, didn’t. I’ve never seen a quiet shy chap get so worked up as he did then. It seemed as if he had some phobia about Maori claims to mountains and rivers under the Treaty of Waitangi. For the rest of the trip, we wished we hadn’t been on an island.”

  “So Stan won’t be too happy about Kevin making the discovery.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year!”

  For some reason Kate couldn’t stop thinking about Stan.

  “What’s the news about him and Bill?”

  “Apparently they left a note at the Waiwawa Hut saying that they were going out another way. Mangaororongo Station.”

  “That’s on the Gisborne side, isn’t it?

  “It’s tough but they’ll make it.”

  Though she heard John’s reassuring words, she was not entirely convinced. There was something wrong with the chemistry between Stan and Kevin. Stan was like a bomb waiting to explode. You could never quite tell how he would react.

  CHAPTER 5

  “The god of the night has been appeased. The sacred bird has been returned to the land of the living.”

  The distinguished-looking white-haired man leaned on his tokotoko in the ornately carved porch of the meeting house at Te Kaha. As he did so, he looked towards the great ranges which loomed up behind the little eastern Bay of Plenty coastal settlement.

  They were the gift of Tane and Papatuanuku, Te Whanau-a-Apanui tribal land which reached from the eastern Bay of Plenty coast to the western watershed of the Raukumara Ranges. It was not owned but held in stewardship to be shared then passed on. Because his people had joined Major Ropata Wahawaha of Ngati Porou to fight with the Government forces against the Hauhau, their land had not been confiscated. The adjoining Whakatohea were not so fortunate.

  Generation after generation had loved the deep shadowy clefts of rivers and valleys, the foaming water that roared through the dark rocks, the mysterious up-sweeping for
ested ridges, the great razor-sharp rocky peaks piercing the summer sky. They were a source of kai: sweet pork in the ferny hollows, eels in the deep pools, plump kereru, fleshy karaka berries. Where the red-barked totara grew strong on the ridges, there was timber for their waka and their houses. Here were to be discovered the rongo-ma-tane, the traditional medicines by which diseases were healed.

  But you never knew with the younger generation now. The Pakeha way was different – wanting things for yourself all the time. He feared that they would listen to those who did not understand the wairua, the spirit of the land.

  The huia would bring back the wisdom of the elders, the wisdom in which he had been trained from his boyhood. As senior kaumatua of Te Whanau-a-Apanui he had welcomed it as a member of their tribe. It was their special taonga or treasure because it had been found on their land. The mana of the royal bird had added to their mana. They would extend to it their mana-iki, their love and welcome and hospitality.

  He had been informed by the Director-General as soon as the huia had been discovered. After he had spoken with his fellow elders, some of them had travelled down to the foothills of the Tararua near Palmerston North where the huia had last been sighted in 1907. When they returned, the iwi had held a ceremony at Te Kaha to welcome back the royal bird. The place of its departure and the place of its return had been noted.

  Now it remained to explore the kaitiakitanga, the role of duty and obligation in protecting this taonga. The iwi would have a hui under the kaupapa atawhai to discuss a national recovery plan which the Director-General was going to implement. It had to agree to any proposal to remove the huia from its tribal area. It would also be involved in the upholding of the rahui, the exclusion of hunters and dogs from the sanctuary area which had already been gazetted.

  It was strange though, the valley where it had been found. There was already a rahui there. Not only was it probably the most remote and inaccessible valley in the Raukumara, but it had a fearsome reputation. Some years ago a young member of the whanau was believed to have ventured there but on his return had died mysteriously. He had known the family well, especially the boy’s grandmother, and there was much sadness among them.