Surveyors at work Beyond the Ranges

THE first surveyor to go to the headwaters of the Tasman River was J. T. Thomson of Otago. His journey in 1857 must have inspired von Haast three years later. Jollie in 1858, and McKerrow and Rochfort in 1864, were all filling in details in the maps of Canterbury, Otago, and Westland respectively. Sir James Hector of all the men at that time perhaps had the most adventurous experiences. In 1863 he crossed the pass at the head of the Matukituki River to a branch of the Arawhata in Westland. Semi-starvation, floods, and untracked bush were not the least of what he endured. Subsequently he made the first crossing from Martin’s Bay to Queenstown, a route of great practical value.   The hardships faced by the surveyors were common knowledge. In seven months seven men were drowned in the sea, the lakes, or the rivers, while a young surveyor, George Dobson was murdered by bush-rangers in Westland in 1866. He was a son of Edward Dobson and a brother of Sir Arthur Dobson, the discoverer of Arthur’s Pass.

Sir Arthur Dobson was typical of the enter­prising Colonial. He started his career in the hard school of survey work, accompanied von Haast on his Tasman exploration in 1862, sketched the Franz Josef Glacier from the sea in 1863 (though he did not name it), and in the following year discovered Arthur’s Pass, which became the chosen stock route to the West Coast. In 1865 other passes from the Waimakariri tributaries to the West Coast were discovered, and Browning’s Pass, further south, was a serious rival to Arthur’s Pass, as the cartoons of the period show. Sealey in 1866 investigated the glaciers up the Godley and Ashburton Rivers.

This period of the sixties was one of unbustled activity by competent surveyors. Boundaries for sheep-runs had to be sketched in, the gold-fields clamoured for new trans-alpine passes, and the settlers were curious about their snowy back-yards. The blanks on the map were being patiently filled.

Survey parties burdened with their heavy equipment were naturally shy about climbing to the mountain tops., With the preliminaries of reconnaissance achieved, the surveyors of the seventies remembered the spectacular trips of their predecessors to unvisited valleys, but settled down to hard conscientious work to get accuracy of detail. Some were more reliable than others. Survey work in the Rangitata Valley, for example, left much to be desired. But other valleys were more fortunate; they were visited by men of the stamp of T. N. Brodrick and G. J. Roberts.

Roberts is worthy of mention for his exceptional zeal and energy. He realised that the higher his trig stations were situated, the better results he would get, as he plotted in the valleys below. He forgot the limitations that weight of instruments entailed, and set his men the example of a leader who would carry his load to seven thousand feet m the Main Divide itself. His work in the Rakaia was carried out from the east, where his private nap shows many interesting details such as ‘ camp inhere large bird was heard at night’ and ‘the ocean beyond Greymouth ought to be seen from there.’ He made a subsequent trip up from the Westland side to link up the triangulation of the two provinces of Canterbury and Westland, and, ill he died, took a keen interest in the country /here he had literally strained his heart. Other survey men were as enthusiastic about the ‘details’ of the maps. A. P. Harper, well-equipped with alpine technique, young and am­bitious, left his mark south of the Franz Josef Glacier. William Wilson, cheerful and determined, pioneered in the Wills Valley.

This activity waned. The Government was satisfied for the time being that the pastoral boundaries were sufficiently defined, that the major gold-fields were discovered, that the tourist trade had not developed, and that no further map­ping work would be justified in the mountainous areas behind the plains.