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It was a damp morning with mist
hanging over the valley when Garrett drove Jo and I across the
hills above Waipori Falls Village, along the winding gravel road
to the causeway and over the old metal structure of the bridge
across the lake. Up the next hill a road branched to the left
and we parked the Nissen 4x4 by a gate where the sign indicated
the road to the old Waipori cemetery. It was a long walk,
picking our way through the dried splodges of cow dung beside a
row of tall pines. A bend in the road revealed a green slope to
the lake below, flanked by a deserted crib (double story house,
curtains drawn shut, used very occasionally in this isolated
spot, I imagine), and below it the sloping cemetery, fenced
around scattered graves with crumbling tombstones. Two large
pine trees with thick trunks dominated the scene and half
blocked the view across the lake, of the flat valley below us.
It was silent, the mist hanging close over the low hills, and
the grass was wet underfoot, soon soaking my shoes as I made my
way from grave to grave. The cement surface of the graves were
frequently cracked and tilted.
 In one instance, inside the
wrought iron railings, the grave of a girl of seventeen lay
collapsed in a pile of marble where the surface had given way.
(Perhaps she had been resurrected and beamed out and the heavy
stones collapsed on account of the empty space below!) One
could read the inscriptions on most of the graves, though with
difficulty due to the weathering and the lichen, the lower ones
dating back to the mid and late nineteenth century, and Garrett
stressed the necessity for inscriptions to be “cut deep in
granite”. Time, indeed, is a relentless obliterator of memories,
easily eradicating the evidence of human life that had gone
before. Nowhere else than here was the mutability of life more
evident. Lifting my eyes to the arms of the lake below, there
was only one structure to be seen – a small black square
sticking out of the water – and I was told that this was the
“killing shed” that stood at the back of the submerged butcher
shop. Of the rest of the small town of Waipori there was no
evidence. I understand that most of the buildings had in any
case been bulldozed before the flooding that formed the lake. I
thought of a similar “lost valley” in Africa, where a whole
tribal culture was drowned and lost when Lake Kariba was formed.
It seemed ironic that here, in this remote drowned valley in the
low tussock hills of Otago, the only remaining evidence of the
teeming lost life of gold diggers, aspirating entrepreneurs,
dredgers, hoteliers, teachers, farmers and laughing children,
was an emblem of death – the butcher’s killing shed.
 Nearer the top of the sloping
cemetery were the more recent graves. Almost involuntarily my
eyes searched the inscriptions on the gravestones for the name
“Agnes Crowley” – but Trish told me later on that she had become
a nun in a teaching order in Invercargill, so she would not have
been buried here. I had been reading her vivid little pamphlet,
Waipori Whispers, published around 1969, of her memories
in that drowned town below me. They were memories from her
childhood in the twilight years of the nineteenth century,
nearly 110 years ago. In her booklet there was a picture of her
in a school photograph – the fifth girl from the left in the
upper row – barely noticeable between taller girls in her white
Victorian pinafore – a girl of about 15, pretty yet unassuming,
perhaps shy, long sandy hair, hands folded, unsmiling. In
spirit, my mind went back through the years and felt the
presence of Agnes as I stood there, seeing the grave of her
little sister Nel, for I had gleaned so much of her youthful
spirit and personality from her booklet. I felt the memories
from her booklet flow through my head as I stood there, alone,
Garrett and Jo having moved away to a further part of the
cemetery. As the memories came I found myself speaking to Agnes,
for my mind was back in the closing years of the nineteenth
century.
*
Perhaps you wondered, Agnes,
whether you, like little Nell before you, would one day lie in
this lonely cemetery beneath the Lammerlaw’s dark shadow? Nell,
that little white-faced scrap of humanity with long dark hair
and big brown eyes, who walked straight into the hearts of
people and stayed there, who bore trials with such a bright face
and sunny smile, shared with you the wild gales that blew across
the unsheltered surroundings, and the terror of the boiling
torrents of the flooded river in spring. And you shared with
Gay, whose imagination soared in heroic tales, the bliss of a
summer holiday, when you felt the warm earth beneath your unshod
feed, or when you found a lark’s nest under a sheltering tuft of
grass.
How you enjoyed the little white
violets, Agnes, the orchids, green in colour, the bluebells, the
buttercups, the variety of daisies. In those days the musk had
not lost its perfume, and each little gulley with its stream of
water was a garden of fragrance.
How often had you waited and
longed for the summer to see the flat-topped hill beside your
home decked in summer glory! At one time, you said, it looked as
though a white cloth was spread over the surface – so thick were
the daisies. It’s difficult now, looking over the drowned
valley, to think that this was where you roamed and picked the “miki-miks”,
the sweet and juicy berries of the miki-miki bushes that
stretched up the gullies. But for your pen it is difficult to
imagine, now, the time when little Teddy got a fishhook caught
in his hand, when your father deftly cleared the hook and sent
poor Teddy home, comforted and well bandaged. Those lads of the
drowned town were sure “to make the welkin ring” – you heard
their joyous shouts right across the valley, and the echoes of
their voices were flung back to the children. This valley, now
beneath a flat sheet of water, was alive with their voices. On
this dull misty morning, the still waters stretch before me in
silent tranquillity, and but for you I would not have heard
those echoes. I would not have heard the old man’s voice calling
to his cattle in the gathering dusk, when you heard his
stentorian “C-u-up!” with variations of intonation. The herd
knew the voice of their master, and one by one heads were
raised, a few more mouthfuls cropped, and a long line set out to
the river crossing. How many of these cattle, I wonder, found
their end in yonder sinister killing shed that sticks out of the
water like a black beacon of death?
As I gaze across the rest of the
unbroken surface of the water, there is of course no sign of the
larch your father planted. It arrived, you remember, as a
delicate little plant to your garden, 1,300 feet above
sea-level. When the little tree was placed upright, little Nell
ran its “needles” through her baby hands – needles rivalling in
softness her little palms. The tree grew and grew till at last
it soared far above your head. When work in your little town was
over and the families migrated one after another, your family
was one of the last to leave. Finally, did it break your heart,
Agnes, when your father, who couldn’t bear to leave his beloved
tree to the mercy of wild things that would soon find out that
it marked an abandoned home, cut it down? As you put it, late
one evening “the ringing of an axe, the knell of our beloved
tree, told that the Larch was safe from desecration.”
From what you tell me the seeds of
the Gospel were sewn in this lost valley, and possibly grew to
fruition, like the Larch, before being felled by the axe of the
grim reaper. Missions were often preached, you say, and were
well attended at the small Church of St. Canice, that still
stands with gaunt sightless windows on the level platform that
was chiselled into the side of a hill in 1869. The well-attended
missions surely testified to the longing for the Word of God
buried deep in the hearts of those early pioneers. On the
opposite side of the river stood the Anglican Church, used by
other denominations as well. The fourteen miles over rough roads
without any sheltering trees in the intense summer heat, or
winter’s storms, must have been challenging for the priest who
travelled from Lawrence every Sunday to take Mass. Agnes, were
you not one of the “black birds”, trained by Mr Kerr, the
schoolmaster, that sang at Mass at Benediction with such sweet
young voices that rivalled “the Angels above”?
In spirit and in place, Agnes, we
are close neighbours. Even when you breathed the Waipori air and
hunted for the gooseberries, the raspberries, the black, red and
white currents that grew and ripened well in your drowned
gardens, the birds that vied with the children to eat those
berries before your mothers could make jam from them came from
the Waipori Bush, the deep valley into which the Waipori Village
was later to be carved to house the workers of the
hydro-electric scheme that swamped your town. The Waipori Bush,
ten miles from your home, was then the home, you say, of the
parakeets and other native birds that seemed to know
instinctively when your berries ripened. Today we have those
berries here, Agnes, and other fruits, so that the deep valley
in which you used to picnic has become a lush Garden of Eden.
Your surrounding country was overgrown with tussocks, and was
treeless, so I can imagine how you enjoyed your outings to my
lush valley, which you reached after driving the ten miles in a
horse-drawn phaeton. Suddenly you stood on the brow of the hill
(at the top of what we now call “the staircase”, the steep
winding road from Dunedin) – and there was my valley in
all its beauty, then still virgin bush devoid of the houses that
are now hacked into the steep slope. “The valley was deep and
wide,” you said, “and the chorus of birds’ songs hat beat on the
ear, was a revelation.” Yes, Agnes, those same birds – or their
descendents – still sing here today! The fir trees and fuchsia
added to the beauty of the valley, you say, and exclaim: “But
oh! The first call of the bellbird and tui!” They are still
here, Agnes, dancing and flitting from branch to branch, foliage
to foliage, filling the valley with a constant singing of
trilling notes and bell-like rings, the cicadas whirring in the
background. But if you were to come with me now and sit with me
on my deck high amidst the trees, you would also see a family of
dainty Silver-eyes skipping through the apple tree, and the
tiny, delicate fantails flitting and fluttering like moths up
and down the length of foliage so close you could reach out and
touch them. As Garrett said, this valley has a wonderful quality
of silence, with the sound of cicadas and the flowing water deep
down below. It is a quality you were aware of yourself: “A wild
creak dashed through the bush, while a road had been formed with
bridges across the water, so there was a leisurely drive from
west to east where the water cascaded down in falls in those
long-lost days.”
Pigeon-pie was the order of the
day in those long-gone Waipori years. The birds were not
protected and were plentiful, you say, and horsemen might be
seen with dozens of them hanging from the saddle. Well, they are
plentiful here in my valley where they beat the air
rhythmically, flying high overhead or far below in the valley,
the whites of their underbellies blinking as their wings whistle
and sweep the air. Sometimes they seem so close, sitting in
pairs on a branch nearby, that I feel I could reach out and
touch their plump velvet breasts!
For me, Agnes, you have brought
alive this lost valley now drowned above my own valley, this
town of brave adventurers, who sought happiness, who sluiced and
dredged the Waipori waters with their shuddering machines
fuelled with wood supplied by the lumbering oxen, dredging the
waters for golden dreams, who danced to the music of drums and
trumpets. For me, in your white pinafore, sweet girl, you are
the Lady of the Lake, the White Daughter of Heaven whose voice
still echoes and reflects across the still dark waters…
*
When I told my Maori friend Trish
about the cemetery, she exclaimed, “Good on you!” It turned out
that, having worked at the Tourist Information Centre in
Lawrence, she was loaded with leaflets and various information
about the Waipori past, and my visit to the cemetery spurred her
on to see it again. So she and Wayne took me there in their 4x4
and as we approached the cemetery, I was greeted by a surprise –
the whole cemetery was awash with daisies, and it was exactly
like the description used by Agnes – “a white cloth was spread
over the surface – so thick were the daisies!” I gasped at the
beauty of the scene, the lake beyond like a mirror in the bright
sunlight. It was like a message from the White Daughter of
Heaven!
- Charles Muller, March 2007
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