Return to the River
A more salubrious journey down the North Island's Motu
Written for NZ Adventure Annual & Directory magazine in 1983
Eleven years after my first adventure on the Motu River, I returned in 1993 on a commercial expedition put together for staff, friends and supporters of New Zealand Adventure magazine. This was the deluxe version of a rafting trip, including helicopter transport, self-bailing rafts and a jetboat exit. This story was published in the first edition of the New Zealand Adventure Annual & Directory in 1993, a pioneering publication I worked on with publisher John Woods who arranged the trip with Wet 'N Wild Rafting out of Opotiki.
Low water and warm sunshine made this Motu River adventure so different to the life-and-death challenge of 12 years earlier.
Joe Faram’s helicopter soars up from the riverbed, its downdraft blowing the rafts momentarily out of control, and then disappears over the high ridges. Then there is only the sound of the river and the chatter of the guides and crews doing paddle drill. It’s a sunny November day, the river low.
I am having deja vu feelings about a similar day, 11 years earlier, and my first rafting trip down the Motu River. That trip too started on a sunny day. But 24 hours on we were locked in a life-and-death struggle with a rain-swollen raging river.
Onuthat trip, our guide, Brian Blewitt, nearly drowned in the wrong side of The Slot with a rope wrapped around his leg—he still bears the scar, I am told. Then we wrapped our supply raft around a midstream boulder and lost everything. It took over an hour to regroup and ease the raft from the torrent.
By the time we made Otipi Camp the river had risen above the hydro investigation river gauge. For two more days we continued on, pausing a night at the Mangakirikiri Stream hoping for the river to go down. It was bank to bank, way up into the treeline as we plunged into the Lower Gorge in a do-or-die effort to “get-thehell-out-of-here”.
The memory of that exit has been forever etched into my subconscious as the benchmark of all my fears and insecurities. Rapids with names like Double Staircase, Sonny’s Revenge and Helicopter blurred into a huge toilet bowl as we were flushed like inconsequential turds down some hideous septic tank.
How we survived that day, no one knows. After 11 years (in 1993), all who made that trip still greet each other with that knowing look usually reserved for people who believe they have seen the face of God.
Our two-day Motu River rafting adventure gets underway as our helicopter ride in departs.
That was then, this is now— and this November day of 1992 feels very different.
There are no ominous black clouds lurking over the Raukumara Ranges as we rendezvous in Opotiki with Noel Rusden of Wet ‘N’ Wild and his team of guides and drivers. An hour’s drive later the convoy of trucks pull up at a remote helipad by the Whitikau Stream in the Toatoa Valley, which runs parallel to the Motu in the centre of the East Cape of the North Island.
We prepare our bodies and necessary equipment for the river and then, in groups of five, are helicoptered over the razorback ridges to the deep cleft that contains the Motu River – a flight of just eight minutes.
This is gentleman’s rafting—the two-day helicopter-jetboat option with all the unsavoury bits removed. The helicopter flight into the Upper Gorge cuts a day off the top end of the trip, and a jetboat ride at the bottom deletes another day of slow paddling.
What’s even better is we have no heavy barrels full of gear to carry—the road crew are trucking everything in to the Otipi camp site where we will camp overnight.
As the sound of the helicopter receded and our four Avon self-bailers and accompanying four kayaks set off down stream, I thought of what I had earlier researched about the first-ever boat trip down this remote river.
The year was 1919, not long after the end of the First World War. In the tiny township of Matawai, between Gisborne and Opotiki, four local men decided to mount an expedition down the unmapped Motu River.
They built two wooden boats and stowed their gear in mailbags before launching into the unknown territory below the Motu Falls. A dog accompanying the party took one look at the first rapids of the Upper Gorge and swam back home.
For ten days the explorers slogged down the river, roping their heavy boats down the larger rapids. As each boat was damaged the carpenter in the expedition would rebuild the broken section. The party made it to the coast in the one remaining boat where they were greeted by a search party about to head up-river.
The heroes returned to Matawai with tales of “gold and oil deposits, of gigantic eels, and gorges so deep and dark the stars could be seen during the day”.
Negotiating the obstacle known as The Slot. This picture shows the right and left hand channels. The jammed dead tree trunk made the narrower channel a no-go zone for many years. It was here, with the river in full flood ,that we met near-disaster on my earlier first descent of the Motu River.
My research of the river’s history revealed that the second descent was made some 16 years later in 1935 by three men in a five-metre wooden punt. Despite a sheet of flat iron nailed to its hull the boat sank four times as the men battled the rapids for five days before making the coast.
Our party, 58 years later, is in high spirits as we tumble over Bullivant’s Cascade, the first of the numerous rapids and weirs of the 25km Upper Gorge. On my 1979 trip I was in the company of Ray Moleta of Gisborne. Today Ray’s daughter Leanna is paddling on one of the rafts.
This is even more historically significant, for in 1953 Ray’s uncle, Kahu Bullivant, was the leader of the third-ever descent of the Motu, and the first in a rubberised dinghy. Bullivant and two others, by the names of Merryfield and Marriot, were swept down river by a flood and made it out to the coast in a record three days.
Earlier the leader had been left behind on a boulder and was forced to swim down river through a rapid to catch up with his crew. The naming of Bullivant’s Cascade immortalises this incident.
Soon after we make our own descent of Bullivant’s, we negotiate the infamous Slot, this time without incident. This hazard, where the river is cleaved by a long, midstream rocky outcrop, has been the undoing of many rafting expeditions. It was here Ray Moleta’s quick action with a knife saved the life of Brian Blewitt over a decade ago. Today I wonder what all the fuss was about as our rafts easily squeeze through the left channel and the kayaks zip down with little problem.
At the end of a six-hour day we drift out of the imposing jaws of the Upper Gorge into the Mangaotane Valley. This was once the site of hydroelectric power investigations by the then New Zealand Electricity Department. On my 1979 descent, there was no vehicle access, there were still huts here and a river level recorder with a flying fox across the mouth of the gorge.
Saving the Motu from hydro development was a major conservation issue in those days. The river and a large part of the surrounding Raukumara Range are now protected with Wilderness Zone status. It is reassuring to see most of the hardware of this quest for energy now removed as we arrive at the temporary fly-camp the road crew have pitched for us.
It’s time to get out of damp wetsuits; to dip crackers into pots of pate, to drink tea, beer or wine while snacking on grapes and Camembert cheese. This is a modern-day expedition after all. Later we have a fine meal of pasta and meat sauce, or Textured Vegetable Protein for the vegetarians, and then relax into that special bonhomie found only around wilderness campfires. Talk returns often to the river.
Fronting up to the cataracts of the Lower Gorge makes this trip all about good, clean fun.
Noel Rusden (37), owner of Wet ‘N’ Wild, and a veteran river guide, reckons he’s made 150 or more Motu descents since he began rafting in the late 1970s. He’s philosophical about flow levels: “The Motu can be a real wild whitewater river, but its real value is its isolation. It’s a wilderness experience, that’s the biggest plus it has over other commercially rafted rivers in New Zealand.”
Noel admits on this particular trip he would like to see another metre of water to make things interesting. But what’s “interesting” to some can be hell-scarey for others– it’s not size that counts, but the quality of the experience – or so they say.
We wake to a huge breakfast we set out on doy two of our journey. The river is very low, and so clear we can count the stones on the bottom. This trip definitely won’t make national headlines. That’s fine with me as I try to estimate where the river level was at the same place in 1979.
It’s a good time to become lost in the isolated grandeur of the place. For this river flows through a true wilderness of virgin, indigenous forest protected by steep mountainous ridges rising to 1200 metres. Born in the farmland hills above Matawai it meanders beneath State Highway 2 to the settlement of Motu. There it plunges over the nine-metre-high Motu Falls to disappear into a deep, inaccessible bush-clad canyon that drops some 600 metres on a 60km run to the sea, emerging in the Bay of Plenty 40km from Opotiki.
The word Motu, in this instance, is translated to mean “isolated” and this is the area’s most significant quality. Once he camp at Otipi is left behind there is no way out but down.
The Motu has often been likened to a sleeping giant. Today the giant is well and truly slumbering. But I am mindful of the numerous old newspaper stories I had unearthed in my earlier research of the river’s history. The river has claimed many lives – the worst tragedy in 1900 when a flood drowned 18 people, including 16 children, who were crossing the river near the sea.
During the early days of recreational river descents the Motu often featured under such banner headlines as: “Rescue Ends Seven-Day Nightmare On The Motu”; “Rain Makes River Trip A Nightmare”, “Fast, Turbulent Motu Takes Toll Of Human Life”; “Marooned On The Motu, Battle Against Violence Of Motu Rapids”.
There is little violence today as we stop to boil the billy before entering the infamous Lower Gorge. We are making no headlines, just celebrating good, clean fun as we front-up to each rapid in succession; watching the kayak paddlers make their runs and then hooting as each raft commits itself to the drops.
We have one dramatic moment as our crew in the six-man raft overturns on the Double Staircase and everyone take a swim; but is more comic relief than high tension.
It was on this section of the Motu in 1957 that the first NZED survey party investigating dam sites, crashed into the river in a helicopter. No one was killed, but the party had a tough time getting out. They were finally dropped a rubber dinghy from an aircraft and were able to raft down the river to safety. The pilot later received an award for bravery. For many years pieces of the wrecked chopper could be seen at the site which is to this day called Helicopter Rapid.
Not far below this cascade the Lower Gorge opens up and we enter quieter waters and the last haul to the upper limit for jetboats and the end of our descent by raft. Kim Woolsey of Motu River Jetboat Tours is waiting for us and begins the task of jetting us out to the coast, seven at a time.
I remember that back in 1979, even with the river in flood, that this last stretch to the coast was a long haul. Today, at low level, the 25km jetboat ride to SH35 will save us five to six hours of paddling. I’m all for ecotourism but, hell, today I’m adaptable.
What’s more, the jetboat ride is something else again – 20 minutes of top-speed, jet-propelled, petrol-heading without wheels.
The road crew are waiting for us at the bridge and after major sort out of people and gear, it’s back to Opotiki, a few beers, a Chinese meal, and then the 100km trip back through the Waioeka Gorge and home.