Today’s journey was the reason for us travelling so far south-west – to visit a power station. The West Arm hydroelectric station is the biggest in the southern hemisphere and is capable of supplying all of NZ’s needs, but 80% is dedicated to an aluminium smelter, for which purpose it was built. The idea was mooted in 1904 but the construction technology wasn’t available. Then again in 1936, the feasibility was surveyed and shelved. Not until the 60s was it begun, and so was born NZ’s environmental movement. As a result, there is astonishingly little environmental impact – it is silent, invisible, (largely) clean and remotely controlled. Most visitors may not appreciate the scale of the task but we were certainly impressed.
To get there, we joined a dozen others on a fast boat sailing an hour to the end of Lake Manapouri. At the station’s jetty, and in-flow gates, we boarded a boat which took us down a 2km tunnel to the generator hall, where the taps of seven turbines quietly hummed. Only one man lives on site at a time as roving janitor, so we didn’t stay to tea.
The bus took us thence over Wilmott’s Pass to Doubtful Sound, where all the machinery and equipment and materials came in from, and where we sailed in a larger aluminium boat, down the sound and to the Tasman Sea. When Cook arrived there for the first time, he refused to sail in, being doubtful of being able to catch enough wind to get out again, hence the name. Technically, it’s a fjord, since a sound is created by a river, not a glacier, but only Slartibartfarst really cares. And possibly a few pedants like me. Most tourists go to Milford Sound, which is younger, narrower, shallower and generally inferior. Although we took on trust the 400-metre depth, where rare deep sea creatures live at shallow depths due to the top layer of tannin-stained freshwater, we felt smugly confident of its unique qualities. It is a most pristine, striking and beautiful environment, and even though we saw no dolphins, no penguins (except for one solitary little blue penguin), we had a varied, interesting and memorable experience. Much of the environment is so reminiscent of Klemtu in northern Canada, with the heavily forested, steeply glaciated slopes plunging into deep, dark waters and though technically summer, the annual rainfall of 5-7 metres (about six times what London or Christchurch gets) means that it is as cool as those more extreme latitudes.
The flora is significantly different from anywhere else, given the breakaway from Gondwanaland, but many familiar species abound – buttercups, hawthorn, evening primrose – and most remarkably, spectacular fields of multi-coloured lupins, and further south, the wild yellow variety. The scent is wonderful and half an acre of purple, pink, indigo, delphinium-and-white, vermilion-and-cream spikes jittering in the breeze is enchanting, especially when I struggle to cultivate the odd couple. Maybe there are no slugs in NZ?? Certainly there are no indigenous mammals, excepting the Australian rat and two types of bat – the only marsupials. The imported possum is a terrible threat and the object of a huge pest control programme which results in shops full of possum fur coats – the Oz tourists, for whom the animal is a preserved species, are scandalised. Amazing what cultural differences can develop either side of a strip of water! Mon Dieu!