ON SODDEN ROPES I inched down the waterfall, wondering how I would negotiate the deep pool at its base. I swung myself across to a slippery boulder, and noticed as I did so a sinuous shape in the water. It was the largest eel I had ever seen, beige in colour, with a head as big as my fist. I was transfixed, but the eel seemed unfazed by my presence. It had possibly never encountered a human being before.

I was halfway through a near-vertical descent from a ridge of Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges into Henderson Valley—the most challenging part of a journey which had begun simply with the idea of paddling the Opanuku Stream by kayak. But the idea had grown. I had decided to explore the stream’s headwaters as well: to travel from source to sea.

The Opanuku Stream is one of many which begin high in the Waitakeres, the hills that flank Auckland’s western suburbs. These streams flow in three basic directions: west, to the Tasman Sea, south, to the Manukau Harbour and east to the Waitemata Harbour. The Opanuku
eventually joins the tidal waters of Henderson Creek, emptying into the Waitemata at Te Atatu.

On this late autumn day the source of the Opanuku was a nondescript trickle that made its way sluggishly along a ridge through dense forest. When two small tributaries joined it, the stream gathered strength and swept past private properties to the edge of a bluff.

Our small party—Martin Hill, photographer, Len Gillman, forest ecologist, and I—worked our way along the bluff to a point where our topographical map indicated the drop was 160 m. We could just make out the valley below, but once we started the descent the forest canopy closed over us, lush and dripping. Where our climbing ropes ran over rock we worried about getting them down after us: if they became jammed, one of us would have to climb back up to free them.

“I’m going to test that the rope will pull free,” came Hill’s voice on the two-way radio I was carrying. He was 15 m below me and out of sight, and I was last down on this section. I could barely hear him above the sound of the waterfall. The rope slithered round the anchor tree a bit and the OK came.

When I reached the bottom we pulled the rope down and rigged the next tree abseil—the sixth. It took all day to get down to where the stream began to level out. With half an hour to darkness we coiled the ropes for the last time and waded through the shallows and pools looking for the confluence with Spragg Stream.

Two huge kauri loomed out of the shadows. I wondered how they had escaped the loggers’ rampage through the lower slopes of the Waitakeres. All these hills would once have been thick with kauri—to settlers’ eyes, there for the taking. The trees were felled and dragged or rolled to the nearest stream. Driving dams built at strategic points on the waterways were tripped sequentially to create a deluge that carried the logs down to the sawmills.

We waded downstream, passing the confluences with Pukearuhe Stream and Stoney Creek, which, with Spragg Stream, probably had driving dams in the old days. Now they are once again an undisturbed habitat for such creatures as the banded kokopu. This native fish hides by day under overhanging bush, emerging at night to lie in wait for prey, typically the larvae of aquatic insects, or land invertebrates, such as caterpillars or spiders, that fall into the water. Still listed by the Department of Conservation as a threatened species, over the past 10 years it has been recorded with increasing frequency in Auckland’s modified urban streams, where it uses watercress for shelter if there is no bush cover. Like eels, banded kokopu are effective climbers, using their pectoral fins to make their way up culverts, pipes, dams and rocky surfaces.
The water level was low for May. At times we waded through pools waist deep, but more often we were in stony reaches no more than ankle deep.