On March 25, 1894, three prospectors left Puysegur Point, on the south-western tip of Fiordland, to walk to the railhead at Orepuki, a distance of about 100 km. They took enough food to last three weeks, and intended to pan for gold along the way.

Things went wrong from the start. Heavy rains and swollen rivers slowed their progress to such an extent that it took them three weeks to reach Big River, a mere 25 km from their starting point. There they were forced to wait three more days until the current was slow enough to cross on a makeshift raft. They were able to ford the next major river, the Waitutu, but by the time they reached the swift-flowing Wairaurahiri, the most dangerous river on the coast, they were all but done for. Their stock of matches had run out and they had practically no food.

Two of the men, Evans and Kelly, could not swim. The third, Harvey, stripped off his clothes, took a flax line and managed to swim across. His cobbers tied his swag to the line, but as he was pulling it across, it came loose and was swept out to sea.

Evans and Kelly hunkered down on the riverbank while Harvey, wet, cold and naked, went for help. Travelling around the knuckle of land where the Hump Ridge meets the sea involved a choice between two evils: thick scrub that cruelly scratched his body if he went inland, or sharp rocks that cut his feet if he stayed on the coast. At night, he would dig a hole in the sand and cover himself with tussocks.

His progress was slow and painful. Caught in a hailstorm, he dug a hole beneath a rata and lay there for two days, numb with cold. A few days later, half dead with hunger and at the end of his strength, he spotted smoke coming from the chimney of a hut. There was nobody inside, so Harvey stoked up the fire and devoured the remains of a dinner he found. When the two surveyors who had been using the hut returned a few hours later, they were stunned to find a naked man inside. They quickly got a message through to Invercargill. Harvey was saved.

Back at the Wairaurahiri, Evans and Kelly had managed to light a fire by discharging their gun into some dry kindling, but they had nothing to eat. In desperation, they killed and cooked the dog that had been their companion on the journey. As the days passed, unsure of the prospect of rescue, they decided to strike upriver in hope of finding a place to cross. They reached a tree that had fallen into the water and seemed to offer a way over. Evans tried to cross, but lost his footing and was drowned.

Kelly, surviving on morsels of dog meat, kept walking upstream until he found a bridge used to drive sheep across the river. He ate some scraps of sago and suet he found in a hut, and three days later he was picked up on the coast by a search party.

Harrowing and tragic it may have been, but the journey of Harvey, Kelly and Evans was not unusual for travellers on the south coast of New Zealand. Miners down on their luck, surveyors, track cutters whose supplies had run out, even a disgruntled lighthouse keeper pitted themselves against the brutality of terrain and weather in this consummate wilderness. Most survived, but few rolled the dice more than once.

Few, that is, except the linesmen who had the task of maintaining the most remote telephone line in the country—a single strand of number 8 wire which connected the lighthouse at Puysegur Point with the settlement of Orepuki. Over the 15 years of the line’s operation, these tough southern men packed their swags and trekked into the Fiordland forest, a world equal parts glorious and brutal, of razorback mountains, rampant rivers and a wave-lashed coast. They followed the flimsy metal thread that kept communication alive. They were the keepers of the wire.