In the footsteps of the ancestors
Posted 8 January 2008 // Jock Phillips
Jock and the Harper family
In the company of eight members of the Harper family, I have just completed a walk over the Harper Pass, which crosses the main divide between Canterbury and the West Coast. We were re-enacting Leonard Harper’s crossing 150 years ago.
When Leonard completed his walk in January 1858, he was the 20-year-old son of the first bishop of Christchurch. He had been in the colony just over a year. His aim was to find flat land for sheep, and although he did find gold in the Taramakau River, the provincial government ordered him to keep the discovery secret lest the news attract undesirables to the Anglican settlement.
Harper was rather lucky to have his name commemorated. He was certainly not the first person to cross that way. As our Walking tracks entry shows, the route up the Hurunui and over to the Taramakau had been for centuries the major highway for Māori seeking pounamu. And as our European exploration entry suggests, Harper was not even the first Pākehā over the pass. Arthur Dobson, of Arthur’s Pass fame, had preceded him.
Harper was also accompanied by another European, Mr Locke, and three, or perhaps four, Māori. Harper’s achievement was less crossing the pass than going down the West Coast as far as Big Bay, considerably further than Thomas Brunner in his epic journey of 1846.
Yet, as we meandered along the track with the comfort of car transport at each end, we did have a new respect for Harper. We followed DOC’s red triangular markers; Harper, Locke and his guides had to fight through the undergrowth. We feasted on dehydrated food; Harper depended on the skills of his Māori guides to catch birds or spear eels. Sometimes they captured kurī (dogs) in the bush to help with the chase.
We had modern equipment – light packs, easily assembled tents and polypropylene clothing. Harper, who experienced incessantly poor weather, had no tent – just a maggoty blanket. He wore Māori flax sandals, and by the time he arrived back in Canterbury, after almost three months away, his back was bare, his trousers had disintegrated and his shirt was so torn that he was wearing it like an apron to protect his respectability.
Despite our encouragement, the elder male Harper in the party refused to re-enact that assemblage. Historical reconstruction can only go so far.
