In the court case following the 1878 fire that virtually annihilated Waimate Bush, a witness described the wind conditions as “a hurricane” (The Lyttelton Times, 25 June, 1879).
A lawyer, seeking a definition of ‘hurricane’ was given:
“a very strong wind indeed; a wind that blew no one any good”.
His Honor, Mr Justice Johnston, interjected at this point, saying:
“That is very doubtful; as the hurricane which you speak of evidently blew the lawyers some good.” (laughter in the court room).
As the blame-game played out, seems like some things, don’t change. But other stuff definitely does…..
The First Big Fires
When humans arrived in New Zealand they triggered widespread burning (Perry et al., 2012). Extensive forests of central and southern Canterbury were reduced to many scattered patches within much bigger areas of relatively flammable grassland, shrubland and wetland. This is very similar to the situation of Australian rainforests today (See David Bowman’s book, ‘Australian Rainforests. Islands of Green in a Land of Fire).
But after a disastrous ‘Initial Burning Phase’, things settled down to some sort of equilibrium. What was ‘on the edge’ when people came, burnt, but what was left, could mostly hold its own in the new fire regime. Maori had no incentive to remove these remaining patches of forest, and every incentive to protect them. They were both a supply of food and timber for such things as waka (canoes). See Geoff Park’s book ‘Nga Uru Ora’ for a North Island focussed discussion on how these ‘Groves of Life’ functioned. Maori likely took every precaution to keep fires out of their forests.
Using the oldest maps, Barry Johnston (1961), a professor at Canterbury University, made a concerted effort to document where forests and wetlands lay in Canterbury, in early European times. I was fascinated by his paper, but many times he had referred to the intriguingly named ‘Black Maps’. But chasing these down wherever they are archived was shunted into my ‘too hard’ basket. So it was fantastic news when I unexpectedly discovered that the ‘Black Maps’ have now been digitised, and are publicly available on line. These carefully surveyed maps include not only the boundaries of land parcels, but indicate the outlines of forests, wetlands, and are sometimes annotated with descriptions. They are a priceless record of the vegetation of Canterbury around the late 1850s, early 1860s, just as settler activity was taking off.
Settlers had an entirely different mind-set appeared, and came in overwhelming numbers. Grassland and wetland was good farming country, while forests were economical assets, just waiting to be milled and sold as timber, and thence converted to another economical asset – farmland.
Waimate Bush
As the settlers arrived, one of the largest remaining patches of bush in southern Canterbury was ‘Waimate Bush’ (‘bush’ is New Zealandese for ‘forest’). It is indicated clearly on the Black Maps. They show it to have extended south-east from the Hunter Hills out onto the lowlands where northwestern Waimate town is now. Unfortunately the Black Maps don’t extend up into the Hunter Hills, so the exact western boundary is unclear. But it likely ended as fingers in the higher valleys of the eastern slopes, with the ridge lines under grass and shrubs. Waimate Bush was well stocked with kahikatea (Dacrycarpus), matai (Prumnopitys) and totara (Podocarpus), the most drought-tolerant of our conifers. I would estimate the Waimate Bush was around 2,000 Ha in extent.
Much of Waimate Bush ‘proper’ stood on the alluvial terraces by and above the incised Waimate Creek. This was/is a well drained, and exposed situation, with relatively low rainfall, and subject to drought. The bush grew in a surface cover of loess (windblown silt), which was described by Clark (1926) as of “great fertility”. Nowadays, the soils that lay below Waimate Bush are classified as ‘Brown’ to ‘Pallic Soils’ (Newsome et al., 2008). Pallic soils form from loess, and Allan Hewitt (2007) has described them as having:
“limited uses (mostly sheep grazing) because the subsoil is dense. Roots cannot penetrate to moisture deep down, so the soil becomes even drier. Although dry in summer, the soil can be wet in winter or spring.”
In other words, despite relative fertility, Waimate Bush was hanging on in a fairly tough environment with respect to soil structure and moisture availability. It likely engineered enough of a micro-climate to maintain moist conditions under the canopy, and remain more or less fire resistant.
The Great Fire in Waimate Bush
The year 1878 had been a weird climatic one. In September-October, torrential rain in the west Otago highlands (perhaps from a hit by what we would now call an ‘Atmospheric River’) had produced epic floods through the Otago goldfields, as well as some Canterbury rivers.
But by November, southern Canterbury had been experiencing very dry weather on and off for weeks, and then – a synoptic situation developed which produced dry foehn winds of gale force. The ferocious wind hit Waimate Bush, in which five saw mills were operating. These were cutting down large trees, which opened the canopy up and bathed the forest floor in direct sunlight and wind. General human activity, like hauling the logs out, would have further opened up the vegetation.
That is, milling was drying out the bush. In fact, ‘dry bush’ was the term used at the time, for bush from “which the growing timber suitable for sawing purposes, had been felled”, or “to the worked-off portion of the bush” (Special Reporter, Bruce Herald, 22 Nov, 1878).
The tree crowns, with their masses of fines branches, was not merchantable timber – so the millers left it on the forest floor, in amongst a mass of sawdust. That is, not only was milling drying the forest out, it was creating huge amounts of fuel.
On top of this, in the grass and scrub-covered hills surrounding the bush, shepherds had a practise of lighting ‘signal fires’. Apparently, at least one of these was lit, upwind of the forest, despite the weather conditions, with catastrophic consequences. The gale blew this fire towards Waimate Bush – where it seems like some fires were already burning. Perhaps those ones had started as sparks from the mills, or from camp fires, or even spontaneously in saw dust: Studholme (1940) wrote that sawdust dumps “were always quietly smouldering”.
By November 18, 1878, a combination of factors led to a worst-case scenario – the fire in the hills, linked up with fire in the Bush, to create a fire that “raged with out check” until the 23rd (Clark, 1926). It destroyed up to seventy cottages and some saw mills, and although no lives were lost, plenty of livelihoods were. At the end of it, Waimate Bush, had almost been wiped out.
The Bruce Herald ‘Special Reporter’ recounted that on a visit “over 15 years ago” [i.e. early 1860s]:
“the bush was all but untouched, and where portions of the township now stand, dense bush then existed”.
The original bush extent was estimated as “over 6,000 acres” (about 2,430 Ha). On Nov 19, 1878, the reporter had “a ramble through what is left of Waimate Bush”, observing that:
“For an inch or two from the surface the very soil itself is burnt and hardened like a cinder. No life, animal or vegetable, could possibly subsist, while the fire was searching out every available corner of the bush capable of burning”.
The reporter added that:
“from 600 to 1000 acres [about 240-400 Ha] of maiden or untouched bush, has been all but unharmed by the fire which swept all around it, but did not reach over a chain [about 20 m] into its unbroken fastnesses”.
So it does seem that an un-milled core of the bush had retained its fire-retardant properties, and survived (until it was milled).
What’s Left of Waimate Bush?
Today, a few indigenous forest patches near Waimate have fortunately been preserved, and with public access. Studholme Bush Scenic Reserve, lies only three kilometres to the south-west of Waimate, and has some totara and matai. However, it was not part of Waimate Bush proper. Curiously, on the Black Map, no forest is indicated, but the area is labelled as “very rough fern and scrub”. The totara and matai are either recent regrowth, or were so minor when the Black Map was made, that they were below consideration as ‘forest’.
Kelceys Bush Conservation Area, is about seven kilometres north-west of Waimate centre, but lies just beyond the Black Map coverage. It has “occasional kahikatea, mataī and tōtara” (DoC, Kelceys Bush Tracks), but it is located in the steep headwaters of Waimate Creek. So although it was likely an upland portion of Waimate Bush, the patch doesn’t preserve any of the lowland forest. Gunns Bush Conservation Area lies even further north, but likewise, is a remnant in a valley of the Hunter Hills, and was not part of Waimate Bush.
The Cause
In the ensuing court case, various witnesses were no doubt trying to cover their arses as regards responsibility for the fire. Some were keen to point out that forest couldn’t/didn’t/wouldn’t burn, that in normal conditions, a grass or scrub fire could be expected to burn up to the edge of the bush, then stop, and that shepherds had long lit signal fires in grass – and nothing had happened before. Some of these views appeared in The Lyttelton Times (June 25, 1879).
Henry Ford, a farm manager:
“Working bush did not make any difference in the greenness of the scrub on the edge of the bush. It was almost impossible for fire to enter a bush, whether it had been worked in or not.”
Alpheus Hayes, a timber merchant and saw-mill proprietor:
“There were about two months of very dry weather before the fire. The bush was very inflammable, as most of it had been worked out. The large area of bush he (witness) had worked was very inflammable, as witness only took the timber out of it that was fit for sawing, and left the tops of trees and undergrowth in it … It had been blowing about half a gale from the north-west nearly every day for months before the great fire. It blew a violent gale on Nov. 15.”
Edward Elworthy, a runholder:
“Last season was fearfully dry, and there were lots of north west winds.”
So, proximal cause of the disaster? Someone lit/caused a fire. All-else being equal, it may not have have burnt into Waimate Bush. But all else was not equal. An actual ‘hurricane’ was not what hit Waimate– but the point was made. This was one of the most extreme of the extreme nor-west gales, the type that tend to presage the approach of a cold front. It came after a long period of similar drying gales, though apparently not quite as brutal. Extreme gales, droughts, and human-lit fires, would all have occurred in pre-European Maori times. But in 1878, the underlying system had changed. With milling activities, the bush had become more flammable. The equilibrium following the ‘Initial Burning Phase’, had shifted.
It’s shifting again now, wherever dry seasons are becoming longer, the Vapor Pressure Deficit (the ‘thirst’ of the atmosphere), and other drivers of fire-weather are increasing. Milling may have stopped, but our little patches of bush, are not out of the woods….
Digital Waimate Bush
To schematically show where Waimate Bush was, I’ve used the 8 m LIDAR topographic data to recreate the landscape in Blender 3D, and then scattered digital kahikatea trees over the Waimate Bush as determined from the Black Maps (and guesstimated its extent on the eastern slopes of the Hunter Hills).
Acknowledgments
The Black Maps. Thanks to Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Environment Canterbury, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), Micrographics and Archives New Zealand, digitised Black Maps are now available on Canterbury Maps.
Papers Past. The various references to newspaper articles are very helpfully digitised and available here.
LINZ topographic maps. The 1:50,000 topographic maps are available free on this site.
References
Bowman, D.M.J.S. 2000. ‘Australian Rainforests. Islands of Green in a Land of Fire’. Cambridge University Press.
Clark, A.F. 1926. Canterbury’s native bush. Te Kura Ngahere, 2: 15-22.
Johnston, W.B. 1961. Locating the Vegetation of Early Canterbury: A Map and the Sources
Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand : Botany, 1: 5-15.
Hewitt, A. Soils – The most extensive soils’ (published 24 Sep 2007), Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/soils/page-4 (accessed 23 July 2024)
Newsome, P.F.J., Wilde, R.H., and Willoughby, E.J. 2008. Land Resource Information System Spatial Data Layers. Data Dictionary: Landcare Research New Zealand Ltd.
Park. G. 1995. Ngā Uruora: The Groves of Life – Ecology & History in a New Zealand Landscape. Te Herenga Waka Press.
Perry, G.L.W., Wilmshurst, J.M., McGlone, M.S., McWethy, D.B., and Whitlock, C. 2012. Explaining fire-driven landscape transformation during the Initial Burning Period of New Zealand’s prehistory. Global Change Biology, 18, 1609–1621.
Studholme, E.C. 1940. Te Waimate : early station life in New Zealand. Reed, Dunedin, N.Z.
4 comments
Good read. And nice use of Blender!!! I wish I was proficient with it.
Thanks Alan! Blender is a steep learning curve, that never seems to get much easier….
Awesomely interesting, thank you Mike
I have hunted wallabies in the Hook Bushand nearby reserves so am familiar with the general area, and yes, chewing still blows like a hurricane!!!!
Thanks very much! I pulled into Gunns and Kelsey’s a couple of weeks ago. But no knowledge beyond the car park! ☺️