Makarora and Wanaka

Thunder Creek Falls Haast Pass.

I left Haast for Makarora on the Newsman's bus Friday 28th. The trip takes about an hour and the fare was $15.00. It's a great service, the driver did a brief commentary going through the Haast Pass, the scenery and building of the pass is impressive. We stopped at Thunder Creek Falls to see the 96 meter waterfall and I did the tourist thing taking photos on the platform alongside everyone else, then we headed up and over The Gates of Haast bridge and on to Makarora where I disembarked.
Rhondda Osmers is the owner of the Makarora Tourist Centre, her late husband Dave started the business in the late 1950s as a young man with a vision he bought some land and developed the centre into what it has become. Beautiful alpine chalets set amongst native bush, sweeping mountains, the Wilkin River and Lakes Hawea and Wanaka nearby.
I stayed two nights in the family and friends guest house. I'd hardly arrived and Rhondda had me loaded with old boxes of Daves photos, newspaper and magazine cuttings. I set myself up with pen and notebook and spent  all afternoon combing through the piles.

Finding some gems in old pie boxes, Dave Osmers Archive Makarora.

Dave and Frank were very close - and he never forgot Frank so when I contacted him back in 1998 he was my most keen supporter of the book idea and wrote me letters and gave me the first of the wonderful B&W portraits of Frank taken on his Rolleiflex. Dave was a professional photographer for the NZ Weekly and his photos have contributed to many articles and books on deer hunting and the venison meat industry.
On the Saturday Rhondda arranged a meeting with Sir Tim Wallis in Wanaka . Tim was so lovely we chatted about the beginnings of the venison meat industry as he and Dave were both involved in the early stages along with hunters like Frank Erceg, John Cummings, Frank Woolf and many others.

My crib in the bush Makarora.

I also visited Doug Jones of Cromwell. Doug had meat processing plants back in the day,  Frank sold his meat to Doug while meat hunting on the Arawhata. Frank was Groomsman at Doug's wedding, he said he'd find some photos to send up. I asked him if he had any old records or ledgers from those days, showing any of Frank's transactions. Doug shook his head and said it all went with the fire. He had a couple of big blazes go through his factories, what a shame, but he was very helpful with the finer details of the operation - prices paid for meat, how the meat was cut and prepared. He said Frank's haunches were always tidy and cared for, not fly blown.
No mean feat, this is before the days of freezers and chillers, when meat was stored in meat safes, wire mesh enclosures with the meat strung up. It wasn't chilled directly, and wouldn't meet todays standards by a deer cullers mile! Amazing to think how it all started. As Doug said, it was trial and error and of course techonology helped. Having the more advanced meat chillers roadside for hunters to store the meat helped and the trucks coming through regularly. But it could be a day or two from killing the beast and hauling it from where it fell onto boats, planes, piling up the Land Drover, securing it onto bonnets of cars, in the boot, on the back seat, or the back seat was ripped out for more room; floating it down rivers on tractor tubes - apparently this didn't work so well - all means were tried at least once to transport the meat to the roads.
This was all good to hear from Doug. I interviewed him for a good hour and learned more on the beginnings of the venison meat export industry.