This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Adrienne and Don Jeffs served to each of the fabulous fourteen T&Ms who ventured to a tramp at Waikanae on Sunday 14 September 1997. And what’s more, who should be there to help serve it but the two Club stalwarts, Trevor and Mary Walsh. And in their hands they held a swag of ancient photographs of T&Ms from the good old days. The name of their game was to put a name to a face, and this we did to the best of our ability and recollections for Mary, Adrienne, Trevor and Don were busy doing their bit for the forthcoming 50th jubilee celebrations. We helped them too.
t was a lovely cup of coffee that
Earlier, 14 T&Ms had met at Elizabeth Street at 10am to go tramping in the Waikanae hills under the leadership of Don Jeffs, a former Chief Guide of our Club in the 1960s. His party included his wife, Adrienne (nee Webb), Dot and Dave Catchpole, Ron Fayle, Beth Griffiths, Margaret Hamilton, Heather Jones, Lorraine Neilsen, Don and Ben O’Brien, Georgie Sanderson, Ollie Stempa and Lloyd Wilkin. Earlier than that the writer had misjudged the time it would take to reach Waikanae, had arrived 30 minutes too early, _and to kill time had cruised fence and passed some cattle following a fence-line uphill and then at right angles to the right until we picked up a bush track heading east and climbing steeply to the hilltop above Waikanae at 500m where we stopped for lunch, having previously scoffed our morning tea at a lower level on the way up. Don told us that a bush track runs along the top northwards towards, and linking with the forestry roads which run up the hill from the top end of Hadfield Road which is opposite the Pekapeka turnoff on SH1. At lunch, the weather was a bit chilly as cloud was blocking the warmth of the sunshine in contrast to the lovely day down below. After lunch we tramped towards the south and came to a sidetrack on our right which, when followed for around 20m reveals the most wonderful view of Waikanae township and its surrounds that I have seen. Haze over the sea limited the distance seawards of the view. Prominent on the southern skyline were the peaks of Mt Wainui 722m and Maunganui 708m. We moved further south and emerged into farmland still as high as about 470m and Don said with a laugh that he had intended this for the lunch stop but when he saw the party earlier climb the a most enjoyable and relaxing ramble in the hills of Waikanae, but here, please revert to the first paragraph and read it again, as this happens to be a circular trip report.
Footnote: On 18 March 1949 “Kereru”, a Lockheed Lodestar of National Airways Corporation (NAC) took off from Auckland with 15 people on board bound for Paraparaumu, Christchurch and Dunedin. The weather was blustery north-west winds with rain and low cloud. It flew on instruments and when south of Wanganui the pilot was cleared to descend on instruments to below the 800 foot cloud base. Five miles north of Foxton the pilot reported being clear of cloud and requested, and was granted, permission to continue under visual flight rules to Paraparaumu. A few minutes later, 9:37am reporting off the Otaki River mouth and 13 miles still to run to the aerodrome, he was given instructions for landing by Paraparaumu Tower, and at about the same time the crew of another NAC plane saw a Lodestar descending towards the south east through a gap in the low cloud near the Otaki River mouth.
A more normal approach for airliners of that size would have been through the streets of Hemi Matenga to identify the start and finishing points of the tramp. The name of one street, Kereru, brought back a recollection which I shall deal with in a footnote to this report. On with the tramp. It started at a signpost in Huia Street and we tramped over a wire hill, stop at its top and pull out their lunches, he didn’t have the heart to tell everyone to re-stow their lunches and keep tramping. They might have had him for lunch.
The descent to the carpark below was per a well-graded and benched foot-track and so ended to let down over the sea near Kapiti Island and then turn left into the north-west wind to land on the main runway. The airliner then disappeared. At 10am an emergency was declared after repeated radio calls from the Tower had not been answered. RNZAF aircraft from Ohakea were airborne within minutes for a search of the area from Kapiti Island to the Tararuas. An Auster spotted aircraft wreckage on the western slopes of Mick (east of Otaki), but it turned out to be the undiscovered wreck of an RNZAF Venturer bomber which had gone missing after a meteorological flight out into the Tasman Sea some 3 years earlier. It was flying from and to Ohakea when it disappeared in February 1946. Not long after the first sighting, an Auster pilot saw smoke rising from “aircraft wreckage on the eastern face of the steep ridge behind Waikanae, 3 miles north of the town”. At 2.30pm a large search and rescue team set off from the Jones’ farm at the top of Hadfield Road “but heavy bush and wet cold conditions hampered progress and, despite the efforts of the Austere pilot to guide them, the search was abandoned for the night”.
By 8am the next day the 50 searchers reached the wreckage to find that it was burned out with only the tail, engines and propellers recognisable. “All 15 on board had obviously been killed outright as the Lodestar flew straight into aravine at 1850 feet and well below the crest of the ridge. With only two minutes’ flying time before landing at Paraparaumu, the undercarriage was lowered and first impact had been left wing against a large Rimu tree. Kereru then had capsized and left a trail of wreckage almost 200 metres long through heavy bush.” “A Commission of Enquiry held in Wellington found that the crash resulted in faulty navigation as no evidence was found of mechanical, structural or radio malfunction and both pilots were experienced. The basic cause was the pilot's decision to try a VFR approach to Paraparaumu in the prevailing condition and, as the Commission stated, the Captain’s decision to go VFR was a fundamental error of judgement from which flowed cumulative errors, terminating in acritical situation from which the aircraft could not be extracted.” The above quotations are from John King’s book “Aviation Accidents and Disasters”. Ross Kerr, in “A Chronology of the Tararua and Rimutaka Ranges” also has something to say on the subject, namely: “1949, March 18, NAC Lodestar aircraft Kereru ZK-AKX crash in Tararua foothills near Waikanae, at altitude of 1500 feet, killing 15 (NZMS 1. N157, GR 643738).”
The writer’s own conversion of the last-mentioned grid reference in the old system (one inch to the mile) to the new metric system of 1:50,000 is grid reference R26/ 882360.
long drive on Friday night finally saw us camping at Reid’s Farm just outside Taupo. Saturday morning the 20 person strong paddling team made its way down to the bridge across the Waikato at Ohaaki, where we met up with our kayak rental friends from Rotorua and _ their dog Bob. Bob had grown _ since last time we saw her, and was running around like mad while the keen kayakers packed their boats - jumping onto the back of our boats as they were launched into the water. I watched as the party started drifting downstream, letting the placid current do its work, and getting into the habit of paddling again. Lazing around behind the others, Suzi, Harry and myself suddenly saw this little brown thing coming towards us in the distance. We suddenly realised it was Bob desperately chasing after us down-river! We turned back to rescue the poor thing, who, with dogged determination surely
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Lloyd Wilkin
October 1997