Ghosts of many boats
Alex and Lesley Stone pay their respects to the great Waikato River in an excerpt of Up the Creek that could be much, much longer.
Our Up the Creek adventure this month breaks all the rules. For a start, we’re not starting at the river mouth. And our ‘creek’ is the mighty Waikato, New Zealand’s longest river.
To do this justice as an Up the Creek adventure would take an entire book – or two. So we’ll just do the bit through the city of Hamilton. A journey that can as easily be accomplished by bicycle along the riverside Te Awa Trail, if you have shipmates with this preference.
We will launch at the Puketu boat ramp car park, just by the Waikato Equestrian Centre, and head up to Hamilton Gardens and back. There’s enough history – and contemporary cultural interest – in this short stretch anyway.
It’s said of the mighty Waikato River that there’s a Rangatira, a chief, living at every bend. And in between a taniwha or two, as well. Mythic and other histories overlap closely here.
This great sense of history’s presence is
