The great river of waiting
The year was 1949 when my teenage brother and I built an ‘unsinkable’ canoe from sheet metal and called it Illawarra. We transported it by ship from Australia to New Zealand and set out to canoe the Whanganui river – a stunning river valley reserve which is now a premier wilderness destination for canoeing and kayaking enthusiasts. Back then, other than the local Maori people, few had contemplated canoeing its length and certainly not for adventure. We had no maps, but over the course of 10 days we canoed a river bigger than we had ever known.
My own father was born in Wanganui in 1904 but emigrated to Australia in 1925, making the Whanganui River my first personal connection with New Zealand. Of course the National Park didn’t exist in December 1949, when my brother, Arthur and I set out to canoe the river. It was still to be conceived and founded about 40 years later. The Whanganui, known as ‘the great river of waiting’ has its name is derived from legend, when a Maori contemplating the best way to cross declared it ‘too
