The Magnetism of Fiordland: The Hollyford Valley to Martins Bay

The Hollyford Track begins on the flat. For the first nine kilometres, two to three hours of walking, the path keeps close to the river through red and silver beech, with moss on every surface and the water so clear the stones on the bottom look dry. Swing bridges cross the side streams.

Hidden Falls Hut stands near the point where Hidden Falls Creek tumbles into the main valley. It was near here, on Christmas Day 1955, that the valley’s best-known figure died. Davey Gunn had taken up cattle runs in the Hollyford in the 1920s, cutting tracks and building huts, and from 1936 he guided walking parties down the valley alongside his musters. That Christmas his horse stumbled while fording the river near Hidden Falls. Gunn and a 12-year-old boy riding behind him were swept away. His body was never found.

Beyond Hidden Falls the track climbs for the only time in any serious way, over Little Homer Saddle, a low forested rise. Through gaps in the trees the Darran Mountains show to the east, granite and gneiss peaks hung with ice, and the highest of them, Mount Tūtoko, at more than 2,700 metres the summit of Fiordland.

The mountain carries the name of a man who lived at Martins Bay when European prospectors pushed down the valley in the 1860s. Māori had long used the region: the coast was a source of food, and the valleys lay on routes connected to pounamu, the greenstone prized across the country. By the time the first Europeans arrived, only a handful of people remained at Martins Bay. Tūtoko and his family were among them, and the accounts of the prospectors record them as helpful hosts, lending a canoe to men searching the lower river for gold that did not exist in useful amounts.

Past the saddle the track drops to Lake Alabaster, also called Waiwahuika, a long lake ringed with forest. Its still mornings, mist low on the water and the hills reflected upside down, are the reason many walkers remember it.

A short backtrack from Lake Alabaster Hut leads to the swing bridge over the Pyke River. Beyond it the track changes character. The Demon Trail follows the eastern shore of Lake McKerrow for most of its length, and the Department of Conservation keeps it to a lower standard than the rest. It was originally a cattle track, rocky and up-and-down, crossing side streams on three-wire bridges and getting muddy after rain. In heavy weather some creek crossings become dangerous, and walkers wait them out.

Guided parties have often skipped this section by jet boat, running down the river and along the lake. Independent walkers earn the views the hard way.

Halfway along Lake McKerrow the track passes a quiet bay. There is little to see now beyond a clearing and a sign. In the years around 1870 this was Jamestown, a surveyed township backed by the Otago Provincial Council, which hoped to turn Martins Bay into a West Coast port for the province. Streets were marked out and several houses went up.

It failed for reasons that are obvious from the shore. No road linked the settlement to the rest of Otago. The bar at the mouth of the Hollyford was treacherous, and supply ships that were supposed to call either could not cross it or did not come. Settlers who had cleared land and planted gardens went hungry while they waited. By 1879, roughly a decade after it began, the town was practically empty. The forest has since taken back almost everything.

The Hollyford is a good place to learn the plants that Māori relied on, because many of them grow right beside the track. Harakeke, New Zealand flax, crowds the river flats and the edges of Martins Bay. Its long leaves were stripped and processed into fibre for clothing, rope, mats and baskets, and the clear gel at the base of the leaves has long been used on burns and cuts. Tī kōuka, the cabbage tree, often marks old campsites; its root was cooked in earth ovens for its sugar. Koromiko, a native hebe, has soft leaves that were used as a remedy for stomach complaints.

Towards the coast the forest changes, with rimu, kahikatea, tōtara and rātā rising above the beech in the lower valley. It is wet country. Fiordland is one of the rainiest places in New Zealand, and after a heavy night the cliffs of the Hollyford sprout waterfalls that were not there the evening before, then lose them again within a day of clear weather.

Rain is the price of the forest.

The coast north of Martins Bay produced the valley’s most famous act. On 30 December 1936 a de Havilland Fox Moth carrying a pilot and five passengers crashed into the sea at Big Bay. One passenger died soon after. Davey Gunn was there, and he set out for help, covering roughly 90 kilometres by foot, rowing boat and horse to reach Marian Corner and a telephone in about 21 hours. The trip normally took four days. He was awarded the King George VI Coronation Medal the following year, and Mount Gunn in the valley carries his name.

The last stretch, from Hokuri Hut to Martins Bay, is about 13 kilometres and four to five hours, and it ends with the sound of surf long before the sea comes into view. The Hollyford spills into the Tasman here across a wide river mouth, with the beach running away north under dark headlands.

Long Reef, at the northern end of the bay, holds a colony of fur seals. The pups use the sheltered rock pools while the adults are at sea, and they can be watched from a distance without disturbing them. Between July and November, tawaki, the Fiordland crested penguin, come ashore along this coast to breed in the forest margins. Herons work the river mouth, and dolphins sometimes appear offshore.

Older human traces lie in the dunes: fireplaces, ovens and shell middens left by the people who lived and fished here for generations. The Department of Conservation asks visitors to leave anything they find exactly where it is.

One small thing about the sandflies. In a Ngāi Tahu story, the god who carved the fiords, Tū-te-raki-whānoa, made them so beautiful that people would want to stay forever, and Hinenuitepō, guardian of the underworld, released the namu, the sandflies, to keep them moving. Anyone who has stood still on the beach at Martins Bay at dusk will not argue with her method.

Martins Bay Hut, near the river mouth, is the end of the Hollyford Track for most walkers. The options from there are to walk back up the valley, which takes four or five days, or to arrange a flight out by plane or helicopter. Flights south along the coast pass over the mouths of the fiords and up the length of Milford Sound, where Mitre Peak rises 1,692 metres from the water.

For those who prefer company and comfort, a Ngāi Tahu-owned operator has run guided walks on the track since 2003, using lodges at Pyke and Martins Bay, which were renamed Ka Tuku and Waitai in 2023. Independent walkers use the six Department of Conservation huts along the route, all of which must be booked ahead.

Fiordland sits at the far end of a long chain of South Island attractions. The glass houses and bungy bridges of Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu lie two hours north-east of Te Anau. In the North Island, a very different volcanic walk crosses from Taranaki to its neighbouring range on the Pouakai Crossing, and the mountains themselves star in the Māori legend of Taranaki and Tongariro.

Check conditions with the Fiordland National Park Visitor Centre in Te Anau before setting out, because heavy rain can close sections of the Hollyford Track for a day or more. Then pack the insect repellent where it can be reached without taking the bag off.