Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Although they rarely settled here, Maori did pass through this region along routes between
Nelson, Marlborough, Canterbury and the West Coast in search of
pounamu
(greenstone).
The lakes provided
kai
(food) in the form of eels, freshwater mussels and waterfowl.
The first European to visit the area was John Cotterell. In 1842 he and a Maori guide
pushed their way through more than 300km of trackless terrain to the Tophouse, near St
Arnaud, and then turned southeast to the Clarence River. The following January, Cotterell
with his friend Dick Peanter and a Maori guide retraced the first leg of that earlier journey,
but this time turned southwest. And in doing so, Cotterell and Peanter became the first
Europeans to see Lake Rotoiti.
Three years later, another Maori guide, by the name of Kehu, led William Fox, Charles
Heaphy and Thomas Brunner on one of the best-recorded explorations on the South Island.
With Heaphy keeping the diary and Fox painting the scenery as they went, the group
struggled down to Rotoiti under heavy packs. From the lake, Kehu took the party up the
Howard River, where they discovered Lake Rotoroa.
Camping by Lake Rotoiti was popular from the early 1900s, and before long holiday cot-
tages were built and walkers began to explore the surrounding valleys and mountains. The
area's significant environmental and scenic worth was officially recognised in 1956 with the
gazetting of the Nelson Lakes National Park, centred on the mountain catchments of the two
main lakes, Rotoiti and Rotoroa. In 1983, the park significantly increased to its present size,
1017 sq km, with the addition of 430 sq km of beech forest in the Matakitaki and Glenroy
Valleys to the southwest.
Environment
The landscape of Nelson Lakes was created by the Alpine Fault and carved by glaciers. The
long, curved valleys that characterise the park were formed by a series of glaciers that
waxed and waned with the onset of sequential ice-age periods that began two million years
ago. When the glaciers finally retreated after the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, deep holes at
the head of the Travers and Gowan Valleys were left, and these filled with water from the
melting ice to become Lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa.
The forests of Nelson Lakes are predominantly beech, with all five NZ species found
here. In the lower valleys, where conditions are warmer and more fertile, you'll find red and
silver beech interspersed with such species as kamahi and southern rata (which has a mass
of bright flowers when in bloom). Mountain beech becomes dominant at altitudes above
1050m, or where there are poor soils in the lowlands.
