Two in the Bush (12 page)

‘Well,’ said Brian at length, ‘tomorrow we’ll walk down to Te Anau and then we can go up to Mount Bruce. You’ll get some good shots of the takahe up there. Once
they outgrew the bantam they became terribly tame, they’re almost domestic now.’

‘What I can’t understand,’ said Jim, ‘is why we didn’t go to Mount Bruce in the first place, instead of mucking about up here, risking pneumonia.’

‘It wouldn’t have been authentic,’ said Chris austerely. ‘We wanted to show the bird’s real environment . . . get the feel of the place.’

‘Well, I certainly got the feel of the place,’ said Jim, thoughtfully squeezing about half a cupful of water out of one of his socks.

The next morning the cloud had lifted and the whole valley was as clear as crystal, bathed in morning sunshine. We collected our gear together and set off early, for it was a long climb down the
mountainside to Te Anau, where the boat was to meet us. As we made our way down through the dripping beech forest, slipping and sliding on the thick carpet of dead, wet beech leaves, I marvelled at
the patience and skill of the little group of men who had climbed up this almost sheer mountainside carrying on their backs a bantam to save the takahe with. I only wished, as I sat down heavily
for the third time and slid several hundred-feet on my backside, that there were more people in the world who would devote this sort of time and energy to the saving of a species.

Now that we had actually seen the takahe in its own valley I was anxious that Brian should take us to Mount Bruce where the takahe chicks, so laboriously obtained from the valley, now lived. The
sanctuary is, of course, government-run, and it consists of a large and nicely overgrown area – carefully fenced – and planted with snow grass. Here the takahes, now fully adult birds,
lived in complete freedom. When we went into the fenced area there was no sign of takahe, but as soon as they heard our voices they appeared out of the undergrowth and ran towards us, heads down,
their great feet thumping the ground. They gathered around us, barging and pushing and almost climbing into our laps in their eagerness to take the banana we had brought for them. Seen at close
range like this their colouring was even more brilliant than I had imagined, and the greeny-gold and purple of their silken feathering gleamed in the sun with a dazzling opalescence. It was a great
privilege, having live takahe feeding from your hand and clustering around your feet like domestic fowl, but an even greater privilege was in store.

In one corner of the takahe paddock was a large aviary, shaped not unlike a half-moon. We had been so busy concentrating on the takahe that I had given this structure scant attention, beyond
peering into it casually. As all I could see in it were some twigs and numerous clumps of grass, I had presumed it was deserted. Now, disentangling myself with difficulty from the takahes, who were
convinced that I still had some bananas concealed about my person, I asked Brian whether the aviary had, in fact, been built for the takahe when they were younger.

‘No,’ said Brian with considerable pride, ‘that is a kakaporium.’

‘What,’ I enquired cautiously, ‘is a kakaporium?’

‘It is a place,’ explained Brian, watching my face closely, ‘where one keeps kakapos.’

The effect it had on me was much the same as if he had casually announced that he had a stable full of multi-coloured unicorns, for the kakapo is not only one of the rarest of the New Zealand
birds, but one of the most unusual, and though I had longed to see one I had thought it would be an impossibility.

‘Do you mean to say,’ I asked, ‘that, you have in that aviary a kakapo and that you never even
mentioned
it to me?’

‘That’s right,’ said Brian, grinning. ‘Surprise.’

‘Lead me to it,’ I demanded, quivering with eagerness, ‘lead me to it this instant.’

Amused and pleased by my wild excitement, Brian opened the door of the aviary and we went inside. Over in one corner there was a wooden box over which had been stacked a large pile of dried
heather. We approached this and cautiously parted the heather, and I was staring, from a range of about eighteen inches, into the face of a real, live kakapo.

The kakapo’s other name is owl parrot, and this is singularly apt for even a professional ornithologist could be pardoned for mistaking it for an owl at first glance. It is large –
bigger than a barn owl – and its plumage is a lovely, misty, sage green, flecked with black. It has a large, flattened facial mask like an owl, out of which peer two enormous dark eyes. This
particular specimen glared at me with all the malignancy of an elderly colonel who had been woken up in his club by a drunken subaltern. Apart from its appearance, which is strange enough, the
kakapo has two other attributes that make it unusual. First, although it can fly rather clumsily, it rarely does, spending most of its time running about the ground in the most un-parrot-like
fashion, and secondly, as if this was not enough, it is nocturnal. In the wild state they wear little tracks through the grass with their nightly perambulations, so that the undergrowth in a kakapo
area looks like innumerable, interlacing country lanes seen from the air. As we filmed the glaring kakapo, Brian told me that its status in the wild state was precarious in the extreme – so
precarious, in fact, that this bird might be the very last kapako left alive. To anyone – even someone not particularly interested in birds – this was a sobering and unpleasant thought,
particularly as one knew that the kakapo was not alone among the birds, mammals and the reptiles of this world in being in this frightful predicament. Probably the only hope of survival the kakapo
and the takahe have is in sanctuaries like Mount Bruce, and the more countries that start this kind of establishment, the better it will be.

Now that we had filmed the takahe story we intended to spend our last three days in New Zealand in and around Wellington, filming anything of interest that we found. However, at this point,
Fate, in the shape of a small man in a bar, stepped in and disorganised all our plans.

Ever since we had been in New Zealand two things had haunted and depressed Chris beyond measure. The first was that it seemed impossible for him to get a decent recording of anything, for the
moment he got the recorder out and set up, either the subject would fly away or else a car would pass or a plane would fly overhead or a stiff breeze would spring up, or one of the hundred and one
things would happen that make recording impossible. The second thing was that everywhere we went in New Zealand people asked us what we had filmed, and when we told them they all said in
astonishment, ‘But haven’t you filmed the keas? . . . You can’t do a programme on New Zealand without the keas . . . the Clowns of the Snowline, they call them . . . and
they’d be so
easy
to film . . . they’re naturally tame and you find them simply everywhere.’

Well, other people might have found these large and spectacular parrots everywhere, but up to that point we had not seen a single specimen, and this had irritated Chris beyond measure. So when
this small, unfortunate man in the bar asked us what we had filmed so far, a llama-like look came over Chris’s face as I recited the list.

‘What?’ asked the little man in astonishment. ‘Haven’t you filmed any keas?’

‘No!’ said Chris, compressing into that one humble word enough coldness to start a small iceberg.

‘Well, you should go up to Mount Cook,’ said the little man, not realising how closely he was tiptoeing towards death. ‘I’ve just come from there – plenty of
’em there. Can’t leave anything about, they’ll be straight down and tear it to pieces. Regular comedians they are . . . you should really try and film those, you know.’

I hastily filled Chris’s glass.

‘Yes, well, we are going to try,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Chris suddenly, loudly and defiantly, ‘and we’re leaving for Mount Cook tomorrow.’

He drained his glass with a flourish and glared at our thunder-struck faces.

‘But we can’t,’ said Brian. ‘We haven’t got enough time left.’

‘I refuse to leave New Zealand until I have filmed keas,’ barked Chris, and so, faced with such an ultimatum, what could we do? We went to Mount Cook. Here we stayed in another
lavish government hotel with a magnificent view out over Mount Cook and the Tasman glacier, and started on a frantic, last-minute search for keas. Everyone assured us it would be very easy; the
mountains around, they said, were full of keas, every valley bulged with them. You could not park your car for fear that several dozen would descend on it and take it to pieces with the enthusiasm
of mad motor mechanics. All you had to do was to go anywhere up into the surrounding mountains – but simply
anywhere –
and shout ‘Kea . . . kea . . . kea . . .’ in
imitation of their cries, and before you knew where you were, keas were swooping down on you from all directions. Well, we tried. The day of our arrival we drove round and round Mount Cook,
stopping at every conceivable crevasse and crag to shout ‘Kea . . . kea . . . kea . . .’ in the prescribed manner, but the barren terrain remained kea-less. That night, in spite of
excellent wine and a delicately grilled trout, Chris persisted in looking like a disgruntled camel that had forgotten the directions to the nearest waterhole.

The following morning, at a most indecent hour and in depressed silence, we drove up to the foot of Mount Cook, where the Tasman glacier lies, to resume our futile kea hunt. The road up to this
weird area, which looks like a small section of the moon, resembles a dried-up river bed, and it eventually peters out on a cliff edge below the great glacier and above the snow-capped peak of
Mount Cook. At this point the glacier was wide – a great sheet of thick, carunculated ice filled, like a fruit cake, with the debris it collected in its passage: rocks, stones, tree trunks
and, doubtless, the frozen corpses of innumerable keas. Standing above it we could
hear
the glacier moving, squeaking, groaning and scrunching to itself as it crept forward, millimetre by
millimetre, down the valley to its rendezvous with the sea.

Raising our voices above the conversation of the glacier we shouted ‘Kea’ at the barren, deserted landscape and listened to it being echoed back derisively from every hand. Then, to
our complete astonishment, a genuine kea suddenly appeared out of nowhere and perched on a rocky pinnacle well out of camera range. Chris, his eyes bulging with emotion, stumbled up the slope
towards the bird, uttering hoarse kea cries. The kea took one look at this dishevelled, wild-eyed figure staggering out of the glacier, uttered what can only be described as a disbelieving scream
of horror and promptly flew away. When we had recovered from our unseemly laughter we discovered, to our amazement, that, far from discouraging Chris, he was now full of enthusiasm at having caught
this glimpse of the kea in its natural habitat. He felt success was within our grasp, and so all we had to do now was film the approach shots. By this he meant shots of the Land-Rover arriving at
the glacier, us getting out and shouting for keas, and various shots of the terrain. Then, when we had our close-up shots of the keas, the two would fit together. Filming is a curious, upside-down
sort of business and frequently one has to film a departure before you
film
the arrival. So all the camera gear was unshipped and erected and then, as it was to be a sound shot, Chris
solemnly got the recorder out and mounted it on a pile of stones.

After much running to and fro with cables and microphones, he proclaimed that he was ready. Our job was simple: we had to drive the Land-Rover to a given point, get out and start to shout for
keas, our action being picked up by the camera whilst the recorder captured for posterity the sounds of our voices echoing back from the mountains. Now, as I have said, you could not wish for a
more desolate and deserted spot. Not only was there no human being or human habitation in sight, but there was no animal life either, so it was with considerable astonishment – when we left
the Land-Rover and started to call for the keas – to hear a sudden clanking uproar that sounded like a Ford factory gone mad. It was the scream and grind and crash of machinery tortured
beyond belief. None of us could imagine what was causing the noise or where it was coming from. All we knew was that Chris was squatting by the recorder, earphones clapped to his ears, with a look
of disbelieving anguish on his face.

Then, from around a great tumbled heap of rocks, there appeared an enormous vehicle, the great-grandfather of all bulldozers, a gigantic thing half the size of a house which shuddered and roared
and clanked its way towards us, while perched on a tiny saddle on top was a small, grizzled man who appeared to have some slight control over it. He waved to us cheerily as the monstrous machine
shuddered towards us. Chris tore off the earphones and rushed up to the side of the juggernaut, waving his arms wildly.

‘Shut it off,’ he screamed, ‘we’re trying to record a sound take.’

‘Aye?’ yelled the little man, changing gear with a screech that made the blood ran cold.

‘We’re filming . . . can’t you shut it off?’ bellowed Chris, now purple in the face.

‘You’ll have to speak louder . . . can’t hear,’ explained the little man.

‘Turn the bloody thing off . . . TURN IT OFF!’ screamed Chris, making wild gestures. The little man gazed at him thoughtfully, played another brief but excrutiating tune on his gear
box, and then leant forward and pressed a switch and the great machine fell silent.

‘Now, what were you saying?’ he enquired. ‘Sorry I couldn’t hear you very well up here – it’s a bit noisy.’

Chris drew a deep, shuddering breath.

‘Could you keep that . . . that . . . thing switched off for a few minutes? You see, we’re making a film and trying to record sound.’

‘Oh, a film, eh?’ said the little man interestedly. ‘Yes, sure I can keep her off.’

‘Thank you,’ said Chris shakily, and went back to the recorder. He had just put the earphones back on and given us the signal to begin when the monstrous machine suddenly started up
again, only now, by some magical means, the little man had put it into reverse and it was slowly disappearing behind the pile of rocks from whence it had sprung. Chris, his face now congested to
the colour of an over-ripe peach, flung the earphones on the ground and, mouthing what appeared to be terse phrases of a sort which no BBC producer is supposed to know, pursued the gigantic machine
behind the rock pile. After a moment, blessed silence reigned and Chris reappeared from behind the rocks, mopping his brow.