Amid the floods and landslides, Southland celebrates its status as NZ's wettest place

Saturday, 15 February 2020

Long-time Te Anau resident Ray Willett, who has spent years working and tramping in the rugged and wet Fiordland mountains, at Lake Te Anau on a nice day.

Ray Willett is an adventurous bloke despite being 83 years of age.

So it comes as no great surprise when the Te Anau identity says, out of the blue, that if he was only allowed one more day in the Fiordland National Park it would be in conditions similar to early October.

Flooding in Gore as the Mataura river and surrounding waterways close roads. The town has now been evacuated.

That's when the rain was so intense that landslides wiped out sections of road and tracks, floods destroyed bridges and trampers had to hole up in bush huts, fearing for their lives. One metre of rain fell in less than three days.

It's not that Willett, a former guide on Fiordland's Milford Track, has a death wish.

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Parts of the only road to Milford Sound in the Fiordland National Park were washed away in torrential rain in early October, trapping tourists in Milford before they were helicoptered out.

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Rescued trampers airlifted from Fiordland in early October, following major flooding and landlsips, register at the Te Anau community centre.

It's that having previously witnessed the breathtaking sight of massive volumes of rainfall in New Zealand's biggest national park, nothing comes close.

'Nowhere in the world would you see water like it,' he says.

'There's only three waterfalls at Milford Sound but when it's raining like that it's one massive waterfall.'

The stunning Mitre Peak rising 1.6km vertically out of Milford Sound in the Fiordland National Park on a sunny day in January, 2016.

Without rain, and lots of it, the Fiordland National Park, all 12,600 km2 of it, doesn't exist as tourists around the world know it.

Rain generates its lush rainforest and it creates the spectacular sight of hundreds of temporary waterfalls tumbling off steep mountainsides.

It can also create havoc when hitting the mountain tops and rushing into the valleys and rivers below.

History shows huts located near rivers in Fiordland will eventually be doomed, Willett says.

Such was the damage caused by last week's rain it may take a year to fully repair the only road into Fiordland's Milford Sound - a 120km drive which begins in Te Anau.

However, the Transport Agency is aiming to have convoys of tourist buses back on the road from February 21, if further storms stay away.

Sutherland Falls on the Milford Track in the Fiordland National Park in January 2018.

The heavy rains also damaged Fiordland's world famous Milford and Routeburn Tracks, with the Routeburn close indefinitely.

Few people know the power of mother nature in the Fiordland National Park better than Chris Hughes, co-founder of Fiordland Marine Search and Rescue.

Hughes says the rainfall intensity in Fiordland is 'off the scale' and last week's dump was on another level again, up to 63mm an hour.

A scenic float plane lands on Lake Te Anau with Fiordland mountains in the background.

His crew winched a family of five - who had sought refuge on the top bunks of a hut as water rose around them - into a helicopter during the storms last week.

He says Milford Sound is even more spectacular when hit by big storms than when bathed in sunshine.

'The Fiordland storms are mind-numbingly big and they make you feel really small.

'It's the intensity and accumulation of rain, the thunder rolling down the valleys, the wind, it's absolutely raw.

'You have to experience it to get some understanding of it.'

The rivers of Fiordland were unrecognisable during last week's rain dump, he says.

'Some of the big rapids were watery versions of some of the worst kind of hell you could imagine.'

Fiordland and the West Coast are easily the wettest places in New Zealand.

Milford Sound receives on average 6.2 metres a year, MetService meteorologist Andrew James says.

Moist air coming from the northwest lifts when it hits the Fiordland ranges and dumps rain onto the mountains.

The rain often peters out before it reaches the township of Te Anau - the gateway to Milford Sound - with the town receiving just 1.1 metres of rainfall a year.

Willett says he sometimes hears tourists complain about the rain in the Fiordland National Park.

'We don't claim to be something we aren't, we don't say 'welcome to sunny Fiordland'.'

If you don't want rain, don't go to Fiordland, he says.

'Go to Ayers Rock instead.'

Southland District deputy mayor Ebel Kremer, also a Te Anau resident, points out it's not raining every day in Fiordland.

'You think of [six] metres a year and believe it must be raining every day, but it doesn't,' he says.

'There's a lot of days where it's beautiful weather, but when it rains it generally rains a lot.'

The rain made Fiordland a 'beautiful lush natural environment' but it also caused destruction, 'and we have just experienced that'.

'Sheer volumes of water have destroyed the Milford Road.'

Department of Conservation South Island operations director Aaron Fleming confirms the rainfall in Fiordland last week was something else again.

'Milford Sound is a wet part of New Zealand but what we saw last week was quite unusual.

'It was a significant rainfall event, lots of rain in a short amount of time, and the roading and some tracks have not coped.'

Locals who had been around for decades have never seen anything like it, he says.

The damage has caused DOC to investigate whether it could be doing more to prepare for future floods

'The rain is a big part of Fiordland and how we build our infrastructure going forward is a question we will be asking.'

Many tourists have missed out on witnessing Milford Sound due to the road closure of recent days, and Te Anau businesses have also lost revenue.

But for tourism operators, that's part of working in nature.

Paul Norris, general manager of Real Journeys which offers tourism activities and cruises, including at Milford Sound, says the rain brings the Fiordland National Park alive.

'We are working in a rainforest and often when you get dry spells the vegetation almost shrivels up then when it rains it all opens up again, and there's the grandeur of the waterfalls.'

However, last week's severe weather event brought the Milford Sound operations to a grinding halt.

As the company became aware the road into Milford was going to be shut for a long period it ramped up its excursions in Doubtful Sound.

Tracey Ewing, operations director of Fiordland Outdoors Co, is philosophical about the Milford closure.

The company takes trampers to the Milford Track on water taxis but is unable to do so while the track is temporarily closed, though it has other revenue streams.

'It's a rainforest, Fiordland. But this was the sort of rain that ended up reshaping Fiordland.

'There's people out there working around the clock to fix it and everyone here is pretty determined to get it open for business again.'

Kremer believes some businesses in Te Anau could be suffering a 70 to 80 per cent reduction in income while the road to Milford Sound is closed.

'Te Anau relies significantly on Milford Sound - people stay in the town and enjoy their day at Milford and come back again.'

He believes Milford Sound to be the 'eighth wonder of the world' but points to many other activities and sights in Fiordland for visiting tourists.

'Te Anau is resilient, it's a fantastic community with a can do attitude, this is a blip, we will come back,' Kramer says.

As will Fiordland.

'Mother earth has certainly been scarred with this damage, but it always heals itself, you get a large slip and in 10 years you have growth, small trees start to grow,' he says.