Cicadas buzzing at Omaru Hut

Kaye Coe from DOC’s Taranaki Area Office shares with us a recent hut experience in the Matemateāonga Range.

It’s dusk. Warm still hazy air. Cicadas buzzing. My 7 year son and I are sitting on the deck of Omaru Hut, Matemateāonga Track. I am loving the peace and quiet of the moment. My son is putting up with his mum’s need for the quiet moment.

Omaru Hut, Matemateāonga Track

I hear a shrill bird like cry, a quiet pause, then another, closer, then another. I whisper “kiwi“. We hold our breath, closer, louder, any moment the kiwi was going to burst out of the bush beside us. Another whistle a few metres away. We sit, still as frightened mice, not making a breath of sound. There’s a pause then, far away, we hear another call. The closer kiwi replies and turns from us. The kiwi call to each other, slowly sounding further and further away.

A few metres away, a kiwi

Four days tramping on the Matemateāonga Range, just us and nobody else except a few kiwi, possibly a kokako or two, some morepork and a few old goats. The best Christmas a mum could wish for.

Four days tramping on the Matemateāonga Range

The Matemateāonga Track

The Matemateāonga Track is one of the two major tramping opportunities available in Whanganui National Park. Using an old Maori trail and settlers’ dray road you are able to penetrate deep into the wilderness of the park.