Time: One hour
Distance: 4.36 km
Start: Styx Mill Conservation Reserve car park, Styx Mill Road, Northwood, Christchurch
Finish: Same place (it's a loop)
Date: Friday 3rd June 2022
It's amazing how you can live in a city for more than 20 years and still discover interesting nooks and crannies. Such is the Styx Mill Conservation Reserve, a 60 hectare wetlands area with a couple of lagoons, some walking tracks and the Styx River running through it. All smack bang in the middle of urban Christchuch/Ōtautahi.
According to the Ngāi Tahu Cultural Mapping Project website Te Huru Manu, in pre-European times, the wetlands and streams were an important kāinga mahinga kai (food-gathering place) for the local Ngāi Tahu hapū of Ngāi Tūāhuriri, with "foods such as tuna (eels), kanakana (lampreys), and waikōura (freshwater crayfish) gathered from the river." According to the Christchurch City Council website, in European times the area was farmed and a flour mill operated from 1860 until World War 1. Since the 1970's the land has been a public reserve and these days local community groups co-ordinate pest control and native plantings.
The Māori name for the Styx River is Pūharakekenui which can be directly translated as "very big flax". The river starts at a spring somewhere near Christchurch airport and flows through the city to Brooklands Lagoon (Te Riu-o-Te-Aika-Kawa).
We expertly navigated our way (with a little help from Google) to the reserve entrance car park on Styx Mill Road and stepped out into a surprisingly "pleasant" Christchurch morning. Admittedly, it wasn't exactly tropical but my weather expectations were somewhat low - heavy rain had been forecast but had not yet eventuated. In the (I thought rather charmingly optimistic) anticipation of "no rain", some of our crew had brought "no raincoat". I smuggly patted my bulging back-pack. I was prepared for the inevitable.
I had however, forgotten the map. The paths all seemed to criss-cross in a confusing fashion and we weren't even sure exactly where to begin. But all paths lead to Rome it seems. We soon stumbled across an information board with a map (we took a photo) and further on, a lookout where we could get our bearings. We were on the Pānako (fern) Walkway heading towards the Hussley View Walkway. Massive stands of harakeke (pū-harakeke-nui) lined the streams and the paths, and the quirky Australian coots, with their white bills and front shields, squawked a discordant "krark! krark!" on the lagoon as we walked by.
The Hussley View Walkway circumnavigated a dog park(we nearly lost our way a couple of times) and on the way back we took a short detour to Contemplation Point where we contemplated some mushrooms. Our mushroom expert Zhanna was not with us today but we think they may have been magic. Psilocybin. I was tempted to try but yeah-nah.
We returned to the car park and, with expert navigation (and the help of Google) we drove down a nearby road to Cosy Cafe. Admittedly we did have to circumnavigate the round-about a couple of times but we put that down to Covid brain fog.
We ordered coffees and, nostalgically, Neenish Tarts. We did a Google search and read that these sweet tarts were invented by Ruby Neenish from Grong Grong, New South Wales. Awesome. However, this anecdote was not published in a peer-reviewed interational journal, and a later fact-check (Wikipedia) revealed it as fake news. A prank story was published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1988 and has since become legend. Anway, the tarts were delicious and reminded me of my youth and baking with my sister and the Edmonds Cook Book.
We expertly navigated our way home (with the help of Google) as the sun came out.
