Charles Muller - Waipori Reflections: Contemplations in Three Locations

Waipori Reflections

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2009 Charles Muller

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Published by Diadem Books

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Cover photographs:

Autumn sunset, Upper Port La Tour, Nova Scotia;

Lake Mahinerangi, Waipori; and rainbow over Clashnessie bay.

ISBN: 978-1-908026-12-5

Lord, you have assigned me

my portion and my cup;

you have made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen

For me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful

inheritance.

Psalm 16: 5-6 NIV

T hanks are due to many people in the inspiration and creation of this book. There are, of course, those who have contributed to the various sections in writing. My wife Joanne Muller has written a large portion of the Clashnessie section in her observations and exposition of sheepish behaviour; and also by way of the extracts from her correspondence in both the Waipori and Nova Scotia sections. Then, of course, there are the atmospheric prose pieces by my dear friend and ex-colleague, Dr Garrett Evans, in New Zealand. More significant is Garretts input by way of inspiration for it is through our discussions at Waipori that the original idea of putting together these reflections was conceived. Thanks are due, too, to my friend and ex-colleague, Dr Moyra Evans, for checking out the house in Waipori Falls Village before I bought it, unseen, as it were. Her report on the house and area has been included! I am also indebted to my friend Bill Waugh whose emails to me, while I was in Nova Scotia, were a source of valuable advice and information about kayaking and the handling of canoes generally. His different points of view were also stimulating. As he said in a recent email, We all have different realities in us and can learn from other visions with the reservation that feelings are free and inevitable but behaviour may affect others. Most of his emails have been included in the Nova Scotia section.

It is a great privilege, also, to have received the contributions from John Kelly and Frank Cordemans about Waipori Falls Village in the early days, when it was the accommodation base for the power stations, for which the village was originally built. Their early memories have been included as Appendices to this volume and will certainly add to the books value, not just as a source of entertainment but as a valuable record of history.

My sincere thanks go to Trisha Keast who, having once worked in the Tourist Information Centre in Lawrence, gave me access to a wealth of material relating to the old days of Waipori dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. She and her partner, Wayne McDonald, were also so kind as to take me on conducted tours throughout the region. Special mention should be made of Garrie Olsen, the Waipori Village caretaker at the time, for his friendship and generous time in showing me around the village not to mention the memorable parties enjoyed at his home with his dynamic wife, Janice, and other marvellous residents of the village such as Murray and Audrey Moore. An earlier, now retired, caretaker, Len Coleclough, became a valued friend, and it gives me pleasure that my friendship with this jewel of a man has become so much a part of this book.

My sincere thanks are due to Ellen Menzies, of Living Corporation Ltd., the Estate Agents in Mosgiel, for her sincere and efficient help in closing the deal when I purchased the house in Waipori Falls Village, and again for her friendly and valuable assistance when I sold the house. She has a thorough knowledge of property in Waipori, and should anyone be interested in acquiring a house in Waipori, I would unhesitatingly recommend her. Her contact email is .

I am indebted especially to the people I met in Waipori, Nova Scotia and Sutherland, in Scotland, who are mentioned in this book. When I first arrived in Waipori, Trisha, my Maori neighbour, said that what really excited her was not so much the friends she already had, but the friends she was yet to make. Indeed, it is the people in Waipori, in Nova Scotia and around Clashnessie, that subsequently became the friends who inspired me to write these reflections. I may no longer have a house in Waipori or Nova Scotia, but what is important is the real value that has remained the memory of and abiding friendship I have with the wonderful people in those places that are so far apart in the world. May God be with you all, and may we meet again, one day.

Charles Muller

9th Dec 2009

www.waipori.com

T he reflections in this volume were inspired by my acquisition of a house, some three years ago, in the splendid isolation of a remote village surrounded by a scenic reserve. Perched on a steep, wooded hillside about 60km west of Dunedin, in a South Island rainforest, New Zealand, the village was built to house staff working on the Waipori power scheme and once had up to 120 residents. The houses cling to the hillside, surrounded by manuka and silver beech. Some call it the steepest village in the southern hemisphere. Sitting on my deck high up in the Waipori River Gorge, with its native bush, birdlife and fishing, I felt inspired. The enchanting and haunting trills and echoes of Bellbirds, and the flapping wings of the sumptuous New Zealand pigeons as they flew lazily overhead, made me feel separated from the world with its talk of credit crunch and recession. Waipori is the Maori word for dark waters, a reference to the rivers peat-stained colour, which in places turns to white on account of the rapids. One could hear the soft tumult of the water as it flowed deep down below in the gorge, and indeed, the distant echo of the thin streak of the waterfall the Crystal Falls that glinted in the sunshine on the opposite slope of the gorge. This was peace amidst a wonderful sense of natural silence. One felt regenerated and ones mind wandered, especially when aided by a glass of wine or a wee dram imported from Scotland. It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that my friend and ex-colleague, Garret Evans, and I, should have hatched the idea on that magical deck suspended over the dark waters of that magical gorge of a collection of reflections. These would be reflections of, and set in, different locales of the world for both of us have been wanderers in our time, but brought together now in this timeless place in the twilight years of our lives.

When I told Tony Bond, a Christian funademantalist friend in Scotland, about Waipori, he smiled and said it sounded like the ideal place to seek seclusion and safety during the forthcoming seven-year period of tribulation between the Rapture of the Church and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Tony, like me, is one of those peculiar persons that embrace the belief in an imminent seven-year tribulation period ruled by the Antichrist, who will persecute Christians and prevent anyone from selling or buying without a bar-code chip on ones hand or on ones forehead. It is not the intention of the reflections in this book to convert readers to our peculiar way of thinking, and I promise that this orientation will not be obtrusive but being aware of it will help to explain some of the hues of the reflections that are inevitably seen through my tinted glasses! My friend Garrett Evans, on the other hand, with his wider ecumenical view of life, is equally spiritual (his word!) in his vision of life, and indeed he once resisted the call to become a Priest. Our different spectacles have helped to give rise to the variegated light that shines through these reflections, and indeed have helped to stimulate discussion and friendly argument as we reminisced on the deck, during the day, or glowed in the warmth of glasses of red wine, of common recollections of Africa, in the flickering light of a log fire that burned in the stove of the sitting room during the evenings.