Not sure what to do today, I decided to explore more of the Catchpool area.
I had a few ideas about where to explore today and narrowed it down to two main options. One was to return to Catchpool and look around the area where a woman went missing 20 years ago. The other was to explore a section near Sledge Track that I had not yet fully visited. Once I reached The Village, I decided on Catchpool. There was no particular reason for the choice, it just felt like the better option at the time.
I entered the Catchpool area and parked at the Information Centre. Mine was the only car there, and I was not sure if the centre was staffed. I set off towards the Tawa Grove Walk, a short track that appeared a little neglected, suggesting it was not as popular as it might once have been. I even came across an old skidder sitting alongside the track. My interest in this walk came from Bush Bash 48, when I considered that Margaret Kaye Stewart, who went missing in the area, may have taken this track. Reports say she reached a DOC hut near the Information Centre. Knowing where that hut likely stood, I reasoned there must have been a track linking the two buildings, which turned out to be correct.
The Tawa Grove Walk included a branch track, and it made sense that Mrs Stewart might have followed it to the hut. I eventually reached what I believe was the hut’s location and also spotted small DOC shed hidden in the bush. According to reports, Mrs Stewart was directed from the hut towards Coast Road. If that is true, two possibilities seem likely. She may have met with tragedy while walking along Coast Road / Catchpool Road, or she may have tried to take a shortcut back through the bush and encountered misfortune there.
Working on the theory that she headed back through the bush, I climbed the hillside and followed the ridge up near an old forestry track. I had walked part of this area on a previous trip but not this far south. I wandered around for a while without finding much, until I spotted a large vertebra bone in a manuka forest. It looked almost 3D printed and was enormous. Nearby lay a pile of bones that could only have belonged to a whale. The sight was baffling. I was clearly high up on a bush-clad hill, with the coast lying about 10 kilometres away. I could also rule out the idea of a beached whale from some ancient high-sea period, or from a time before the land was uplifted by tectonic forces. The more likely explanation is that some decades ago, DOC had placed the bones here, perhaps after recovering a whale carcass from the south Wainuiomata coast to dispose of it away from the public.
After taking some photos, I continued along the ridge and found a beautiful patch of forest on the slope down into Catchpool Valley. I descended through a mix of tree ferns and what looked like Douglas fir, a Canadian tree I recognised from past walks in the mountains near Vancouver. Before long I rejoined the Tawa Grove Walk and returned to the car.
Although I did not explore every part of this area, I doubt Mrs Stewart was lost here, though it is possible she met her end in this place. An organised search would almost certainly have uncovered some trace of her. With this area now ruled out in my mind, my next theory is that she became lost further north in the park, perhaps around Grace’s Stream, which I plan to explore on a future trip. What goes against this idea is that, at the time she spoke to the DOC worker at the hut, she was already late to meet her daughter. It seems unlikely that she would have chosen to take an extra walk which was beyond the location of her car. This leaves two possibilities, either she ventured further into the bush for some unknown reason and got lost or maybe met someone like a hunter, or she met with tragedy on Coast Road or Catchpool Road. Both seem unlikely, but one must be true.
