Lake Brunner ( or ) is the largest lake in the West Coast Region of New Zealand, located southeast of Greymouth. The main settlement, Moana, is on its northern shore. It is an important settlement and waystation for local Māori. The first Europeans in the area were loggers, and sawmills were an important early industry. Being several kilometres inland from the coast road (), it is less frequently visited by tourists than many of the West Coast's scenic highlights, but it is becoming increasingly popular, in part due to its reputation for fishing.
Geography Lake Brunner is the largest lake in the West Coast region, across with an area of 4061 ha, just over . The outlet of the lake is the Arnold River, a tributary of the Grey River / Māwheranui, next to the largest settlement of Moana, on the north shore of the lake. The largest rivers feeding into Lake Brunner are the Crooked River from the east, the Orangipuku River and Bruce Creek from the south at Swan Bay, and the Eastern Hohonu River from the west at Hohonu Spit. It is 31 km southwest of Greymouth, at an altitude of 76 m. Two small islands in Pah Bay near the mouth of the Crooked River are known as the Refuge Islands (Takataka and Takatakaiti).
The lake is normally reached by heading south from State Highway 7 at Stillwater, or north from Jacksons on State Highway 73. A smaller road connects Kumara and Inchbonnie via the lake's southern shore. Most of the lake shore is only accessible by boat; the only settlements are Moana, Ruru, Te Kinga, and Mitchells. Bain Bay can be reached by a walking track from Mitchells, but a damaged bridge was removed in January 2021 and the track is currently closed.
Lake Brunner was created in the last ice age by a spur of the Taramakau Glacier, which split from the main glacier and flowed north either side of Mount Te Kinga, between it and the Hohonu Range. Both these prominent mountains are made of erosion-resistant granite and granodiorite, cooled magma 100–145 million years old.Barrell, D.J.A.; Andersen, B.G.; Denton, G.H. (2011.) Glacial geomorphology of the central South Island, New Zealand. GNS Science Monograph 27. Lower Hutt, New Zealand: GNS Science. When the glacier receded about 11,000 years ago, it left behind moraines which impeded the flow of rivers to the sea and filled the gouged-out glacial valley; the large blocks of rock it dropped, known as glacial erratics, can still be found in the surrounding bush. At this point, the lake would have been larger and deeper than today, with several outflows, but the Arnold River eventually became the main one, cutting through the moraine ridges to drain the lake to its present level. The same process of moraine deposition and glacial retreat created nearby Kangaroo Lake, Lady Lake, and Lake Haupiri.
To the south of the lake, linking it to the Taramakau River valley, is a stretch of flat land known in the 1860s as the "Natural Paddock" or "Bruce's Paddock". The term "paddock" referred on the Coast to any treeless expanse, and Natural Paddock was mostly pakihi swamp.
The lake is large enough that it can be subject to severe weather, including a powerful easterly wind known as the "Brucer", which blows up the valley from Inchbonnie, once belonging to Thomas Bruce (1831–1908) who began farming there in 1872.
Lake Brunner has a maximum depth of 109 m, but local stories claimed that the lake was bottomless, or that it was connected with the sea and rose and fell with the tides. A naval survey after WWII established its deepest part, near the Takataka islands by the mouth of the Crooked River, at around 335 feet. Like Lake Kaniere, the other large glacial lake on the West Coast, Lake Brunner is in a deeply-scoured basin and drops off quite rapidly around most of its shoreline. Its water is stained the colour of tea, sometimes appearing almost black, by the tannins—organic and humic acids—leached into its tributaries: a consequence of high rainfall in a catchment that is almost entirely forested. The lake waters are acidic, with a low pH and low oxygen levels compared to lakes on the eastern side of the main divide. The soils in its catchment are derived from greywacke, granite, and schist, and are low in nutrients, but unlike many other West Coast glacial lake, Lake Brunner has significant alluvial soils on its margin. The lake has less thermal stratification than other West Coast lakes, as it is subject to strong winds, and its level fluctuates significantly following heavy rain, sometimes covering the jetty at Moana.
Name
Although the Māori name for the lake is often given as just "Moana", two names for the lake are recorded. The first, Kōtuku moana, translates as "sea of herons", referencing the white heron (Ardea alba modesta), known to Māori as kōtuku. In New Zealand kōtuku have a population of roughly 200 at any one time, breeding only at Ōkārito on the West Coast, and are symbols of beauty and rarity in Māori culture.
The second name, Kōtukuwhakaoka, is shared with the Arnold River, and is the name of a Māori chief (Rangatira) from the North Island who came upon the lake after following the river upstream. According to Māori mythology, the chief was attacked and killed by a taniwha which lived in the lake, which later became one of the two islands in the lake after it was killed by the chief's son. The name was variously rendered as Kotukuwakaho and Kotuku-kaoka; Brunner spelled it "Kotu-urakaoka" in the proclamation that in 1853 defined the boundaries of the province.
In the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, the lake's name was rendered slightly differently, as Kōtuku-Whakaoho. The origin was traced to a husband and wife, Kōtuka and Māwhera, who gave their names to the lake and the Grey River respectively.
The English name "Lake Brunner" was chosen by John Rochfort to honour the 19th century explorer Thomas Brunner, who was the first European to visit the lake.
History
Māori occupation The lake was a significant resting point for Māori groups travelling east or west over the Hurunui saddle. They would stop at the lake to fish for eels and kākahi (freshwater mussels), catch birds, or process pounamu. The green stone only found on the West Coast was a precious commodity to Māori all through Aotearoa, and a significant trade good for the Poutini Ngāi Tahu, the hapū who lived west of the Southern Alps / Tiritiri-o-te-moana. Fortified settlements were built at Pah Point on the eastern side of the lake, and on nearby Takataka Island, with terraces, stockades, and gardens. There is evidence of pounamu working taking place at Pah Point and Takakataka Island at the lake, and Kotuku up the Arnold Valley.
Early exploration
Brunner, who in the 1840s had undertaken several journeys to and from the West Coast alone or in the company of Charles Heaphy—but always led, provisioned, and hosted by local Māori—spent Christmas of 1847 at the settlement of Māwhera at the mouth of the Māwheranui (Grey River). The resident Poutini Ngāi Tahu told him about a lake upriver, and Brunner was keen to explore the area inland. After a three-week delay while his guides went on a fishing trip, and ten days of provisioning, Brunner and twenty Māori set off upriver in four canoes on 26 January 1848. Heading up what came to be known as the Arnold River, the party reached the lake on 29 January. They camped on Takataka (later known as the Refuge Islands) near the mouth of the Crooked River, where they ate kākahi and raupō root, and Brunner smoked the last of his tobacco. His guides told Brunner there was an overland route across the mountains near the Taramakau River, but the group turned back and headed to the Grey and the Inangahua Valley.
In October 1857 Leonard Harper, led by Ihaia Tainui and three other Māori, left Canterbury and crossed the mountains at the Hurunui Saddle, known afterwards as the Harper Pass. Heading down the Taramakau towards the sea, he glimpsed grassy flats and the lake on his right, but did not investigate. In February 1859 surveyor John Rochfort followed the same route down the Taramakau, but after camping below its junction with the Ōtira, east of Mount Turiwhate, he headed north through the low gap that led to the lake. On the shore the party made a canoe from a kahikatea log and crossed the lake, which Rochfort named after Thomas Brunner, and exited by the river he dubbed the "Arnould".
From January to March 1863 young explorer Herbert Charlton Howitt, who previously explored for gold across the Hurunui Saddle, cut a trail over the pass to Lake Brunner. He initially planned to make a trail around the lake shore to the Arnold River as a route to the coast. In April he decided instead to cut a track from the lakeshore over the Hohunu Range to the lower Taramakau, avoiding the dangerous Taramakau Gorge. On 27 June, Howitt and two of his party set off across the lake by canoe to fish for eels and retrieve stores from their camp at the Arnold River outlet, and were never seen again. The canoe, which sat only three inches above the water when laden, was presumably swamped in a storm, and the three men drowned; numerous subsequent searches turned up only his tent and some eel lines at the lake shore.
In December 1865, during the West Coast gold rush, word got around that a group of prospectors, known as the "Kangaroo party", had lodged a claim on land to the north-east of Lake Brunner. Eight hundred men headed to the lake, where they found a ferry boat waiting to take them across the lake at 15 shillings a head, and a well-stocked store on the other side. When no gold was to be found, an angry mob looted and demolished the store and headed back to Greymouth. Flooding in the swamp at the Arnold River outlet marooned 200 of them, who clung to kahikatea trunks without food until the waters receded.
Railway construction
By 1867 the Canterbury provincial government had built a bush track along the south bank of the Grey and Arnold rivers, and along the south-west shore of the lake to Natural Paddock. The first farmers in the area settled around the Crooked River in 1868–69. In the 1880s a railway linking Greymouth and Christchurch was begun, which opened up the Arnold Valley and Lake Brunner. The route was originally proposed to follow the eastern side of the lake, but Westland MP Richard Seddon, from 1891 Minister of Public Works, insisted that it follow the western shore, closer to his constituency of Kumara. After some wrangling, the railway was laid to the east of the lake, and a road constructed to connect Kumara with the southern lakeshore, from which a steamboat could convey people to a railway station—although this ferry never eventuated. Moana had its own railway station by 1892, and the line continued as far south as Te Kinga, where it hit swampland. Materials were then conveyed by the steam launch Little Tay across the lake and up the Orangipuku River to Inchbonnie, and during 1893 construction continued in both directions up to Rotomanu and down to Jacksons. The link between Stillwater and Ōtira was completed in 1894. The Midland Line connecting Greymouth and Christchurch opened in 1923, after 36 years of construction and the building of the Ōtira Tunnel. The building of the railway created a market for the long-lasting timber of manoao or silver pine (Manoao colensoi), which was used for railway sleepers, telegraph poles, and bridges.
All trains stopped at Moana for water, and the settlement quickly grew: by 1906 it had four shops and a billiard room, and in 1907 a grand hall opened, hosting bachelor dances for the timber workers. The road took longer: by 1896 it had reached from the south from Rotomanu to Bell Hill, with a track to Stillwater, and by 1918 it was possible to drive from Rotumanu to Kotuku and then Greymouth—although the road was only kept navigable by grazing deer and a gate needed to be traversed at Bell Hill.
Sawmilling