Wildside - St. Arnaud and Nelson Lakes National Park

Life in the ultimate outdoor playground

© Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, Life in the ultimate outdoor playground, Nelson Mail, 19 December 2009

St Arnaud and the Nelson Lakes offer a world of opportunities.

You could almost miss St Arnaud if you blinked, but the town has enough civilisation to make it a great place to visit.

Lakeside views: Jake, left, and Ike Mirfin enjoy the St Arnaud snow from the deck during winter 2007. Photo: SHERRY
MIRFIN

BING CROSBY may have dreamed of a white Christmas, but a recent viewing of an old winter photo at Lake Rotoiti made me realise how fortunate we are to have our Christmas in summer, when we can enjoy our food, wine and recreation outside.

Last week, all rivers were high and murky as we blasted through St Arnaud in search of fishable water. My American anglers were fascinated and I began describing what a great place the town was, the outdoor resources nearby, and how the Mirfin family valued our association with the area.

As the gateway to Nelson Lakes National Park on the shores of Lake Rotoiti, you could almost miss St Arnaud if you blinked, but the town has just enough civilisation to make it a great place to visit and stay a while. ‘‘The Lake’’, as most people know the place, has a long and varied history. Julius Von Haast observed in 1859 that, ‘‘I am sure that the time is not far distant when this spot will become the favourite abode of those whose means and leisure will permit them to admire picturesque scenery’’.

Land development, burning and sheep grazing saw the slopes of Mt Robert collapse into the lake, but land stewardship changed in later years, with the area being gazetted into the Nelson Lakes National Park in 1956.

Apparently it is named after Jacques Leroy de Saint Arnaud, French commander in the Crimean War of 1854. Today, the town is heavily populated with Department of Conservation staff and their families looking after the national park.

The Lake has always been a place where many Nelson and Marlborough families have had holiday homes, but
the Mirfins spent a lot of time in the hills and rivers of the Nelson Lakes area before we ever owned our own holiday escape there. I remember many hunting and fishing forays into the valleys of the Travers, Sabine and D’Urville as a boy with my father, Stuart, and brother Scott. Later, in November 1985, Tony and Sharon Entwistle, with their business, Nelson Lakes Guiding Services, were to employ me as an apprentice fishing guide, and I got to spend my first full summer at the lake learning my craft – it’s still a work in progress.

During the 1980s and the 1990s I spent many summers living at the lake and at Lake Rotoroa during my guide days before self employment and business ownership. In the winter of 1992 I even worked as a liftie at Rainbow Valley Skifield but the weather was abysmal and I spent days at the bar with ski buddies, often accumulating an alcohol bill larger than my weekly pay cheque.

During the mid-1990s I abandoned St Arnaud to work in Colorado as a fishing guide during New Zealand winters. The pay was better and American summers far more appealing.

My wife-to-be, Aimee, and I even got marooned at the lake during heavy snowfalls after a chance meeting. Aimee was unable to get back to her job in Christchurch, meaning my days as a single man were numbered. When we married it was at the lake, high up on Mt Robert, looking across toward the clear blue waters and the high peaks of the St Arnaud range on a beautiful early-October day – before the fishing season hit full stride. As my best man (brother Scott) drove me to the Mt Robert car park, we crossed the narrow single-lane Buller River bridge and a lucky fisherman held aloft a fish he had just landed. It had to be an omen.

St Arnaud has always been a lucky spot for me and is held in high regard by my children, who now enjoy St Arnaud holidays with their parents and grandparents in the family lakehouse built in 1994.

My boys thrive on hunting rabbits, and hopefully they will graduate to the numerous quail, duck, goose, deer, pig and chamois hunting opportunities nearby. My dream is that one day they will take their dear old dad out hunting near St Arnaud and remember the fun we had there together as a family.

Our lakehouse is a fabulous family hang-out, complete with animal trophies, paintings and other artworks depicting gamebirds, mountain scenery and brightly coloured brown trout.

It’s hard not to be nostalgic about the great times shared, whether swimming, skiing, skating on the ice-ponds, sailing, water-skiing, or enjoying the antique boat show, boat racing and native birdlife.

One of my favourite St Arnaud residents is Bill Butters, who for many years operated his Rotoiti Water Taxi on the lake.
Bill’s great grandfather, John Kerr Jr, was the first man to release brown trout and whitefish (whitefish failed to acclimatise) into the lake and upper Buller tributaries in 1873, ultimately creating the trout-fishing mecca that St Arnaud was destined to become.

St Arnaud continues to be an epic base for fishing, situated in the headwaters of the Buller, Motueka and Wairau river systems, allowing easy access to these rivers and their numerous tributaries. Situated on the east/west divide, the weather is invariably favourable for fishing somewhere and you can fish to any point of the compass for brown trout. Places such as Lake Rotoroa, Owen River and the rivers of Murchison are nearby to the west; to the east the waters of Rainbow and Molesworth Station beckon enticingly. Maybe, just maybe, St Arnaud and the Nelson Lakes are the ultimate outdoor playground.

Return to Wildside Trout Fishing Columns