Silence of the Lands

An award-winning lodge takes its environmental responsibilities seriously and provides four-star comfort too.

Words: Kate Coughlan  Photographs: Kevin Emirali

THERE’S A FANTAIL GOING nuts in the tall manuka by my bedroom balcony. His tail is fanned out and he is squawking and jumping from branch to branch. All this yelling with tiny bird lungs must be tiring. I can differentiate four birdsongs with my clogged-up city ears though mostly they still roar with silence. The lack of noise fills them to an almost deafening level.

Beneath the calm surface of the wetland lurk monstrous flesh-eating eels. Pretty ordinary swamp eels actually, but in the Monsters and Fairies Tour for little children the eels play the role of the Baddies. They squirm and writhe about in their fight for chunks of meat. Then comes a gentle bush walk before the wee ones are introduced to the magic of a damp cave wall covered in minute and winking lights. The glow-worms get to be the Good Guys on this gentle bedtime tour.

It’s a blustery spring morning with the wind running riffs across the bay. The track to the spur is sheltered by manuka sighing like martyrs in the stiff breeze. From the ridge the four-star Awaroa Lodge resembles nothing more than a collection of old loggers’ huts strung haphazardly along the edge of a wetland. Ian Athfield, national icon architect, had a vernacular conversation going on when he designed these buildings. Even the water tanks, tossed up on the roof in direct line of sight, have all the permanence of a bush camp about them.

The backpackers’ lodge, which preceded this more eco-aware accommodation, was famous far and wide for its scones. Those scones could, apparently, make visitors see all sorts of visions including Baddies and Goodies and things more philosophic besides. Today’s managers, Allan Fordsdick and Ivana Radulovic, preside over an establishment no longer unique for the curious capacity of its scones but for its location – the only one within a national park – and for its innovative approach to waste management in such a sensitive environment. These purely Kiwiana solutions to waste management have been recognised by Green Globe 21 benchmarked status.

How does a four-star (Qualmark-rated) lodge, in a national park four hours by boat from Nelson, deal with bottles and inorganic waste? Dozens and dozens of bottles? Not a problem for the resourceful staff at Awaroa. Let’s buy an old lime crusher, feed in the glass waste and grind it into lovely gravel to spread on tracks in the bush. Works a treat.

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