THE FAMILY OUTNUMBERED BY SEALS & PENGUINS

Ruth Allanson and her young family live a six-hour return trip from the supermarket. It might not be a conventional life, but as Joanne Naish discovers, it certainly has its charms.

Remote living is not for everyone, but for Ruth Allanson, who takes her daughter swimming with dolphins after school, it is ideal. Extending more than 500km along the western side of the South Island, the West Coast is the longest region in New Zealand. With spectacular scenery, including glaciers almost bordering the ocean, some parts have the feel of an isolated, frontier country. Allanson has lived in South Westland since 2013, where she runs Waiatoto River Safari with her husband Wayne.

“Most people won’t understand how we can take on a six-hour return trip to Cromwell for groceries once a month or live without internet and signal, but we wouldn’t trade this life for anything else,” she says

The logistics could be mind-blowing for city folk. The family makes a shopping trip to Cromwell about every six weeks, or sometimes up to three months, usually in a return day trip. And when a shopping trip isn’t on the cards, the strangest things can become desperate situations.

“It’s funny what items you start to value once you don’t have 24/7 access to them. Rubber bands, for example, are gold to me,” Allanson says.

“I ran out of rubber bands and wasn’t going shopping for seven or eight weeks and then of course I forgot to put them on the list. Then a woman on one of our tours had about 20 of them wrapped

around things she was taking in and out of her bag. She dropped one and I picked it up and said you won’t need this one and we haggled over it for a while but when I explained how precious they were to me she let me have it.”

Allanson lives in Hannah’s Clearing, a small settlement of about 20 people between Haast and Jackson Bay. Her 7-year-old daughter Aru goes to school there with six other children.

For them Jackson Bay, near Haast, is splendidly isolated – there are more resident seals and penguins than people. Aru has grown up with an outdoors lifestyle, and her favourite thing to do is go to Neils Beach where she goes fishing, surfing and swimming with Hector’s Dolphins.

“She is very confident in the sea. She has named two dolphins Fluffy and Pearl. When we are by ourselves Fluffy and Pearl come in within a hand’s length. They don’t touch us but they swim around and around,” Allanson says.

While nature is plentiful, footprints of the modern world are harder to spot. Allanson now has a landline phone and internet at home with the help of Starlink, but before that she would drive 25km to check her business emails. Cellphone coverage is still sparse.

“I am taking the jet boat out to the sandbank to send a text message or make a bank transfer and I really don’t mind it. My daughter doesn’t know any other way of living and therefore doesn’t miss it. I am proud to be able to raise her in an environment where she learns to embrace nature, instead of going out, spending money and being soaked up by technology and social media,” Allanson says.

Allanson grew up on Minaret Station on Lake Wānaka, which was only accessible by air or boat so the remote nature of moving to Hannah’s Clearing wasn’t a shock to the system. Although the West Coast region covers 8.7% of the land area of New Zealand, it has only 0.75% of the people. For Allanson, there is a sense of simplicity and community in the area.

“People are really interested in what it’s like to live in this area. There are only 249 people over a 160km line. Everyone multi-tasks. Every one has two main jobs. The guy who looks after the stoat traps also drives the ambulance. The horticulturist who grows all the lettuce for us is also the manager in one of the hotels. There’s lots of that going on.”

She said it would be a tricky life for people who like makeup and shopping, but it is particularly hard on mothers. The nearest midwife is two hours away in Wānaka. Allanson says when Aru was born seven years ago she was lucky to have a midwife in the community but still had to travel more than 400km to give birth in Dunedin where she stayed for two weeks before her due date.

The area is served by a district nurse and a doctor who comes once a week or fortnight for clinics. For medical treatment people drive to Dunedin or Greymouth and in an emergency a helicopter arrives from wherever the weather allows. The Allansons have not been immune to the isolation that can create.

“Sometimes if the weather is bad the ambulance drives people through the Haast Pass for a helicopter to pick them up in Makarora. My daughter was very sick and had a temperature nearly up to 40°C and I just had to breathe and stay calm. I was so close to calling the helicopter but [her temperature] luckily came down,” Allanson says.

The opening of the Haast Pass road in 1965 paved the way for the area to become a welldefined tourist route between Queenstown and the glaciers. As commercial pilots Ruth and Wayne Allanson operated a flying business in Wānaka before buying Waiatoto River Safari. The boats and the business allow the couple to show off the simply breathtaking scenery of their home.

“We couldn’t bear having access to the backcountry taken away. It would take a musterer a whole day to walk to where we go by boat and we can get there in 15 minutes. We go to the Haast Kiwi Sanctuary, which has the rarest kiwi in New Zealand. We have people come back more than once and it’s just as amazing on a clear blue sky day as when it’s raining,” she says.

The trip takes in waterfalls and untouched temperate rainforest in an Unesco World Heritage Area and with Allanson as tour guide, visitors get a unique insight into both the human and natural history of the area, including a massive waterfall that is six times higher than Niagara Falls at more than 300m. It was named Rubicon Rivulet by Charles Douglas who spent 40 years mapping the back country in the 1800s with a dugout canoe, tea, tobacco, a pencil and some wax paper.

“I feel very, very calm and peaceful on the river,” Allanson says. “Even if it’s raining you can see twinkling waterfalls and all the moss and the beautiful forests. The river is constantly flowing. It’s hard to describe. I encourage people to get off the boat and just leave them to it, have a look at the stones and be with the river to relax.”

“I wouldn’t want to trade my home and way of living with anything if it allows us to enjoy such special experiences, that tourists around the world pay money for.”

The only downside? The area is well known for its sand flies that swarm around – and favour the blood of outsiders.

“They do come out when it’s humid and overcast. They don’t bother me,” Allanson says.

“I tell people that’s why we have such a small population.”

“I feel very, very calm and peaceful on this river. Even if it’s raining you can see twinkling waterfalls…”