Angler Dougal Rillstone and surfer Derek Morrison talk to fellow explorer Bruce Ansley about their love for the wild places of Aotearoa.

Angler Dougal Rillstone (author of Upstream on the Mataura) and surfer Derek Morrison (author of Surf Dreams) talk to fellow explorer Bruce Ansley about their love for the wild places of Aotearoa.

This conversation was a highlight of the 2021 Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival.

Listen to Dougal Rillstone, Derek Morrison and Bruce Ansley in conversation

Highlights:

Dougal Rillstone: My association with the Mataura river Roes back a long way. I was born a stone's throw from it. I lived on the eastern side of Gore in a very ordinary street. But we had paddocks beside us. We had the Waikaka Stream at the end of our road. It was a wild place. And that was where I grew up, and grew to love being near water and the river. The Mataura was about three blocks to the west of us. And we were surrounded by green hills and the Hokonuis. And it became the landscape of my happiness really. I've been lucky because I feel such joy when I'm fly fishing. It's helped me going back to the river and feeling good about it. But you can't lose sight of what you've lost in that regard. The main river is holding up ok, but the tributaries are being damaged by changes in agricultural practice.

Dougal Rillstone: One of my favourite streams is Fortune Creek, which I write about in Upstream on the Mataura. This beautiful little stream just running on the north side of the Hokonuis, into the Mataura. Water as clear as vodka. Beautiful plant life swinging in the current there like flags. Trout. A clean bottom. And, in the space of 15 or 20 years, for economic reasons, the farmer gave up sheep farming. It was converted to dairy. Pretty quickly the streamside vegetation was pulled out and burnt.

And before you know it there are pivot irrigators going across that landscape. There is cowshit arcing through the air fertilising the ground. And no surprise quite quickly that Fortune Creek deteriorated badly. The water lost its gloss. I used to drink from it with impunity. But I started to think that I shouldn't. And the insect life in the stream deteriorated badly. And frankly, it died. It runs under the highway as you head towards Riversdale. It's an inconspicuous thing. If you cross over it, it looks ok, but if you get close to it, and look at it in any kind of detail, it's a dead piece of water. And that's happened too much through that catchment…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details