Bishop passes through the Bay on 1000km walk
Bishop Richard Ellena, centre front, enjoys one of Golden Bay’s beaches.
Nelson’s Anglican Bishop, Richard Ellena, passed through Golden Bay last week as part of his 1000km diocese walkabout that began on February 17 from the Cathedral steps in Nelson.
Based on what early Nelson bishops called “Walking the bounds of their diocese”, he hopes to complete the pilgrimage in around five weeks. Taking in the odd rest day, that’s an average of 30km, roughly six hours walking, per day. The diocese stretches to Greymouth and Kaikoura.
Coming over the old bridle track of the Takaka Hill from Sandy Bay proved slightly more adventurous than anticipated. The Bishop and his party got into heavy overgrown gully country towards Horseshoe Bend, and had to bush-bash the last part out, with many scratches to prove it. The following day’s 12km walk along the East Takaka Road to Takaka township was relatively easy, but the Bishop was sporting the odd blister and pleased to be barefoot for the walk along the coast from Patons Rock to Collingwood last Saturday. Accompanying him were local vicar Richard Dyer and a dozen or so local parishioners on both foot and horse.
The affable 58-year old Bishop made it known before he left that he more than welcomed others to join him for stretches along the way, including as many clergy as possible.
“This walk is intended to be a pilgrimage in that it retraces the steps of the first bishops, but it’s also a journey of discipleship, talking faith with people just as Jesus did on the road. What a marvellous way to meet with the locals, to be able to talk and walk along together at a natural pace. It’s also a chance to encounter God in the unexpected.”
After a preaching engagement in Collingwood, the Bishop headed up the Aorere Valley and through the Heaphy Track to Karamea, where he will begin the long trek down the coast to another preaching engagement at Cobden near Westport. From there, he will head inland via Reefton and Springs Junction to the top of the Lewis Pass, then go from Waiau home via another preaching engagement at Ward, and finally over the Maungatapu Track back to Nelson, hopefully sometime around 28 March.
Some short road sections were left out on advice from Opus Consultants, who advised the Bishop that some road sections were now just too dangerous to walk. One of these was a 100-metre section coming into Mapua. In Golden Bay, it was the Birds Hill section of State Highway 60 along to the start of the Puramahoi Straight.
The tenacity of past Nelson bishops in getting around their diocese has been a subject long recalled by settlers in Golden Bay, like the sight of Bishop Edmund Hobhouse wading through the Parapara River on his way to from preaching at Collingwood. A towering ex-champion Oxford rower, he could easily walk 30miles (48km) in a day. In 1860, his wife wrote; “Edmund returned a few days from Collingwood, walking sixty miles in two days through road ankle deep in mud and with blistered feet, but is well.”
Bishop Ellena’s walkabout is not the first time a modern-era Nelson bishop has attempted a big beat trip like this. Bishop Sutton in 1969 teamed up with Havelock’s Vicar Greig to sail around the outermost farms of his Marlborough Sounds parish. Coming through Stephens Passage, they smashed off their boat’s rudder on a submerged rock at Hell’s Gate, a treacherous cauldron of water off D’Urville Island’s northern tip, and ended up drifting for several hours before a rescue boat could take them in tow.
The following day, the The Nelson Evening Mail ran the prominent headline across its front page: “Nelson Bishop Adrift at Hell’s Gate”.
Gerard Hindmarsh
