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 At our final strategy meeting before the students left to protest
against the destruction of the Clutha Gorge by the Scheme F Clutha Dam
I advised Keith Johnston to stop off in Wellington on his way down and
get a prospecting licence.
At 4.30am on 12 December 1977 nine adults, a child and a dog arrived at a point half a kilometre from Clyde where they planned to set up an information centre. At 6.30am a helicopter arrived with a geodesic dome suspended beneath it, and in a matter of hours the group had established their camp. Optimistically they called themselves "Clutha Rescue".
The Ministry of Works was caught completely by surprise by the appearance of Clutha Rescue. By the fourth day of the occupation of the river bank, however, they had recovered sufficiently to respond with an ultimatum that the area was needed for a car park and an information centre. Clutha Rescue stayed on.
At 9am on 23 December the protesters were handed trespass notices and told they had an hour to leave the site.In response they produced their prospecting license which gave them the right to remain on unoccupied Crown Land. The only person who could evict them was the Minister and he had gone off for his Christmas holiday.
It was Christmas and every hour the radio news was giving an update on the cat and mouse game. The whole nation became focused on the Clutha, and the background features needed to explain what the Clutha project was all about only added to the media coverage. It was a brilliant success.
Eventually the only solution the Ministry could come up with was to transfer the title of the land.
The camp was then moved to a nearby orchard, but the objective had been achieved.
Perhaps the real highlight of the protest was the marriage of Keith Johnston and Trish Sarr on 14 January 1978 in the threatened Lowburn Church.
In those days planning students did not waste their time writing useless essays about something they had read about in books. They went out and changed the world. Staff just gave them the clues and the support they needed. The staff were just as involved in the real world as the students were. Really everyone was a student. Some just had a little more experience than others.
Justice Casey put the icing on the cake when he refused to issue the water right which was necessary for the dam to proceed. Muldoon was not pleased.
Only many years later did the engineer discover that the students were right when they said the dam was being built over a fault.
If you would like more details refer to Roger Wilson's book "From Manapouri to Aramoana" published by Earthworks Press in 1982.
The two photographs are by Mike Brown.
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