rom Arundel the road continues across the plains to Geraldine. After passing through foothills now being turned into yet another pine forest the road descends into Beautiful Valley, followed quickly by Cattle Valley and then Fairlie. It then travels along the foothills of the Two Thumb Range, all stock-raising land, into the MacKenzie Country.

With so many place names glorifying politicians and businesspeople, it makes a change to find a place named for a sheep thief. Britain has its Robin Hood and Australia its Ned Kelly, and we have our James MacKenzie, with his rather innovative method of training his dog to help him rustle sheep.

The MacKenzie Country is made up of the drainage basins of Lakes Tekapo, Pukaki and Ohau as well as the tributaries of the Upper Waitaki and covers more than 16,000 hectares of land, once all in tussock. It has a few claims to fame: a giant weta, the scree weta, and an endemic butterfly, the southern blue. This is in danger of being hybridised into extinction by a recent Australian immigrant, the common blue, and as such is seemingly destined for the same fate as the black stilt.

The black stilt, or kaki, was once our most common stilt, but predation, combined with the opening up of the country which better suited its relative the pied stilt, or poaka, has meant a sharp drop in numbers. This decline has forced the black stilt to take pied stilts as mates, resulting in an increasing number of hybrids called 'smudgies' and today only about 120 pure kaki survive.

Nesting enclosures for the black stilt have been built by the Forest and Bird Society near Lake Tekapo to keep out predators and black stilt eggs are being given to pied stilts for fostering. However, this has led to some behaviour changes by the fostered chicks, which may reduce the effectiveness of the foster-care programme: these black stilts now migrate north with their foster parents instead of wintering in the MacKenzie Country with other black stilts.

Parallel to Lake Tekapo is Lake Pukaki and by following the shores of this lake you arrive at Mt Cook, our highest mountain and centre of probably our best known national park, the Mt Cook National Park. On a clear day the drive up to Mt Cook is breathtaking, with the huge mass of the mountain dominating the landscape. Although the view from any direction is tremendous my favourite is across Lake Pukaki, with the mountain soaring above the vivid, turquoise waters of the lake.

Mt Cook is a good place to stay for a couple of days while exploring the park but make sure it is not in the skiing season. Then you stand a good chance of being skittled by a skier while watching birds and, anyway, all the interesting plants are under several metres of snow.

At this height above sea level all the birds, except the kea and the rock wren, spend the winter at lower altitudes where the pickings are presumably better, but in summer migrate back to the higher reaches. Paradise ducks and harriers can both be seen around the park in summer together with black-backed gulls and pipits. Even pukeko stray up from time to time and look very much out of place in the snowfields.

The monarch of the mountains is undoubtedly the kea. He struts around with a proprietorial air, sticking his beak into anything left unguarded. Heaven help the campers who go off and leave their packs or tent unattended. Its sabre-like beak is not ornamental and even windscreen-wiper rubbers, the roofs of convertible cars and motor-bike seats are an easy target for a kea with its heart set on mischief. Department of Conservation staff at tourist resorts have a campaign to discourage travellers from feeding kea in the hope that they will move away from settled areas and start foraging for themselves again. Some, unfortunately, have learned to kill sheep. Mt White Station near Arthur’s Pass is said to have lost some 200 sheep to this bird in 1987 and with stud Merino sheep worth as much as several thousand dollars each, the loss of even one is a serious blow to a farmer.

But despite their failings, kea have a raffish charm shared by few other birds. Gerald Durrell was much taken with them on a visit to Mt Cook, writing: 'Their strutting pompous walk, their general attitude of being lords of all they surveyed, combined with [their] oft repeated and never varying cry, made them remind me irresistibly of a small group of fascists'. Since reading this description I have never been able to look at a kea without thinking of Benito Mussolini. From a distance their plumage appears a drab olive colour but close up it reveals a marvellous range of shades with the orange undersides of their wings like flashes of flame.

Around the Mt Cook environs are other animals that, like the kea, are not universally popular: the chamois and the thar. In 1904 the Duke of Bedford sent six Himalayan thar from his herd at Woburn, in England, which were liberated at Mt Cook and these were followed by three other liberations. Eight chamois arrived at Mt Cook as a gift from the Emperor of Austria in 1907 with a further two in 1914.

Both have thrived and spread over a great part of the Southern Alps. Hunting pressure on these animals is considerable. Over 50,000 thar have been killed by private and government hunters since protection was removed in 1930, but this has only slightly checked their numbers and in the meantime the damage they do to alpine vegetation is calamitous. Not only is much of this vegetation unique but its removal is worsening an already serious erosion problem. Unfortunately, the removal of the animals entirely is almost impossible and, even if it were not, pressure from hunting interests would probably prevent it.

Yet the vegetation around Mt Cook is particularly good as browsing animals are more easily kept under control here. The Mount Cook lily, actually a buttercup, is well known and deservedly acclaimed but there are also many other plants which, even if not quite as spectacular, are beautiful and worth seeking out. Among these are the large mountain daisy or tikumu, the alpine buttercup, the snow gentian, the New Zealand eyebright, or tutumako, and the various marguerites and bluebells.

The tikumu was prized by the early Maori, as the pellicles of the leaves were plaited into headbands and the white soft wool used as hair ornaments. The stiff, spiny leaves of the speargrass were also valued as a source of aromatic gums for use in scented oils.