On Feb 7, 1890, 50-year-old Rosa Clara Moreton, first wife of Southland-based artist Samuel Moreton and mother of 10, climbed aboard a borrowed boat which took took two "long and tedious" days to row to the head of Lake Te Anau.
The catamaran, with her five descendants, Fiona Maddison, her son Jarrod Maddison, Jude Ruakere, her brother Philip Peek and his daughter Bronwyn Davies on board, took an hour to complete the same journey recently.
Mr Peek said Rosa and Samuel had an adventure before they even started.
Mrs Maddison said she put out the call to the wider family group after she realised the 135th anniversary of Rosa’s traverse was coming up.
The story had initially been a family "myth".
"Then when we started digging into it, we found the information on it, it sort of brought it to life — so it was a pretty amazing experience."
Stories of the historic traverse were published in 1890 issues of The Southland Times and Evening Star.
The Milford route was first discovered in 1888 by Quinton MacKinnon and at the time of Rosa and Samuel’s journey two years later, Donald Sutherland was the sole resident of Milford Sound. Now 14,000 people make the journey annually.
Upon reflection, Mrs Maddison appreciated the tenacity it took for Rosa to complete the trip.
"It was just an amazing feeling to think that we were walking in her footsteps ... she was a pioneering woman doing it."
The family group saw photos in a track lodge of women wearing coarsely woven, ankle-length, brown linen skirts and hats with nets that were a stark contrast to their lightweight merino.
"When you’re not a hiker, it’s a fairly gruelling sort of a walk, and how she coped in her day, you can only imagine. It beggars belief how she managed it.
"She was certainly a woman of her time, that’s for sure."
Both the historic and 2025 journeys were guided walks, but the latter came complete with cooked meals, warm beds in powered huts that were luxury compared to Rosa’s fern-padded bed under a canvas sheet.
Rosa’s account of one hut: "The first hut we approached ... around the door for a space of some twenty square feet was a wilderness of buckets, camp-ovens, kerosene tins converted into cooking utensils, old billies, split slabs, discarded kitchen stuffs and blowflies by the million ... the establishment was black with the smoke of ages."
Mr Peek said in comparison with Rosa’s journey, "We had it easy ...
"We had electric light until 10 o’clock ... and woke to cooked breakfasts.
"She would’ve had it 10 times harder than us — we had a formed track. Her track was possibly more of a route than a track."
Sharing their "why" at Glade House on the first night with the 50 members of their guided party generated a lot of reflection among the Americans and Australian visitors.
"Every day we were walking, somebody commented on our great-great-grandmother, how she would’ve found it walking and what an honour it was for us to do it.
"I think she lived a pretty tough life."
Rosa died on May 10, 1908, after her husband left to live in Christchurch, and is buried in an unmarked plot at Invercargill’s St John’s cemetery with her children Annie, Alice, Paulina, Atlanta Minerva, Claude, Loraine and William.
By Toni McDonald
