Maruia Falls is where the wide Maruia River leaps over a 10m escarpment on its mad rush north to join the Buller River. For most folks the falls are just a quick look-see from the fenced viewpoint above the falls. The view there isn’t very good though. A much better one is the 3- minute track down to the base of the falls. Maruia Falls change dramatically and quickly depending on the day’s rainfall—it’s easy for the river to swell more than a meter in just hours…and thus you may see the falls as a raging mist-spewing chocolate-brown torrent, or just a clear gentle-flowing multi-channeled trickle. When the water is low it’s fun to hop the viewpoint fence and go down onto the top-o-the-falls rock shelf where the water streams through a spaghetti of channels and fissures. Don’t try this at high water, as you’d be surely swept to an untimely (and bad for tourism) death.
What’s really interesting about Maruia Falls is what the interpretive sign at the falls doesn’t tell you, because there isn’t one. The neat fact is that Maruia Falls originated due to a catastrophic 1929 earthquake that pummeled the area. A weaker guidebook would simply inform you that the earthquake “caused” the waterfall, leaving you to wonder…how? At first look you may be inclined to wonder if the downstream land dropped away an incredible 10m? But no, a journey into the nearby Murchison Museum’s will reveal a file folder filled with newspaper articles detailing that the earthquake caused a massive landslide to the east of the river sending a debris slide into and filling the former river channel, which was roughly underneath the present-day carpark. The earth shook, the land slid, people were crushed…and the river detoured around the landslide pile to establish a new channel through what was a paddock. The museum article details that after one week the new waterfall was about 1m tall, after a few weeks it was 2m, and after a year it was 5m tall. Since about 1947 the falls look as they do now—10m.
Interestingly, the geology article goes on to examine the fact that the existing waterfall existed prior to earthquake-caused re-birth! Evidence indicates that an Ice-Age debris-flow covered up a pre-historic Maruia Falls, re-routing the river channel…and this pre-historic waterfall only re-asserted itself after the 1929 landslide dammed-up the then-channel, letting the river rediscover its former waterfall! Whew, how did Tourism NZ pass up this opportunity to tout “a world-famous earthquake re-engineered Jurassic waterfall”???? Hopefully DOC will come to its senses and have Christchurch writer/satirist Joe Bennett pen a fun info plaque ode to this peculiar not-quite-yet Tourist Attraction.
