Photographic images of Buller, New Zealand - Michael Venter Photography

St Arnaud, Lake Rotoiti
The Buller River runs from Lake Rotoiti through the Upper and Lower Buller Gorges and out into the sea at Westport. St Arnaud was originally called Rotoiti until 1921, when it was renamed by the Department of Lands and Survey to avoid confusion with other communities of the same name. 
The Buller River is named after Charles Buller, founder of the New Zealand Company. Both Buller, and Sir William Molesworth, were associated with Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his schemes for colonising New Zealand. The Buller is the major river of the South Island's west coast. Rising as the Travers River on the St. Arnaud Range of the central highlands, it drains Lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa, flows west for 177 km, and enters the Tasman Sea at Westport. ​Source; Web, (edited),Britannica.

Murchison
The discovery of gold and the search for grazing land were the initial driving forces behind the establishment of the township of Hampden, which later became known as Murchison in 1882. But developing a settlement in wild, inhospitable, isolated country was slow. Māori axes and implements indicate that they passed through the area in pre-European times on their way to and from the West Coast. The dense native forest in the Upper Buller provided excellent hunting for birds, but it seems that Māori did not live in the area. 
The town is located on the Four River Plain at the confluence of the Buller, Matakitaki, Mangles and Matiri Rivers. The heavily wooded flat was first described by Charles Heaphy.  In February 1846 Heaphy, Thomas Brunner, William Fox  and their Māori guide, Kehu set off from Nelson to look for ‘the plain beyond Rotoiti'.  Heaphy wrote of their first sighting of the Murchison Valley as “an expanse of open manuka country, with kahikatea forests and fern flats on either side of the Buller, several valleys seem to join the main opening a mile or two down the plain".Source; The Prow, NZ (edited)

The Buller Gorge
The Buller River flows through the deep canyon between Murchison and Westport. Land Information New Zealand lists two sections for the gorge, Upper Buller Gorge and Lower Buller Gorge. State Highway 6 runs alongside, but considerably above, the river through the gorge. The Stillwater - Westport Line railway also runs through the gorge. Source; Web (edited).

Lyell Cemetery
Lyell was named by the geologist Julius von Haast after the British geologist Charles Lyell, a friend of Sir George Grey, whose writings had influenced Charles Darwin. This cemetery is located in Lyell in the Buller Gorge. A track enters native beech forest clinging to a steep hillside and leads on to one of the more picturesque goldfield cemeteries.  Surviving headstones, some in iron-fenced plots with large trees growing out of them, tell stories of short lives and tragic deaths.  Between 30 and 40 people were buried here from 1880 to 1900. Source; Web, (edited), DOC.

The Lower Buller, Hawkes Crag, Westport Harbour.
The Buller River mouth forms the harbour at Westport. Hawks Crag never fails to jolt visitors with its craggy one way road challenge.  The name of it is said to have come from nesting hawks which populated it – but an old gold miner, Robert Hawks, who did work claims in this area, reckoned in later years, that it was named after him. Believe it or not, when the Buller River is in full flood, it submerges the road at Hawks Crag – not a sight you want to see close up!  Source; Westport website, (edited).

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