Heretaunga Tramping Club – Liz Pindar

Good evening, Jim Newbigin here. I’m at Hastings Public Library and our speaker this evening, 11th October, is Elizabeth Pindar, and she’s talking to us about tramping in the Ruahines or the Kawekas.

Barbara Brookfield: Welcome! Nau mai haere mai – it’s just wonderful to be back, I’ve never seen so many happy faces. It’s amazing what eighteen months can do, and it’s been pretty tough hasn’t it? Lot of water under the bridge, but we really celebrate having the talks up and running again, so from the Landmarks Trust a very big welcome. The Knowledge Bank we welcome as well, and our two organisers, Joyce Barry, who’s been very bossy and asked me to welcome you today [chuckles] as usual – she who must be obeyed; and Cynthia Bowers sends you the emails to remind you. So it’s a great pleasure that we have to welcome Liz Pindar, who for sixty years has tramped the back blocks of Hawke’s Bay and been a member of the Heretaunga Tramping Club. And I’ve been here when she was putting her photos together last week; she’s got some wonderful tales to tell us, so welcome Liz, and we look forward to hearing your talk.

Liz Pindar: Gidday, everyone. [Applause] Well because I’m a tramper, even though I’m not fit enough to be one any longer, this is going to be a kind of a rambley talk. I’m not going to start from the beginning and go to the middle and go to the end, it’s going to be exploring along the way, if that’s okay with everybody. Right, well as the song says, “The Heretaunga Tramping Club started in the Spring” … but I won’t carry any more than that.

It began in 1936 when Hamish Armstrong disappeared in a plane. He’d taken off from Akitio I think it was, and was flying that way and he flew over the Ruahine Ranges and he vanished. At that stage there was no Search & Rescue or anything like that, and the police and various people who knew the outdoors started, you know, doing their thing and trying to find where the plane was. Eventually they found the plane, no sign of Hamish Armstrong. They did find his spectacles which were in the plane. He was very short-sighted, so where he went no-one knows; no-one still does know. But the tramping club started at that point with people like Doc [Doctor] Bathgate and various other well known Hawke’s Bay types – Norm Elder – don’t expect me to give the list of names offhand. But it all started then, and people wanted to get out into the Ranges. Well you always do want to get out into the Ranges, don’t you? You want to see what’s on the other side; that’s the whole point of things. [Chuckles]

And so in 1936 they started out – men and women. And the women wore trousers [chuckles] or shorts, or skirts. It was all go. And ever since then we have continued to be a tramping club. All are welcome. A basic minimum of fitness is required. I’m no longer capable of getting up the hills; never mind, I can still dream. And the search was basically in the Ruahines … in the central part of the Ruahines. And you’ll all probably have known children, grandchildren, whatever, who go up to Sunrise Hut. Well that’s where Armstrong Saddle is, and Armstrong Saddle of course is named after Hamish Armstrong. And at one time there was even a stick in the ground with a tin plate attached labelling where the plane was found. That’s something that I think the tramping club could maybe start looking for again. It would be a jolly good search in all that manuka. Nowadays there’s not the snow.

Right, that’s the beginning of it. Now the main thing about tramping is that you’ve got feet, and you’ve got legs and there are the Ranges. So you put the two together. You do need transport. The tramping club truck has been a feature of tramping club life for a long time. Originally it was borrowed from various sources … people who had trucks, and people would pile on the back. The first truck that I was on was quite a nifty affair because it had three quarters covered in at the back with a tin frame and large tarpaulins that you put over yourself to keep off the rain or the dust, or at one stage when we had a dog with us, the dog spew. [Chuckles] Yes. You didn’t want to be having a hole in the tarpaulin just where you were sitting.

The tramping club truck was great. It normally got up just about everywhere. It could go through mud, it could go on roads that were falling apart, it could get up on farm tracks and you could sleep in the back. Now that was the marvellous thing about it; because way back, because I never managed to get out on any of these particular trips because I was always working in the holidays on an orchard. But in December/January there was normally a two week trip down into the South Island, and so that was really good because they could pile all their stuff in, food and everything, make a false floor on top of the food and then sleep in the truck whenever they got to the right place. They had some marvellous trips down in the South Island and I do rather regret having been kind of bound by duty and work; but never mind, that was a great thing.

And other times when we went in the tramping club truck … one trip we did was down to Kapiti Island. So we stayed in the club truck overnight at a DOC [Department of Conservation] camping ground quite near to Kapiti. That was fine, got up nice and early at about six o clock I think [cough] it was because we had to catch the ferry according to the tide and all that. But it was a really good way of getting around, and it may not have been to some people’s idea of comfort but to me it was absolutely idyllic, because we had mattresses and you could lie back on the mattresses with a pillow and just travel up the Ranges [or] wherever you went. Some people did tend to get a bit car sick; well, there’s always the tail board. When you’re not in a closed truck you can just lean over the back. Later on we progressed to a closed in truck so that meant we had to have a buzzer so that we could stop it quickly for people who needed it. Anyway, little inconveniences like that are all part of the fun.

Right. The the gear that you needed. Well my first tramping trip was with Nancy Tanner. And Nancy and a couple of her friends took me out up to the top of Four One Hundred. Now that’s what they call Kuripapango Hill nowadays, but Four One Hundred is much more descriptive because that was the height in feet. I am talking in feet and inches; I do not do metric. Height to me are [is] feet. And anyway, Four One Hundred at that time had snow on it, as it did every winter, and we went up Four One Hundred and Nancy stuck her ice axe in the snow and that was the first time I saw that beautiful blue colour that you get [coughing] when the sun’s shining on the snow. It’s an absolutely incredible colour and you never forget it. That alone should make people want to go up Ranges and see what the colour is. But now there’s not the snow.

Anyway, that was my first trip and I borrowed a pair of boots, I borrowed a pack, I wore my father’s cricketing jersey from the 1930s which I had dyed a brown shade with permanganate of potash [or Condy’s crystals]. I mean, a white jersey isn’t going to be very good for tramping is it? [Chuckles] And permanganate of potash makes a jolly good dye.

After a while I got my own gear but the club always, at that stage, had gear that other people could borrow; those old kidney basher packs that sat on your back and bashed you. Then there were the frame packs – they always seemed to stick you in the wrong place. Boots … yes, we always had boots available too [to] lend to people who didn’t have boots because there’s nothing like a pair of good solid boots on your feet. We also had things like the odd parka, and things like that. So at that time in the early to mid-sixties, people didn’t need to spend much money on gear. It was really good. The only expense was paying for the truck and that was at that stage not a very expensive thing because petrol didn’t cost the earth.

Right – gear; oh yes, sleeping bags. Now at one stage you made do with something [like] folded up blankets. They weren’t very warm; then you progressed to down. Down sleeping bags are beautiful but after a while the down comes out and makes you sneeze, and stops being very warm. And then you get some of these artificial filly [filling] varieties, but they are either too hot or too cold, or too heavy or too bulky; nothing like the real down.

Mind you, I do have fond memories of one of my tramps with a down sleeping bag; we were up on the top of the Ruahines at Howletts Hut. Now Howletts Hut is reasonably high, it’s over four thousand feet, and at that time of the year there was a good snow cover. Once you’ve ploughed up and up and up and up, you come out on the level above the tree line, and then it’s snow. And then you get to the hut and you find, “Oh dear!” The doorway is somewhat submerged in snow. So of course the shovel to dig the snow out is inside the hut, isn’t it? But I mean, we’ve got hands, so … And then we find that, “Oh dear, it’s all come down the chimney.” So then you have to find where the shovel is – dig a bit more for that – and then start shovelling the snow outside. Well, that’s all right, we finally got the entrance clear and the bunks were reasonably clear of snow, so we got the fire going and the food on and that; and then it came to bed time. Well the snow was about that high on the outside of the corrugations; yes. And on the inside of the corrugations were icicles. [Audience murmurs] Each indentation had a nice icicle in it. Well, there were about twelve of us or something – I think there were about four bunks. So we were double bunking naturally. Now double bunking is nothing to do with hot bunking. Double bunking means one person sleeps that way and the other person sleeps that way, and if you are lucky the big parts of you don’t overlap. [Chuckles] Well I was on the hut side with my back against the corrugations with the icicles. It was a somewhat chilly night. I did keep on waking up and trying to wriggle a bit, but the chap who was on the other side of the bunk was trying to wriggle so that he wouldn’t fall off and land on the person beneath him on the floor.[Laughter] So every time I woke up and shoved Apple, Apple would wake up and shove me, so [chuckles] … never mind, next morning it was fine. And then we had to dig the dunny out didn’t we? [Chuckles] And that was tricky, because the path was fairly steep and it was a little bit difficult digging when you’re in a hurry. Never mind, everything worked out; and it was a lovely day. And some of the boys even did Sawtooth [Ridge] after that. Now Sawtooth is something that I would not do myself, because as it sounds, Sawtooth is the name; it goes like that, and you climb around it like that. It’s all right when its snowy because you can kick your feet into the snow and get a good grip so it wasn’t too bad then. But if you try to do it when it’s gritty and fine and no snow, you don’t really want to do it with such ease. That was a chilly night; that was one of the chilliest nights I’ve had.

Now, another interesting trip with snow. We had parties; some of these tramping club types, they get all excited about having parties and being sociable. Well we had Christmas trips; but originally we used to have Christmas trips with people who had all their assorted young sprogs with them, and some of the sprogs even became trampers themselves. And we used to have that up at Kuripapango at the clearing beside the lakes, up the Taihape Road. And on the side of Four One Hundred there is – or there was – a lovely big shingle slide. So part of the fun of the tramping club Christmas trips – this is in the mid-sixties – was all the mad boys would rush up Kuripapango and have a race to come down the shingle slide. Terribly un … what would you call it? Definitely not the thing to do these days because of disturbing the local vegetation. But it was fun then. And you’d sit by the lakes or be swimming in the lakes, or getting your Christmas decorations laid out, and you’d watch these mad boys coming down helter skelter, down the shingle slide, about two thousand feet of drop. [Phone ringing] Everyone seemed to enjoy it. And then we had the Christmas parties, and we always had Father Christmas. Yes – I mean he was usually a bit hot and sweaty because he’d been up the shingle slide too, but never mind. [Chuckles]

We also had lilo trips on the lakes. That was quite fun – especially when one boy who could not swim and his only way of being in the water was to go straight down – someone tickled his feet and he fell off his lilo. It was a bit difficult – he did manage to keep on and he didn’t drown. I was, of course, like the usual walrus that I am I was quite happy in the cold water. I did not tickle his feet, that was not me. But that was the Christmas parties.

And then we started to have mid-winter Christmas parties. And this was in the … ooh, late sixties, seventies, when there was snow on the Ranges, and we’d go up. Hinerua Hut was quite a good place to go to, or Buttercup Hollow, after Buttercup Hollow ended up having Sunrise … Sunrise Hut was built where Buttercup Hollow was. Buttercup Hollow was several tarns. And my first trip up there was when the tarns were frozen over and we skated on them. Shoowwh! It was great fun. It looked rather like a Breugel kind of picture where all these ungainly types, still sometimes even wearing their packs, trying to slide across the ice. But then the hut was built, and the tarns have vanished, but Buttercup Hollow is still there in my mind. Buttercup Hollow of course, because of the buttercups that grew there … the wild ranunculus.

Anyway, these midwinter Christmas holidays was [were] the trip up there, and we had to be wearing proper formal dress when we were there for the dinner. One of the boys carried up a big container of ice cream; because it was cold it didn’t melt all the way up. We carried things like roasts, and gravy and custards, and plum puddings and all the vegetables, and we all heated it up and had it there; and had a lovely meal. And of course we were all dressed formally, with our long dresses with our woolly shirts underneath [Laughter] and the men had to be wearing a jacket, a shirt and a tie. Yes – and the ladies were supposed to be wearing high heeled shoes. Well that was fun; it was all right in the hut, and we did a really good job. And I must admit that a slinky orange long dress with three quarter sleeves of wool and a nice high wool neckline looked rather odd underneath, but it was warm. [Chuckles] And then we went outside and danced. The ladies were allowed to take their shoes off because you can’t dance in knee deep snow with high heels, [chuckles] so we just put our woolly socks on and danced that way. And there’s a little rocky knob not far behind the hut, and that was a lovely place to climb up in full evening dress, hitching your skirt up out of the way. It was good fun. Yes, I mean does anybody expect people to be too sensible and serious?

Mind you, we were sensible and serious – we always had quite a lot of bushcraft courses, and we actually went on quite a few snowcraft courses too. One snowcraft course I was on we did up on Ruapehu. We were staying at the old Alpine Club hut which is I think somewhere near the new one, but it was nothing like that, it was about that big and it held about twenty people if you packed them in. You know, you could fit them in. Anyway, we went up Ruapehu – no, we were on Tongariro, sorry; we went up Tongariro and a blizzard came on. And it was getting so cold that I wanted to put an extra pair of gloves on underneath my over gloves, and I couldn’t undo the buckle on my pack to get my other gloves out – it was so cold my hands had stiffened up. So after a while I decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to carry on learning how to use self-arrests and things like that. It was fun while it lasted, and actually it is fun. You throw yourself at a slope holding your ice axe in such a position, and let yourself go down. And if you’re lucky you’ll get your ice axe into the snow and it’ll hold you. If not, you get your hands dropped off the ice axe and you go on skidding. But there was a good runout so it was all right for people who did let go of things. Yes – I do remember an unexpected jerk and my hands just kind of opened. Yes, I did get laughed at.

Anyway, we got back to the hut that night and it was extremely cold and we were all extremely wet. And there was about that much space between us all when we got into the hut, and we were trying to get out of our wet clothes. I was having trouble putting my …. now I don’t know whether I should say this to mixed audiences … I was having trouble getting my bra on. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get it on. And I discovered that one of the boys standing behind me trying to get into his dry shirt had got his arm through the arm holes, and … [Laughter] Yes. [Chuckles] Since then I’ve never really worried about losing my clothes in public. [Chuckles] But it was quite entertaining while it lasted.

The other thing about staying in the Alpine Club hut that night was you had to rope up before you could go out to the long drop, because if you hadn’t you’d’ve been blown away. The wind was something tremendous, and when you sat on the long drop your back got blasted by the snow that was blowing up. [Laughter] It was uncomfortable – yes, well.

We also did things very decently. There was one trip we did in the Ranges, and it was quite a hot day and two of the boys, Dempster and Douglas Thompson, who were quite clowns; there was a Thompson’s Butchery in Hastings at that time. And they’d taken umbrellas with them to keep the sun off. It was quite fun until there was a thunderstorm and then they were worried about getting struck by lightning. Yes … well, they didn’t.

Now that was snowcraft; we did quite a lot of snowcraft trips actually. We did some very good ones up in the Ruahines, because at that stage when you got winter you got snow on the Ruahines. And at the Waipawa Saddle there was Sixty-Five, Sixty-Six and Sixty-Seven – the big peaks. And at that point you could have a real alpine climb up Sixty-Seven because of the ice [?]. [Cough] You couldn’t do it now ‘cause it would just crumble away, but some of the mad young men climbed up that, and some of the normal people went over the Saddle and down to Waikamaka Hut, which was beautiful. Waikamaka Hut was actually quite an interesting hut. They started to build it in 1939, and when it was in the process of being built – I’m not sure how far into it – the next lot came up on the Saturday afternoon because of course a lot of people had to work on Saturday morning then. And they come up and said, “War’s been declared!” But the hut still carried on being built.

Now talking about war being declared, up at the top of the Kawekas is the club cairn. That has the name of … I think it’s eleven, may be more … men of the tramping club who all died in the Second World War. They were all active young men, and on November 11th or as near to November 11th as we can, the club goes up there and has a memorial service for them. To think that they gave up their life, their love of tramping, their enthusiasm for the bush … they gave it up for us. So I hope that people still remember that. There was quite an interesting sideline to that, one of the things I have over there on the bench is a brass ashtray made by the Heretaunga Tramping Club Middle East branch. They would climb the pyramids and things like that. So you can’t ever keep a good tramper down; they always were keen, and they sent very interesting letters back to the club telling them about the various activities they’d been doing. And wherever they could they seemed to find some tramping to do, even if it was just climbing a pyramid or two – after all, what’s a pyramid when you can climb Sixty-Seven? [Chuckle] Or Kaweka J? Kaweka J is the highest point in Hawke’s Bay, so what’s a pyramid?

Oh yes, another thing we did – I don’t think people would be allowed to do it now, we had [chuckle] lilo trips down the Mohaka and the Ngaruroro [Rivers]. The idea was that you’d get on your lilo and you’d float downstream, which was fun. And you had to manoeuvre around the rocks; I remember once getting stuck on a rock. My lilo was up on the rock like this, and there was the water all surging around me. How do I get down?! I got down – if I hadn’t, I mean I’d’ve still been there. But that was fun, except that after a while people decided it was getting a bit dangerous. We didn’t have anything sensible like life jackets or crash helmets or anything like that. One girl had a problem. She got stuck in a nasty rocky cleft, and if she’d hadn’t been a strong girl she possibly would still be there. So I think, after that, we stopped doing it down the Ngaruroro. The Mohaka was great for that because you could come down a long sweep of Mohaka and then you could come out at the hot springs. The only trouble was when you climbed below the hot springs you occasionally put your foot into a hot piece, which was a little uncomfortable. That was, that was fun, but it didn’t last for too long.

Two years running … it might’ve been for three … Hastings had a raft race down the Ngaruroro River from Fernhill Bridge. Now it was open to all – this would’ve been in the late sixties, early seventies – and there were about twenty or thirty rafts entered in the competition. The rafts had to be built and carried, and floated down the river. They were made fairly substantially; we used metal drums and planks on top, anchored on somehow … I can’t remember. Anyway one year, I think it might’ve been two years, they actually built it at our orchard down Hill Road. That was fun because you were allowed to try to sink the other people’s rafts. [Chuckles] You weren’t allowed to actually kill anybody, but it probably came fairly near a few cases with some of the sticks that were brandished. But I think that that raft race only lasted about two years, and this was before Health and Safety. [Chuckles] I’m sure it wouldn’t’ve been allowed now. But it was fun. I mean there was always quite a bit of water; we must’ve had it in the Spring so that the river was still fairly high. You went down from below the Fernhill Bridge and you ended up, hopefully at Pakowhai. I don’t think anyone ever got as far as Pakowhai though. I think we always ended up having a few casualties on the way.

Oh, and working parties – now that’s another thing that the club used to do. They still have working parties now but much more organised. We still do the Hazcare, if people know about the Hazcare? Tramping club always supplies some members for that. We’ve been doing that for quite some years, but originally it started off … well, helping out farms. There was one time when the ground was too wet to pick sweetcorn so the tramping club went and picked sweetcorn. There was another time when we picked up pumpkins, and another time when we turned them over in the sheds where they were drying.

But one of the first working parties I went on, somewhere up around Lovedale Road it may have been, we demolished a couple of old houses. Now that was definitely non PC; not Health and Safety or anything like that. You got up on the roof with your crowbars and jennies and things, you pulled the nails out and you threw the iron down. You got up, and you battered the rafters off, and you threw them down. The electricity had been taken out earlier. [Chuckles] My job was generally belting nails out of four by twos – comparatively safe. It was fun, and we demolished those two houses in two days! No doubt about it we were a pretty good crew. We had no accidents either.

Another job we had for quite some time was mending bins for the pack houses. And that was hard because they were put in with wriggly nails, and it was really hard getting broken pieces of wood off and getting the nails out. Ooh! Some of those boys must’ve developed some really good muscles; and some of the girls did too. Yes, the working parties were fun.

We had a working party at our orchard one time. There’d been I think maybe a hailstorm, maybe it was too much sun – I can’t remember what, but the apples weren’t suitable for export but they were fine for Whittakers to make into sauce. So they were picked, and the tramping club came and picked them. Now I must admit some of the tramping club boys got the idea that it was more fun to pull them off quickly rather than pick them correctly, but they got picked, and that was the main thing. There’s probably a few other ones around that maybe shouldn’t be mentioned …

Comment: Aborta contorta?

Liz: Oh, don’t mention aborta contorta! Yes, those ghastly pine trees! The first aborta contorta I went on, we went up on the side of Ruapehu. We actually did something which was probably was not what we had expected, because after working hard one day – we did a lot because we had the right bearings to do this right area – someone put a compass down on the rock. “Yes, that’s right, that’s right; yes, we’re in the right place.” But what they didn’t realise was that rocks thrown out from a volcano have a set magnetism in them that isn’t the same as north and south is normally. So we ended up doing about half a day on an area which was Māori land which was not supposed to be touched. [Chuckles] But anyway, we got the aborta contorta out of that area. [Chuckles] It was quite funny actually because it was a long hot day, and there was Girdlestone up above us, all shiny and white. And at the end of the day people said, “Oh, let’s climb up Girdlestone.” I think about three boys had the energy to do it [chuckle] – it was a long hot weekend, but we did a good job. We did a very good job including a big area which we didn’t really need to do.

We also did aborta contorta a lot up in the Kawekas, because in 1965 it might’ve been, up at Makahu they put trispur up there trying to get different trees growing. Well, some of these trees were not exactly the right thing; they took over, didn’t they? And so they had to be pulled out. And it gives you a hatred of pine trees, it really does; and every time I go out there I pull them up, pull them up, pull them up. You can’t get rid of contorta but you can definitely do what you can to get rid of them.

Okay, well now I’ve got some photos that are vaguely relevant; they’re just ones that I had. [Shows slides] Right – this is what I mean by the early mad tramping club picnics … Father Christmas in attendance, and all the kids.

Some of the well known tramping types there, and a bloomer in the stripey dress at the back; Pete Lewis there in the front with the [?]; various others. It was a good idea, you know, it was all good fun.

That is one of our long-term members and I’ve got a funny story about him. On the only search that I’d ever been on – the only search and rescue – all I did was make cups of tea in the woolshed. Athol who was quite short, was one of the team searching for this lost schoolboy, and he was going up a river. He had a hat on, you know hat with a brim. The radio went out, “Are you okay?” “Oh yes, I can still see Athol’s hat – he’s only up to his ears in the water.” Yes! [Chuckles] It was in the winter too, wasn’t it? Silly schoolboy had gone out and [got] left behind from the tramping party because he decided he’d go his own way home. Yes; they found him. He didn’t deserve to be found. [Chuckles] But Athol was a real good tramper. He drove the club truck too.

Now this one – it’s not very good, but Labour Weekend 1974, the Tramping Club, Forest & Bird I think, Deerstalkers, we all combined to go through Poronui Station because Poronui Station had forbidden us entry. It was a paper road but you couldn’t get on it because it was blocked with gates and things like that. So we went on anyway, and this was going up the side of the Ngaruroro [River], and that’s the Oamaru Hut on the far side – at least I think it is. It was quite a big river; but we walked up there. And I had a lovely discussion with someone there who said that we shouldn’t have been on their property. And I said, “Why not? We are, so there.” [Chuckles] And he was about that high and he had a gun, but what the heck? [Chuckles] I wasn’t going to be put down by any bank man … huh! I had my rights. [Chuckle]

And that’s one of our club members, long term club member, crossing the Kaipo Stream in the same area. The Kaipo Stream has definite memories for me. We went on a long trip through the same area once; yes, it had its moments. Maybe I should talk about that later.

Now this is going up the Black Birch Range to go to Makahu Hut to get [to do] some snowcraft on Makahu Spur. Well, the truck, and you can just see it at the back there with our badge on it, came across the snow which had iced up. So what do you do? You get out your ice axes and you cut steps in the ice, don’t you? That way a truck can go up a hill. So we cut steps in the ice and the truck came up the hill, so we got there. And if you’ve ever thought of cutting your way up an icy road with an ice axe, why not? It seems to me the logical thing to do. And that’s the same thing; you can see the steepness of the road and the iciness, but we got the truck up, we carried on, we had a wonderful day. And when we were coming back it was only mud, and the truck could slide down the mud quite easily. [Chuckles] But that’s what I mean … it was one for all and all for one.

As you can see there was quite a high wind – I’m not quite sure where that is actually – it’s in the Ruahines somewhere, and I think that might be Sawtooth behind. But as you can see it was a bit windy that day, but I mean, what the heck? What’s a bit of wind? That’s what a good tramper wears in the wind … woolly shirt, pair of shorts.

And that is a real typical tramping club hut. [Baby crying] They were forestry, deer cullers’ or rabbiters’ huts originally, usually four bunks, sometimes six bunks. Then you had a fireplace, and at a pinch you can sleep twenty or twenty-five in there. If it’s a four bunk hut you can probably sleep about twenty; if it’s a six bunk hut you’d be able to sleep twenty-five. Above the doorway there’s a little loft, so you can sleep two up there. Yes, someone here has a brother who may remember that. [Chuckle] He jumped out, desperate to have a pee in the night, and he jumped down on several people. [Baby crying] And it was snowy outside, wasn’t it? And so he was given a good boot in the backside and landed in the snow face downwards. [Chuckle] And then he had to climb up back to the little loft. I’ll always remember that.

And then – I mean you could sleep on the table, you could sleep under the table, two to a bunk and the rest are on the floor just like logs of wood, and you’ll have a really good sleep. But that is a typical tramping club hut.

That’s the cairn that I was talking about. And a wreath is put up there every year we have a service. That year obviously it was snowy. But we have camped up there overnight sometimes on a beautiful day; we have camped up there sometimes in such gales of wind that you have to go up on your hands and knees.

Once I have been up there and the mist came down. Now there are the waratahs, the iron standards put along the track on the top part where it’s flat, and you can normally see where they go … well, you could just see. So one person would go as far as they could, still keeping an eye on the one behind them, and the next person would go on until they could see the one in front. So that’s how we had to go over that flat part because it was really too thick to see. And I just about know every stone on that way, or I did; but three of us Helen Hill, myself and someone else could not find our way down once we left the waratahs and were going down. So we had to go down on our hands and knees and try and feel which was the actual piece of path that was smoother, rather than going off down the wrong spur. And it was probably only about the length of this library that we did like that but we could not see a thing, and my goodness, you get to know the feel of that rock on your knees when you’re doing it that way. We found our way down all right and no-one go lost, but you just could not see a thing. We go up there every year. The cairn has since that photo been rebuilt, because it was getting pretty knocked about with the weather so it’s in a slightly neater condition now. And that’s one of the reasons why you go tramping, because it’s just so gorgeous up on the tops.

That’s up towards Kiwi Hut up in the Kawekas, and that’s looking over towards … oh, eventually you’ll see Ruapehu over there. Once or twice I have been up there and it’s been really clear and of course you can see the Bay, you can see Ruapehu and the mountains there and you can even sometimes see the little peak of Egmont over on the far side. I mean, how’s that for a view? You can see the entire world spread beneath you; it’s the most wonderful feeling, and that I think gives you a bit of an idea of what it is you go tramping for … the beauty of being up on the tops.

That shows the latest club truck – now it’s a club van, so not the same. Going up fairly recently, that one with the places that you can stow your packs and your muddy boots underneath, and everyone piles out.

That was at a [an] anniversary party for the club up at one of the huts, and we just went up there and had fun. I think some people there may recognise themselves [Chuckles]

And we still go on club working parties; this was up at Opouahi, ‘bout three years ago – not long before Covid – when the weir there had collapsed and needed to be repaired rapidly. So people got stuck in and repaired the weir at Lake Opouahi so that the area for raising the kiwi chicks can be looked after happily.

That’s all the club slides I have … well I’ve got thousands of slides; how would I bring them along here? But that was just a taste.

Now I’ve got a few things over there which people might like to look at. There’s one of the early maps which Norm Elder made because there weren’t any maps of the Kawekas or the Ruahines, and there’s one map there that we originally used. It doesn’t have anything fancy like contour lines on it, but it’s a good map.

There’s also a modern map that we used for the Kaweka Challenge. Now the Kaweka Challenge was something that the club and the radio communications people helped with for twenty-one years, [voices in background outside] but then Health and Safety and everything – it just got too much. But there’s the club map; there’s a map there of the Kawekas.

There’s a carbide lamp. Now a carbide lamp was a marvellous device. You put acetylene in it and water in the top part, and it dripped off; [a] little flint on the side which lit the gas. And you could keep your hands warm while you had a light, and it gave a much better light than a torch because instead of a fixed beam it threw the light out evenly, and it was lovely. And one time we went up on a trip to one of the mountain huts on Ruapehu. And we left here Friday night and it was dark when we got up there, so we lit our lamps. And we walked for an hour and a half in the darkness in the moonlight, and it was absolutely beautiful in the mid-winter in the snow and everything. And that is absolutely the peak of feeling that you’re part of something wonderful … the darkness, the stars, the shine of the snow, and this little warm lamp that you could hold to keep your hands warm. [Chuckle]

Now George Lowe was one of our members, club members and you all know about George Lowe. Well he was a club member, and he sent very interesting letters back to the club about Everest. And there’s a book there signed by him and with all the signatures of the Everest trip on it.

There’s also a collection of photos – if anyone can identify them we’d be very pleased. They’re old photos taken in the 1940s so if anyone knows anyone who may’ve been tramping in the 1940s ..? [Chuckles] And there’s also some fairly modern photos that I took; I came across the other day. They’re just photos of snow in the Kawekas and snow in the Ruahines, and just going tramping … just the sheer enjoyment of tramping.

But there’s something about tramping … the hills; the hills call you. And once you’ve been up there you can’t find a better place in the world. Up above the treeline, up where all the little tiny Alpine plants grow. You’ve got the sheltered places where you get the daisies and the beautiful big ranunculus – mountain buttercups – they’re yellow up there, ‘bout that big; and all the tiny little bits of growth there that are just so lovely. And up on the tops it’s like that [gestures] because the frost heave causes these little flats and drops; and all these little drops which are about maybe two inches high you’ll get sheltered little plants growing on them, whereas the flat piece is bare. It’s just so beautiful … and then you get patches of the golden tussock. There’s just nothing like it. There’s no part of the world that is more beautiful than that. The top of the Kawekas or the top of some parts of the Ruahines – it’s the most beautiful place in the world.

Okay.

[Applause]

Joyce: All you softies out there, put your hand up if you want to go to the top of the Ruahines, ‘cause I think, looking round, you probably missed your chance. [Laughter]

But you gave this tremendous feeling of mountains; we’ve tramped in our family, Liz, and I can’t back you up enough because sometimes you had to pinch yourself ‘cause you’d just come across a scene that you thought, ‘Well, this won’t happen again in a hurry.’ But it was just wonderful.

Question: Were all the tracks formed?

Liz: No. A lot of them were – now, I should say this is when I’ve been tramping. In the last few years DOC [Department of Conservation] has fallen apart; it just doesn’t keep up tracks. It keeps up the ones that are suitable for tourists and wheelchair people and things like that, but it doesn’t do much about the back country. There used to be tracks reasonably well formed; you wouldn’t have the track as such, but you’d have marks on the trees – bits of venetian blind, old Agee … the mason jar bottle tops – those nailed to a tree; something like that, and you’d know. And you’d have a change of direction and you’d know that’s where it was. Mind you, after you’ve been out there a while you’d know the individual manuka where you turned off down a particular spur. I mean, “That manuka? Oh, is it that one?” “No, no, it’s that one.” [Laughter]

Joyce: Now I’ve got to say it’s worth having a look at these photos. Very kindly on Liz’s behalf and some old trampers, they are going to be donated for full digitisation at the Knowledge Bank, so I think they’ll be absolutely delighted, Liz, because there’s a lot of genuine photos there. Fantastic. Can we just have another round of applause for Liz please.

[Applause]

Liz: One thing I did forget to say was the club huts. The club actually built several huts … Waikamaka Hut, Kaweka Hut, Kiwi Hut, and now we’ve taken possession of Howletts Hut. Kaweka Hut [was] unfortunately burnt down some years ago by idiot hunters, but the other huts are there and they are free for use, you send a donation to the club. But we built those huts, and I’ll tell you, once you’ve walked up the top of Kiwi carrying five pounds of lead headed nails on your back you know all about the weight of them. [Chuckles]

Joyce: Well Carol Keys actually donated some of those photos on behalf of Ralph Keys, and I think there’s one she’s yet to find that is the gentlemen climbing the mountains with whole sheets of corrugated iron on their backs. Great dedication.

Well Liz, that was fantastic; thank you. You’ve inspired a lot of people and I know as a family we’ve tramped a lot, and you come across people who’ve said, “Oh, we were going to do that”, and you get to a certain age and I don’t think I have to tell any of you, you sort of think, you know, you can’t. Well, thank you everyone

[Applause]