tramping new zealand

The first time I went to Rakiura, I was 20.

I’d earned money picking apples during the autumn, and had saved a bit. I’d also broken up with my first partner, who had found more of interest with someone else. We’d exhausted our relationship, as I guess you can have less patience in youth.

I’d meandered south for a couple of months, walking the Rees-Dart and Routeburn tracks.

I’m not sure what initially drew me, but there was a certain romance involved in walking to the end of the Earth to find myself.

No catamaran back then, the chunky Wairoa was a mini version of the Aramoana Cook Strait ferry. My main memory was the continual vibration of the vessel, combined with a rockin’, rolling ride. It took the same time as the standard Cook Strait ferry, ie, 3 ½ hours from memory.

It was agony when feeling queasy.

I believe I set out on the North West Circuit immediately upon docking, with limited ambition and limited food. Maybe enough for three days.

The North West Circuit track was well-maintained by the Forest Service and didn’t have the massive influx of trampers that now flock there, stirring up the mud.

My first night was the Port William Hut, which I had to myself.

The second was the Christmas Village Hut, where six members of the kākāpō search team were stationed, and having their bark well scratched up, were preparing to head back to civilisation. No sign of birds was found, which tends to support the idea that they had been introduced by Europeans 100 years prior in the south of Rakiura.

I’ve told the story before, but they spoke of a food cache at Long Harry Hut that I was welcome to. Useful, as I was already on rations.

The next day I went around to Yankee River Hut, where a lone sailor had been dropped off while his fishing boat crew went back to Bluff for repairs. He had been there for a week already, but he had a rowboat that he used to catch blue cod a short way offshore. No shortage of fish. He took me out and we caught a few, so I stayed a second night, and then a third.

However, a pure protein diet didn’t agree with me much, and a feed of paua had me throwing up. Our attempt to pull up someone else’s well-weighted craypot in the 2 m swell of Foveaux Strait was unsuccessful.

Next stop, Long Harry Hut, the six-bunk SF 70 hut at the old site, 2 km to the west of the current location. This is the hut that was later moved with the assistance of the Air Force helicopter and a barge to Doughboy Bay.

The food cache consisted of a kilo of potatoes and nothing else. I boiled them up and took them around towards East Ruggedy. It was getting on dark when I staggered into a temporary hut that had been moved into the sand dunes to accommodate the builders of East Ruggedy Hut, which had not yet been started. From memory, it was an old manual telephone exchange from a mining camp that hadn’t yet been extended.

I had no camping gear, so I’m not sure where I would’ve stayed if I hadn’t stumbled into it. I certainly had no knowledge of it and obviously should have stopped at Long Harry.

I called it The Tardis. It had two narrow sleeping spots on dusty old hessian potato sacks, supported on manuka poles that took up the complete interior. I put my foot through a window getting into one. No heating, so it took a while to warm up.

More potatoes for dinner and breakfast, and then I was out of food.

At least I had been forewarned that Benson Peak Hut, the next hut on the route, had burned down earlier in the year, but that was way too close.

I started out at first light on the Freshwater Track, which was quite flat. It required crossing the inky black Freshwater River a couple of times, on a narrow bunch of greasy manuka saplings, bound together with Number 8 wire just above the river level. I had sweaty palms in both instances, but nothing to hold on to. That river seemed of infinite depth.

The track was decommissioned shortly after DOC took over from the Forest Service in 1987, but back then was well-marked, and I made speedy progress, sometimes breaking into a canter as I had little in my pack. I arrived at Freshwater Hut before 2 pm. That gave enough time to get to the old North Arm Hut in the light.

I zipped over the well-cut track and made it to North Arm just as it was getting fully dark.

That was already a huge day, 10 hours of hustling along, but for some reason, perhaps due to the lack of food since breakfast, civilisation beckoned.

Without any lighting, I set off for Oban. Even back then, the track was pretty good into town.

I remember arriving at the South Sea Hotel totally exhausted before 9 pm, cramping up with cold and dehydration. The bar was still open, and I got a room. $24 from memory.

Thought I would just lie down for a moment on top of the bed, still in my stinking tramping clothes, although I probably had taken off my lace-up rubber gum boots. Well, it was a 14-hour day at pace, covering around 50 km, some with slopes both up and down involved.

I woke up 12 hours later, feeling mighty hungry, as I had been unable to get dinner due to the late hour when I arrived. Fortunately, they were still doing their huge breakfast downstairs.

I must’ve had a second night before I caught that vibrating ferry back to Bluff.

That was my first multi-day solo tramp, a massive adventure, and I pushed my youthful body to its limits. I learned a lot, which proved useful in later years, such as taking adequate food.

I was hooked.