When we moved to Taupo in 1961 I had not been tramping for about eight years.  I had spent the ten years before I got married going to work so I could go tramping at the weekends and during holiday times - South Island here we come.

So when Taupo’s Tramping Club started up I was keen to start again. The only drawback was that I had two children and a husband who worked seven days a week in the summer-time.  He did get a day off when it rained!  However the Tramping Club had a fairly relaxed attitude to children so we went on all the trips that were suitable for children and some that weren’t.  I can remember Bill Te Wano being very patient with a whiney girl-child on the way from Mangaturuturu Hut to Horopito – there was a lot of mud.  Bill Te Wano was a wonderful bushman and took us on some memorable trips.  Once we went to Pipiriki where we camped and Bill took us up-river for day tramps.   I can remember swimming across the Wanganui and then wondering how I was going to get back against the current.

Another time Bill took us to camp at the “Hole in the Wall” on the Taranaki coast.  Ben Stent brought his young family and Joyce Bennett taught us all how to catch fish.

In those days we car-pooled and it was always a worry; would you come back to find your vehicle had been broken into?  I cannot remember who had the bright idea that we buy a bus, but it was when Pauline Gapper was our live-wire president.  At that time (1985) Forest Products, my husband’s employer, remembered that they had bought a patch of forest on the Waipunga Hills along the Napier Road, so they told Maurice to attend to any silviculture it might need and he found that the bracken was choking the small pine trees that were trying to grow there.  As the block was so far out of the way and too small for Forest Products’ usual gangs to work, Maurice offered the contract to the Tramping Club.  Maurice worked out the price to be paid and to supervise the work.  So, for three weekends we camped out on the block with our slashers, parkas and boots. We toiled up and down those steep hills pushing through head-high bracken to find those 10 cm high pine trees.  Then we slashed away at the bracken till those little trees could see the sun.  Now when we drive up the Napier Road those trees are 30 feet high.

Because Maurice was working weekends the company gave him a meal allowance as well as his normal pay so, every Saturday evening, we would drive down to the Tarawera Pub and blow his meal allowance on beer and chips!  Then the club got one and half days’ work scrub-clearing at Lochinver and finally, Mel Scott who was a land survey ranger, gave us a contract to plant pine trees at Ngatamariki Reserve.  Once again Maurice was our supervisor – he said we would never get a job in the pine forest as planters as we were too slow!  But we got he job done and had enough money to buy our (first) blue Bedford van.

That was when we started the tradition of the South Island trips.  The first one was to the Heaphy Track in November 1986.  There were Pauline Gapper, Doreen Abraham, Jane Lewis, Viv Mack, Mollie Green, Ruth Worrall and myself.  We drove to Wellington – on to the ferry – then drove to Nelson taking turns with the driving.  We split into two groups.  The fast, fit lot were to do the Heaphy Track and come back over the Wangapeka – they were Pauline, Doreen, Jane, Viv and me.  It rained a lot on the Heaphy and the rocks were very hard when it wasn’t muddy.  We got to Kohaihai with a bad knee, a sore Achilles tendon and blisters – on the soles of my feet – bad enough to make me weep.  So we cancelled the Wangapeka and flew back to Karamea.  Then we dawdled along the Abel Tasman until we met Mollie and the van at Tin Line.

Another tradition which I helped to start was celebrating the Winter Solstice.  Why I thought that camping on Mount Tauhara in the middle of winter to celebrate the dawn with a champagne breakfast was a good idea, I cannot remember.  Maurice thought that I was mad and so must the rest of the Tramping Club except for Ann Deller, a teenager and a youth whose name I have forgotten.  There had been a heavy frost the night before and it was nearly snowing as Maurice dropped us at the foot of the mountain about 3pm.  We had our sleeping bags, my three-man tent and primus – and we were supposed to have brought a cooked meal to heat up.