This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Friday night Saw the trip drop dcwn over the new track to Smith Creek looking for a suitable. camp site, Due to the lack of suitable sites we decided to push on to Smith Creek Shelter and spend the night with rats and four lads with shooters also keeping out of the drizzle. Saturday ‘started cool, but warmec to a magnificent day. After breakfast and very strong tea we moved up the Tauherenikau River to the "Cricket Pitch" which has shrunk so I'm told. There we dropped packs for an upstream jaunt. This involved tremping upstream some distance, then swimming in all suitable swimming holes on the way back down past the Smith Creek Shelter. The afternoon consisted of sunburning and setting up ‘camp. Ra’wyn supervised the chicken dish which went down well, although we couldn't get all the apricots off the billy bottom for a brew so we haa apricot flavoured tea: Sunday. was Overcast and showery with breezes up by Dobsons Hut where we had lunch with some HVTCs who were trying to kill a rat which nearly went’ up one bloke's kilt. As if tramping up to Dobson's with sunburnt shoulders wasn't enough, wé also got our sunburnt legs tenderised by the gorse on thé trip back down the Puffer. However Robert Fox, Kerrin Allison, Andrew Trembath, Reewyn Eager, Allison C'connell, Jamie Clelland and Trip Leader Brad the Lad all enjoyed it.