This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Thirteen of us departed from Wellington Station at 7.30. It wasn’t long before everyone was sound asleep except the driver and us Poms at the back. This being our first trip it was a bit disconcerting to see all the Club members sleeping under sheets of the Dominion like a bunch of tramps. Was this a sign of things to come? In due course we arrived at the roadend. The nocturnal kiwis (alias FEs) toddled off, while the sensibie ones of us went to bed. After a somewhat cold night I! was hoping to be woken up by the smell of cooking bacon. It was not to be. A steaming cup of tea was offered as a consolation.
it wasn’t exactly sunbathing weather. However, despite the vast snowy patches which we had to traverse on Herepai Ridge the kiwis insisted on wearing their shorts. I being more sensible wore my trousers. Personally I thought that they were nuts and they probably thought the same about me so it was fairly mutual. So we set out - the kiwis in their shorts and the poms in their trousers.
We hacked up through woodland onto the Herepai Ridge. The E's wandered up to the hut while us M’s followed the old saying that everything which goes up must come down, and wandered down to Roaring Stag Lodge for lunch. From here our route took us up a river back to the Herepai Ridge. Evidently the word ‘up’ has a slightly different meaning in kiwi or someone decided that it was time to get the Pom’s trousers wet. Up the river we went literally. Gordon who was following me certainly had an easier task since I carried off haif the river in my trousers reducing the water level significantly.
It was all worth it as from the river we had unobstructed views of the beautiful surrounding scenery. We ended our walk with a steep hack through the bush to Herepai. According to Murray this last stage followed a track - the track was as visible as TVNZ’s coverage of the World Cup! Finally we arrived at Herepai where the Easy walkers were resting their weary legs and solving world shattering problems like - 'A carrot and two pieces of coal are found ina field. Why?’ A good evening was had by all.
The following morning we were on our way down by 9.00am. Our no. 1 socialite, Tony, who was no doubt overwhelmed by his female following, managed to lose one on the way down. Fortunately the rearguard performed a timely bush rescue and we all succeeded in arriving at the rendezvous in due course.
So the weary mob piled into the truck to depart. We did not get very far. One of our honourable leaders had left the lights on over the weekend. I won’t mention his name other than to say that it rhymes with Crockford. Faced with the choice of pushing the truck up the hill or through a gate and down to the river, we unanimously opted for the latter. So in what appeared to be a wanton act of hooliganism the truck was pushed down the hill towards the river. Fortunately our honourable leader pulled off a fine bump start before the truck reached the river and thus redeemed himself.
Our trip back to Wellington was broken by a minor detour made to the logically named Mt Bruce so that the poms could see a genuine kiwi, or more to the point, so that the nonfeathered kiwis could have a sleep. The trip was rounded off by a fine ice-cream obtained from a dairy situated somewhere in the back of beyond. All in all a jolly decent weekend. Hopefully my trousers will have dried off in time for the next trip.
Poms: Mark and Tanya Loveard.