This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
THE PELORUS RIVER The trip began excitingly enough with the Club’s first ever use of the fast ferry. A word of waming for those wanting to use the fast ferry; when the wind is up and the sea has a good swell on, people should have good sea legs or obtain a set out of a packet. Fortunately, all the punters on this trip made it to Picton without feeding the fish, although a few of them were looking a bit green and eyeing up a clear run to the back of the ferry. We reached the Hacket roadend (Nelson) at around . 11:30pm feeling rather contented after a delicious snack at MacDonalds, which by the way guys was open ie. Lyndsay and Jo, you'll have to learn to use those two round things stuck in the middle of your face! Camp was set under some trees right next to Hacket Creek. We were also informed by Lyndsay that the water was as warm as bath water and that everyone should come in for aswim. Most people used their common sense and hit the sack.
The next day I was awoken at about 5am to the chorus of barking dogs and some hunter shouting “get in the back, you mongrel’. It was shortly after this that (you guessed it) the squadrons of trampers favourite little flies arrived. Eventually the day dawned fine, and gradually began to heat up and up. You can take it from me that I, and alarge number of others, consumed vast quantities of fluids this day. It was a pleasant enough trip to Roebuck Hut, as pleasant as sidle tracks go. It was also on this day that we met a lot of German tourists, namely the yellow and black variety, in large numbers. Walking
at the back of such a large pack of people, you soon to learn to dance, namely the quick step, past most of the nests. However, this was not always totally successful, as a lot of the people on this trip soon found out.
I consider myself to be an open-minded person, willing to learn, and on this very same day and also on the very last leg of the trip, I learnt a new technique for going downhill from biscuit bo ... man. That is, taking off your tramping boots and putting on sneakers makes going downhill a lot easier, or so I’ve been told.
A swimming hole directly outside all the huts made this trip worthwhile. It was good to see most of the people on this trip taking advantage of the swimming at every opportunity, some of us more than others, ay Angie? To be quite honest, this trip really does belong to the tubers, if all Lyndsay’s yahooing was anything to go by. Other than the nice campsites, and the occasional glimpses of scenery from a swing bridge, the track in general was average and uninteresting, and coupled with the large number of wasps, I would rate this trip ona scale of 1to 10 at a maximum of a 5.
For all you punters who cannot afford to buy a biwvy bag, Angela Hawes has the perfect solution: lie on your snow foam with your groundsheet over the top of you. This seemed to work except when the wind got up.
See you in the hills, Woody “]' Ml MOT OME FOR GOSSIP BUT...”