This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
By Sue Walsh “Sue, do you know what that tree is?” Saturday would have been the perfect time to start “mm, no!” This was becoming'a too common reaction on my part. ! could recognise a few species, but basically; I had no idea what I was tramping on, around, over, through, or under. So I decided it was time to rectify the situation. An upcoming trip to Field Hut seemed the perfect opportunity, so armed with my little book on native NZ trees, ! headed into the bush with Pat F, Pat, and her son: Chris (7 years old).
botanising, but the Southern Crossing race was being held as well. I felt the first priority was to get to the hut before the track became inundated with runners. could just see the headlines, “NZ RECORD FOR SOUTHERN CRoss- ING Race Lost Due To FATAL Coutsion WitH TRrAMpRRs”, What a way to get famous!
Our timing was quite good; we only met about five bods on the track just below Field Hut. By the time the rest of the runners started coming through, we were happily munching on our lunch watching them through the window. A few of the runners popped in (we should have had tea and scones waiting for them) to shed layers and have a breather, and they regaled us with tales of 60 knot winds between Alpha and Hector. Pat F and Pat } were suitable astonished, amazed, and astounded by what these people were putting themselves through, while Chris told them all about his exploits on the way up to Field Hut.
Asthe runners started to dwindle, we decided it was time to start dinner. Pat} attacked the cheesecake and put it all together using the box it came out of. We were just about to serve up when some familiar faces appeared outside. Dinner was left bubbling as we caught up with Eric, Joe, and Matt who had helped as marshals for the race. They soon departed to a well-deserved beer and we went back to our dinner and supreme cheesecake. As usual we had too much pasta so the leftovers went to another group who had arrived after dodging runners on the track. .
After.dinner we retired to our pits while the other group entertained Chris with a new card game until it was time tocrash. The night was relatively peaceful until Chris had a bad dream and yelled us awake. We found him right off his bedroll, squashed up in the corner against my feet - no wonder he had a bad dream!
The weather had deteriorated in the early hours of the morning and we awoke to strong wind gusts and rain. Everyone opted to stay at the hut rather than venture up to Table Top, so it tumed into a pitbash. We finally roused ourselves for an early lunch then strolled off. On the way down, the NZ native tree book finally made an appearance and we managed to identify a few trees, in between rain drops. The Mediums had arrived and we were speculating on whether or not the Fits (Chris and Gerard) would make it out on time when they appeared on the scene. They told us how they had belted out to get to the carpark on time. That was impressive, it was just ashame the transport never turned up. A phone call, and another hour later the Shuttle finally arrived and we headed back to Wellington and dinner.