This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
November 5-1 1004
To misquote Rachel Hunter “it didn't happen overnight but it did happen’.
I volunteered to lead a trip in November. I accept no responsibility whatsoever for my decision. I blame the fact that I have been on far too many excellent trips led by enthusiastic people who read maps (topographical and weather) in their sleep and relish solving problems when stuff goes wrong. They make leadership look effortless.
“No worries”, I thought, “November is months away...”.
November rolls around. The character of my trip has changed. Someone with a well developed sense of irony has decided that as well as leading ! am supposed to teach people about navigation. Panic seems appropriate. The alternative is to go on the fit trip to the Orongorongos the weekend before my trip. lf anyone knows how to lead a trip Grant Newton does. His trips are like Bledisloe Cup tests — sold out months in advance regardless of the date, current AB form, and the quality of the opposition. Grant may be the new Shackleton. He could advertise an intention to lead an expedition to a toxic waste dump in a carpark in Broadmeadows, combining it with a 40 hour famine and compulsory self flagellation and that psychopaths are welcome and his trip sheet would still be full within minutes of it going up on the club notice board. [I have since learned that there has been one exception to this massive popularity. He once failed to secure any punters for an SK. Undeterred he successfully led himself on the trip completing it within the requisite 48 hours and relatively unscathed. I rest my case!]. What's the attraction? It has to be his superior leadership qualities. So the plan is to weasel my way onto his trip and get The Insiders Guide to Leadership.
Friday night. We negotiate the Wharepapa river by torch light in search of an old DoC hut. Eventually the hut is located with a little help from Andy C’s GPS with the loss of only one torch and one bladder valve. The hut is occupied. We have a brief discussion. A decision is made to evict the occupant on the grounds they have no annual hut pass, no hut tickets, and no visible means of support. I had always suspected that Geoff Keey had a thing for brunettes. This is confirmed when he moves the giant female weta from the top bunk and deposits her outside after offering her fresh strawberries. The rest of us settle in for the night.
Saturday dawns fine and sunny. Almost immediately another brunette captures Geoff's attention. We photograph the water spider and head uphill where we encounter Orongorongo. How a person relates to Orongorongo can give you an insight into their psyche, possibly. Leading the way, Andy C is a no nonsense type of guy, firm yet fair. Any Orongorongo that strays into his line of sight gets decapitated right and left with a vicious swing of his walking stick. John Marney endeavors to shake hands with the nettle. He discovers fresh emphasis for well used short verbs and that NZ nettle lacks manners. Geoff has tales of lingering deaths or mere drawn out misery caused by poisoning from stinging nettle.
We arrive at Paua hut in time for afternoon tea. Did I mention this is a fit trip?
Saturday evening is spent in the role of enthusiastic voyeur. Eric Blumhart gives full vent to his hitherto thinly disguised pyromaniac tendencies. While our firework display undoubtedly lacked some of the pageantry and expense (not to mention infrastructure - a few less barges) of the big publicly funded display in Wellington Harbour we more than make up for this in other ways. The acrid smell of explosives up close, (think “Apocalypse Now’), singed trees, melted polypropylene, impressive echoes and the fact that it takes ages to get through not very many fireworks when you are setting them off one by one. [If anyone from Forest and Bird is reading this Geoff did put in an impassioned plea on behalf of the trees and he shut his eyes whenever a fresh round of explosives was set off so as not to derive an unseemly amount of pleasure from the spectacle.]
Sunday we headed out to the Catchpool car park via Mt McKerrow. Again Grant had arranged brilliant sunny weather.
So what did I learn about leadership in the Orongorongos?
I don’t want to give too much away as it would spoil the mystique, besides the club is running a leadership course in March which will likely be nearly as much fun as brunettes, stinging nettle and fireworks. I imagine the course will be slightly more informative than this article.
Generosity and commitment come into it. Grant led the trip at a very busy time for him personally. He had a wedding to help organize, the club journal to edit and write articles for. He could have pulled out but he didn't. He brought along enough mini donuts to feed at least 12 Americans and enough fireworks to blow up all the Houses of Parliament in the Commonwealth and a few that have gone down the Republican path. His pack was so full of donuts he had to strap the fireworks on the outside. This proved jolly handy on Friday night as the fireworks tended to glow in the dark making locating Grant easy. Everyone else ignored the request to bring fireworks except Jamie. Jamie had just arrived from Scotland. This was her first ever NZ tramp. She probably thought that carrying round explosives in the bush was a unique kiwi adventure sport, a kind of militaristic offshoot of bungee jumping.
Enthusiasm doesn't go amiss. This quality is strangely infectious. Grant was full of ideas for future trips and tales of past trips in the area. One got a sense of endless possibilities. The fireworks were a superb metaphor for this, especially when Eric converted them into sound, light and smoke.
The right mix of an unassuming manner coupled with flexibility is also useful. Grant might be tall and blond but he tramps around with two enormous walking sticks. He was quick to call in the GPS and take responsibility for navigational error when we didn't immediately locate the hut in the dark on Friday night and he was happy to forego sunbathing in favour of a sprint out over Mt McKerrow on Sunday.
So there you go. Three cheers for Grant Newton and the rest of the team. They were Andy C and his GPS, Geoff Keey, John Marney, Eva Lottermoser, and Jamie Monaghan. Special thanks to our bus drivers and to Eric Blumhart and his party plus Harry who shared Paua Hut (or the surrounding bush) with us on Saturday night.