Tramping club celebrates its half century

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 1, Issue 39, 20 March 1984, Page 7

Tramping club celebrates its half century

Ohakune 's Ski Life Lodge was the venue for a weekend of happy reminiscences and stirring tales of early ^tramping experiences when about 60 members and former members of the Tongariro Tramping club, together with their families, celebrated the club's 50th anniversary. Many of those who attended the weekend celebrations were pre-war members and several were the original members who formed the club in the early thirties. Among these were Eric Fetzer, Gordon Hunt, Bruce Davis, Olive and Ngaire Shoiit, Neil and Daphne Hunt, Neville Mosen, Con Murphy, Les Rowles, Jessie Seaman, Ross Journeaux, George Chan and Eileen McCarthy ... many of these were in fact pre-club members and it was as a result of their shared interests in tramping that • e Tongariro Tramping lub came about. Olive and Ngaire Shout for instance remembered that, as young children still at school, they accompanied their father Tom — a great outdoors man and park ranger — on his tramping expeditions and Eileen McCarthy of Raetihi also remembers, as a young girl, being with Joey Blyth — a great mountaineer and golfer — hitting a golf ball into the Crater Lake on his 1 00th climb to the summit of Mt Ruapehu. Con Murphy at 85, was the oldest ex-member present while Eric Fetzer at &3, was one of the original club committee when it was •-med in 1935. Present also was Neville Mosen, formerly of Raetihi, who was one of the early members who helped build the original Mangaiti Hut. Guest of honour ("though I didn't know it until I got here!") at the 50th anniver-

sary celebrations was the Club's first leader and secretary, Gordon Hunt, who for the past 40 years has lived in Perth, Western Australia. His were the first reports in the club's logbook and many ef the early photographs which other members had brought to the reunion weekend to stimulate memories featured his youthful figure in the tramping clothes of the period ... he is now 71. But he can't have changed much. Other members who haven't seen him for 40-50 years — he was born in Raetihi in 1913, went to school there, worked for and then owned Stanley's Grocery in Seddon Street before joining the NZ Army at the outbreak of war serving in the Pacific and, after transferring to the RAAF i-n 1944, stayed in Australia — had no difficulty recognising him ... despite the moustache! Gordon Hunt recalled that at one time membership of the Tongariro Tramping Club stood at 99 but he never did find out if it ever reached 100. On this return visit he made a sentimental journey round to Whakapapa and admitted that he was "somewhat amazed to find 49 centrally heated huts with electric mattresses at the top of what was then the Bruce track. In those days we used

to sleep between two straw mattresses to keep warm!" Another speaker at the reunion 'Shorty' Pritchard, a former baker in Raetihi who joined the club in 1947 claimed that on a recent tramp he had discovered the mountain had got a lot steeper and higher than it was 37 years ago. The next speaker, Ray Johnson of Marton, who was largely responsible for the renewal of interest in the club and its rejuvenation, said that as former members moved away from the area after the war interest declined and it wasn't until 1969 that it began to build up again among those exmembers and their families then living outside the Waimarino. The fourth and final speaker, Ross Bidmead, joined the Tongariro Tramping Club in 1971 but, in proposing a toast to the founder members, said that he had no apologies to offer for being a 'new chum' because today's trampers

are having to climb, as an earlier speaker claimed, steeper and higher mountains!" During the weekend reunion several tramping activities were planned. One of these — to the Mangaiti Hut — was for a group of eleven former members, known affectionately as 'the oldies', whose combined ages totalled 760 years! The weekend reunion and 50th anniversary celebrations were very ably organised by club secretary, Brian Mosen, formerly of Raetihi but now living in Pukerua Bay, and presided over by club president Brian McKeon.