Rob: 0:00

No, I don't have favorite huts. There's too much variety and too many good places out there for that. They're a wonderful equalizer and bringing together of people socially and culturally, they can do for a community what camping will never do.

Speaker: 0:23

Kiro and welcome to the Tramping Life, a podcast about hiking in outro New Zealand, or as we call it here, tramping. I'm jt, and in each episode I chat with people who share passion for exploring this incredible country. We'll hear about the tracks they love, the huts they return to, the lessons they've learned, and what keeps them heading back into the bush.

Jonty: 0:43

My guest today is Rob Brown, one of the most influential voices in New Zealand tramping. Rob is the manager of the Back Country Trust, the organization that supports volunteers to restore and maintain our huts and tracks. He's also well known as a photographer, writer, and a longtime advocate for the outdoors, and I'm delighted to welcome him to the podcast. Can you give us a bit of a flavor about where you grew up and what some of your earliest memories are being outdoors?

Rob: 1:08

Yeah, so I grew up on a farm in the Waikato. It was a little bit of a insular, upbringing in some ways, although I enjoyed growing up on a farm. It was really nice. And when I was 14, I went off to a thing called the Hor Venture School. which is down near the Waikato, which was part of a boarding school I was going to at the time. I won't say I necessarily got into the outdoors through that though. it was run a little bit like the army in those days we're talking early 1980s. And in many ways Possibly put me off for a while. But I did learn a lot about survival skills, street smart, it was run in a bit of a chaotic way and I learnt to have a bit of an eye for when silly things were happening, I suppose.

Jonty: 1:51

Where were the activities take place? Is there a national park near them or reserve

Rob: 1:54

We had RA Forest Park right on our back doorstep and Beautiful. There was various other activities like kayaking and sailing and all sorts of various things. We used to go down to Rero um, Nara and OU occasionally didn't get onto EU so much. Yeah. So that was all when I was 14 years old and we had six months there and that was kind of like school for six months. Then went back to my hometown. Uh, and it wasn't until I went to university at the Massey University in the late 1980s that I really got into tramping in the outdoors and, I got lucky then'cause I just happened to, arrive there when it was a particularly vibrant time for the Massey University Alpine Club. It was just one of those really, really good university outdoors clubs. We were students in those days who worked pretty hard during the week, but made sure we had our weekends free. And so every weekend the club had a hu up on the southern slope of tour and so we used to go up there most weekends. And through that we got into skiing and climbing quite a lot. And I guess it was there, I suddenly learned that tramping was actually supposed to be fun, which was quite a contrast what my experience had been when I was 14 years old. So by this stage I was early twenties, I was quite a late student going there.'Cause I worked in engineering straight outta school, and gone there to do a technology degree. Yes, I had three very hippie years, at Massey University Alpine Club, and uh, that's where I met Sean, a great adventure buddy. And, um, you know, someone who I got into photography with and, and writing with and that was a long and, happy partnership, that all started there. So we had, some other people that were really influential at that time, a really good mate, Tim Kerr, who was just a machine in the hills and, dragged me up a few climbs that I had no right to be on, you know, so people like that were there.

Jonty: 3:50

Do you remember any specific kinda moments or tramp you did whilst at University that really made you think, yeah, this is what I like doing?

Rob: 3:57

Tramping wise, I perhaps not so much. I, I wasn't doing the big longer tramps in those days. I was doing quite a lot of alpine climbing climbed cook in my last sort of summer at university. Various other climbs. We did a little bit of Nelson Lakes, but it was, a lot of it was, focused on walking in somewhere and going and climbing a mountain. it wasn't until I left university that I got into more multi-day tramping and trans aine tramping. And again, that was really. Sean was the sort of big instigator of that. In those days. I'd probably done more climbing. But Sean was based in the North Island, working for Doc. we came outta university in the mother of all budgets when there was like 10 or 11% unemployment in New Zealand. And the economy was a train wreck for several years. And not so different to how things heading now so it was a really hard time to come out of university. it was a lot of us who had a lot of skills we thought we had a lot to offer, but none of us were getting jobs. Sean started working, doing voluntary work for Doc. And I started working off in the repairs department at Macpac. But we couldn't actually get jobs in what we were trained to do. So, again, yeah, it was a prompter to get into doing some other things. And I think the photography and making a little bit of money on the side doing that sort of came out of a bit of that desperation in some ways. Sean was the instigator of these big long trips. So he would once he got a full-time job up in the north island with Doc, after he finished his voluntary stuff, he would send me down these plans and schemes and, he would've researched it all and I would go, yep, sounds good to me. Looks like a neat place to go. And we generally make those sort of a week or 10 days. they were into. Places like the Lansbury wildness area or, we did a really neat trip. I remember once, up over Whitcomb Pass and over the Lang Range into Ivory Lake, and then out far the Waha and those were the days when it was hardly anyone going into those places. No, it wasn't on the list of

Jonty: 6:01

the best huts in the world at that time. It was very much a bit of a secret. Lisa Anson was saying there was a boat that used to be on Ivory Lake you'd go out into, or was that there when you were I don't

Rob: 6:10

remember the boat, but I very much remember, walking into those huts and them being like still museum pieces, prices based in hu I remember we walked into that and it still had all the old cans of food from the deer colors and the on the shelves and the cupboard and uh, still the old kerosene cooker and all those sorts of things. And Ivory Lake. Yeah, it was very much like the Glaciologist had left yesterday. So yeah, it was a neat time. Ivory Lake, of course was still, the glacier was still flowing into that lake in those days and in 30 years time that, that glacier virtually doesn't exist anymore. And the and the

Jonty: 6:47

tracks, at that time, were they still, there was still the remnants from the Forest Service in terms of being well maintained or were things starting to, with the dock and the budget, were things starting to slip or, yeah, there were definitely

Rob: 6:58

slipping and going downhill. And I think, uh, it's a bit of a myth that they were handed over to dock in good condition from the Forest Service. They were on their way downhill even then on the West Coast. I mean, when I look back at it now, the huts were only. 30 years old at the time, so they hadn't had a lot of maintenance and they were rustic, but we didn't think that they were in decline or unsavable. But when I look at the Hut Network now, I think it's looking better than ever, so those buildings have proved to be very resilient through periods of non maintenance and they're not difficult buildings to fix up. The tracks, as I remember, were pretty rough. Yeah, it was definitely a bit of thrashing and root finding, trying to find markers in places, especially on the West coast.

Jonty: 7:42

Do you remember any specific tramps that really pushed you to your limit? You thought, this is about all I've got to give.

Rob: 7:48

I definitely remember Sean and I getting absolutely sandbagged going up the Otoko River into the, hook of Landsbury wilderness area. We knew our friend Tim Kerr had been there just the year before and, had gone up the otoko and he told us, that it was two relatively straightforward days to the head of the Otoko and we just had an epic in there. We struggled to find the deer trails that were easy to find on the side of that river. Found some of the going Pretty hard. It's all untracked. Big wild West coast river. Amazing the feeling of wildness in that place. I vividly remember seeing a, combined flock of Kia and Kaka, which I'd never seen before. You've never seen since. And you know, it's got all these big sort of steep walls on the northern side of Mount Hooker and very, very impressive place. But it took us three days of hard going to get to the head of the Otoko River. And by the time we got into Mark's flat, I remember we were both feeling pretty shellshocked. We didn't end up climbing Mount Hooker, unfortunately.'Cause Sean had to be out and we'd felt like we'd lost the day. and so we gave up a very nice days climbing to continue on the journey out. Then when we got out, we sort of rang up Tim and sort of said, duh. How did you make it up there in two days? And he said, oh, did I say two? I meant three. and with Tim's mischievous way, I think he knew that we'd probably had pretty similar experience to him. Yeah. But it was, all of those trips were highly memorable. We did, really nice trip through the dragon's teeth at one stage. I remember we went the wrong way to do the high route. We were trying to do the high route, but hadn't really thought that one through and tried to start off trying to go down the high route until quickly, realized that this wasn't the way you were supposed to go..

Jonty: 9:32

Is it as gnarly as the photos would suggest?

Rob: 9:35

clients? Uh, well, we probably didn't do enough of it to get a good. Handle on it. But yeah, you're definitely supposed to go the other way. You're not supposed to go down there. No, that's sort of asking for trouble. So are there any

Jonty: 9:45

times you got particularly close to disaster?

Rob: 9:48

No, I think, both of us had reasonably good survival instincts and not wanting to, put ourselves in any sort of risk. There was one I wrote up when we did that trip over into Ivory Lake. We went along the direct ridge, climbed up onto a ridge and then headed straight towards a ridge on going over the lang range. And I remember there was this huge big boulder sitting in kind of shay sort of dirt stuff that we had to get round. And I went around the side of this thing and, um. just as I was getting onto the top of it, it felt really. Horrible and unstable. And just as I was getting onto the top of it, the whole boulder just peeled off the ridge and went down. But as that happened, I'd sort of scam it up and then round onto the safe ground really quickly'cause out of, you know, a surge of adrenaline. And Sean couldn't see me. So he was sitting below waiting for his turn to go around this bloody great boulder. And all he thought was that I'd gone with her. And so it wasn't until he heard me yelling from the top of the thing, you can come up, but you know, go the other way because it'll be a bit safer. Um, yeah. So that was probably One near Miss. I remember on the trip we did into the Hooker Lansbury as well. We had a yeah, there was a couple of bits of that where one day going across McKellar Pass, I nearly took a horrible tumble. Uh, luckily I stopped after about tumbling down three or four somersaults. But, um, there was just, trying to cut across some steep ground when I was tired at the end of the day. And, just that usual situation where, making the wrong choice.'cause you've had a long, hard day. I remember the only time I saw Sean having a close run was we were coming down the waha and there was a notorious slip there just before we get to Kiwi Hut. There was a cable across it at one stage, and that cable had been washed out by more slip activity. And I remember Sean had just woken up that night and eaten something bad and he'd been throwing up and he'd felt pretty miserable the whole day, but he was stoically going on I think the slips about an hour and a bit from Kiwi flat hu. And uh, And sort of edged across it. I went across it first and then you had to do this scramble up onto the eroded bit where you could regain the track. And I did that first. And I was sitting there watching Sean come across, seeing he was quite exhausted. He got almost to the end of it and he took a tumble and went down. I thought he was gonna go all the way to the river, but he hauled himself up quite, quickly and, again, the surge of adrenaline, he sort of scrambled up and then got himself back up onto the track and he just sat down looking, I, I've never seen Sean looking like that tramping before. And he looked, just totally washed out. Anyway, he was sitting there and he had a hole in his long johns while we were trying to have something to eat. You know, just to recharge the batteries again, a wasp went into his long johns up into his thigh and stuck them about five times for he get it out. And he was just sitting there thinking, shit, what else has to happen today? Let's get to the next start. Yeah. Those sort of days they become memorable and they stick in your mind.

Jonty: 12:52

It's the hard days of the memorable at the, at the time, yeah, they were shocker, but afterwards you, they really stick in the memory. So were there most of those hikes you'd do just yourself and Sean or do you do much solo tramping or with bigger groups?

Rob: 13:04

That sort of time in the 1990s up till we published classic tramping. Yeah, that's when most of those trips were happening. And then Sean went overseas with his, um, wife Tanya, and he was overseas for about a year, traveling around. And, by that stage I'd finished at Macpac and I was working for Pop and in Burton Publishing, and Craig had already published the book on the Great Walks. And I had this idea that, we would do a companion volume. Called Classic Tramping. And so Sean was out of the country. I was off on a trip with Robbie Burton, who was the publisher, and Robbie just jumped at this idea and I said, yeah, and Sean and I should co-write it. And so anyway, I sort of committed Sean to this big project without really asking him, and then wrote him a sort of slightly apologetic letter saying, oh, by the way, when you get back, we've got this project to do. But luckily he was sort of thinking, you know, what was his next step? And he was, I think he was keen to finish up at Doc and go out on his own. Uh, well, he wasn't keen to go back to Doc. He was keen to go out and make a career out of writing and publishing. So. Yes, he sort of came back and suddenly it had all fallen into his lap, that he had a nice book project sitting in front of him. And we had a wonderful summer that summer of 98, and part of 1999, putting that book together. So we did a really intensive sort of year and a bit, doing all the tracks again, most of'em together, but sometimes with other friends just to try and get through all the work before we could. Get or meet all the publishers' deadlines., Those

Jonty: 14:42

relatively early days in terms of obviously this me guide been, it's been trumping books forever, but in terms of the more, uh, larger repeal, I guess the photography, maybe that's when that they kind of start taking off from there.

Rob: 14:55

Yeah, well certainly that book did a lot better than the publisher was expecting. And I think in those days we still saw tramping books. There'd been a few from people like Jeff Spearpoint and Mark Pickering, but they were still selling in relatively small numbers and still seen as relatively fringe. Mark had done pretty well out of his big overall tramping guides. But anything that was a bit more, coffee table, it had sort of been a bit harder to get across the line. But, you know, it sort of got the timing right. Then, and, um, you know, and, and of course for Sean, I mean, I went off on the photography sort of way and um, was wanting to start my own sort of publishing thing with greeting cards and that sort of thing. But Sean, uh, very much, uh, wanted to push his writing and, and basically becoming Mr. Tramping in, in New Zealand. He had exactly the right background for that. It start a lot earlier than me and could write really well about those sort of things. My writing tends to go, go and fits and starts and I get inspired by all sorts of different things. But he always had a very, very, very tight focus and was an incessant collector of all sorts of little, scraps of information where he could get it. He had huge archive of sort of stuff that had built up over the years.

Jonty: 16:14

Back in those days, you know, it was very early days on the internet. There's not so much around, like these days were kind of, there's almost too much information and you've got the Instagram and you've got a doc website and there's so many different sources for information and so I guess in those days you're having to. Develop it yourselves

Rob: 16:28

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was definitely a different world. And we're all shooting on film as well. I look at, what's being produced these days with people able to, you know, the level of creativity you can expand into with how much digital photography has opened up to, I mean, good and bad. I mean, some people definitely abuse that, but, you know, when it's done really well I can look back at the photography from those days and I'm pretty happy with it. But then I also look at it and think, ah, if I had all those tools, now, you know, that, that are around, could have done quite a lot more,

Jonty: 17:00

equipment, male functions, I'm just thinking about carrying, rolls of film and keeping them dry

Rob: 17:05

No, not really. No. We had all that stuff pretty well thought through. The nice thing is there was always a very friendly, competitiveness between us, on the photography front, it pushed us to do better. There would always be times we'd get back out and someone would've seen something that the other person didn't see and you're thinking, ah. Ger, where'd you see that?

Jonty: 17:26

In terms of equipment, I guess on the theme of cameras, have you got any favorite bits of gear

Rob: 17:30

uh, well in those days I was shooting large format film. So I had these horrendously heavy packs at times. And I would carry in 50 sheets of basically four by five film. So I would've two cameras with me. Sean would've one camera, and I would have, I usually have a smaller, lighter, 35 millimeter camera and a large format four by five. Camera and a tripod. So I'd only have 50 sheets, so I'd have to be pretty careful about what I was photographing. And so, yeah, my job was to try and get the really big forest interiors or the big scenic or whatever and shoot those sort of things. And it was, yeah, it was back breaking work.

Jonty: 18:11

for a seven to 10 day trip with all the food plus the Canberra gear, plus the terrain, that's, um, quite an adventure.

Rob: 18:17

Yeah. Be about, 35 kgs start off with for most trips. So it was quite a lot.

Jonty: 18:23

So on the food side of things, were you or you and Sean kind of foodies or you just needed the fuel to get you through?

Rob: 18:29

We couldn't afford to go and buy freeze dry, so we just used to cook pretty simple. Plenty of pasta and rice after we'd published classic tramping to celebrate. I'd been doing quite a few trips to Stewart Island'cause I was onto my next book project and, Sean, I don't think had done much on Stewart Island. So we flew down to DoBoy Bay, landed on the beach. I remember there was a little sort of biv that was pretty grotty in those days down at Day Bay. A little Forest Service biv and that sort of supplemented the accommodation in the cave. so we got landed there and we had food for 10 days and we're gonna walk up the Western beaches and then fly out of West Ruggedy. We're gonna spend a couple of nights at To Boy Bay, so we had our packs full, but also some shopping bags of food. And we went in and we just dumped these on the table in this makeshift shelter that was on the front of this biv, and then went off for a walk on the beach and go and take some photographs. And we were away for about an hour. Came back and I think two of the loaves of bread that we had there had been half eaten by rats straight into it. Oh, okay. It's gonna be a bit of a hungry trip then. so you're Russians by, uh, for the rest of the Yeah. So I'm very much hoping that that big zip program that's going down there is as killing as many rats and possums as it can right now.

Jonty: 19:48

How was the wildlife and ra from when you first went, I dunno when you last visited, but have you seen much of a difference over time?

Rob: 19:55

Stuart Island doesn't have stokes, but it's still got some major problems. And you probably see more bird life around the village now it's just that really, really strong community trapping program that's going there. You see more kaka there. And I think part of that's food supply, but a lot of it is, is that, the community's been pretty good about trapping but I think the cats are a major problem. The rats are a major problem., The bird life's okay, but it's not nearly as good as what it should be. I've spent some time. Over on Codfish Island and, that's what all of Stewart Island should look like. You go to Ver Island and you think, oh, this is fantastic. It's what all of Stewart Island should be like.

Jonty: 20:39

The tramping with Sean, how long did that continue for? Did you guys go separate ways a little bit? Life gets in the way or you kept tramping together?

Rob: 20:46

Both of us had families and then Sean was off pursuing a writing career and I was going in a more photography side of things. We did have a really, really neat trip that we did through the Southern Alps with Ailey's Bryant. that was just an amazing trip actually, over a month. Started at Mount Cook the day after Christmas in 2000. We'd had a heavy snowfall and so it almost felt like, not summer conditions, but late winter, early spring conditions. But we started off anyway and caught a water taxi up the new Lake Tasman at that stage and went into the merges. And so our idea was to and go up through to earth's pass through as much difficult country as we could So crisscrossing back and forth, the main divide.

Jonty: 21:33

I assume you had some friends who did resupply

Rob: 21:35

we had two major food dumps and we had one at, St. Waterford's Hut up to Havelock. I think we did 10 days to get to that point. And then went through over the gardens into the nui and we had three friends flying in, with the food drop. And we get in there and welcome to all this fresh buns and pache that had really been turned on. It was Sean's friend, Tony Gates who's no longer with us. And, Tony was a really, really good mate of Sean's and a little bit eccentric on some of that sort of stuff. And he said, oh, there's heaps of food. Help yourself. Well, we're off today to go up and explore this area. So they went off for the day and we start looking through the hut to try and find Sean's carefully prepared food drop. and there's bits and pieces and boxes and we are thinking, oh, the food must be out in a meat safe or somewhere. So we spent the morning looking around in the forest for some mythical meat safe with this food drop, nothing there. And eventually it dawns on us that the food in the hut is the food for the six of us for the next 10 days. And there's not a lot of it. And Tony arrives back and, proudly announces to Sean that he thought he'd pack far too much and, Had pruned a few things out and reorganized everything, and Sean was just seething. But Sean was just incredibly polite about it all. Redeeming thing was that Tony was also a hunter and had a rifle and, the following day went and banged over a tar for us. So we ended up having a lot of chewy tar curry for the next few days. So we all survived and it all worked out,

Jonty: 23:05

on the, um, question of huts, your specialist subject, do you have favorite huts or they're a bit like children? It's hard to pick between

Rob: 23:11

them. No, I don't have favorite huts. There's too much variety and too many good places out there for that. I think they just serve this wonderful sort of social cultural thing in New Zealand where well for me it's not only the basic sort of shelter of them and that whole feeling of arriving in a storm and, the protection they give you. it's also all the times you've met various people in places and they're a wonderful equalizer and bringing together of people and, every little one. Can feel like a little communal, Mariah, in some ways. I love that sort of aspect of them. Socially and culturally, they can do for a community what camping will never do. And I like the way that buildings can do that, especially very simple ones like that. It doesn't matter what your background is, and wherever you come from, you're in this one place for the night. There's a fire on. People having to socialize and talk and especially in the digital age, with so much being done online, and, there's so many sort of ways of separating people with those real kind of interactions. I think they've become more important than ever for me anyway.

Jonty: 24:23

You turned it into your job, your current career now with the backcountry trust mean, how did that come about?

Rob: 24:29

I think some people have been quite negative at times, that we were simply taking over a job that Doc should have been doing, the government should have been doing, I am not sure for the last 40 years that we've ever been paying the sort of taxes or been a wealthy enough country for the government to have been able to do all those things. That's just a simple reality and I think we've had to get past that sense of entitlement that everyone's expected these things. And we do have a wonderful hut network there, but I think it was not really realistic to think that the government was just gonna keep funding that forever in a day. And we've got far more pressing needs. Health, education, biodiversity issues all of them cost a lot of money. And then when I look at the models that happen overseas, Iceland's a place that I've done quite a lot of time in the last 10 years. And they've got more huts per head of population than we have in New Zealand. They've got slightly lower servicing costs'cause most of'em are accessible by four wheel drive, but most of them, in fact, probably 95% of them are run by local community groups and somehow they make it work. They do charge European type prices to go there, but they're beautifully maintained,

Jonty: 25:47

Iceland's got a far higher number of tourists per capita than we do. We have a lot of tourists, but Iceland is overwhelmed and it's a very short season in the summer, so there's a lot of people in the short period of time

Rob: 25:58

Yeah, absolutely right. And I think the first time I went there, we didn't have to book huts and we'd just go into the high country and turn up at huts and there'd be a warden and you'd pay your money and that was it. The last time I did a trip there, it was 2023 and most of it I had to book nearly a year in advance. And the same way you do European type huts. And I agree. I think, iceland's an interesting case study of unrestrained tourism and I think, there's definitely lessons on it for us there for sure. Where's it going in New Zealand? I'm very keen to see us still have an integrated, publicly owned, hut network that's, still sits under the doc label. I don't wanna see it fragmented into a whole lot of, mini groups here and there. I don't think that's helpful for us as a country. A lot of our success is also built from having really good, strong relationships with regional doc staff. To keep attracting quality people. there needs to be engaging, interesting work that they're committed to. And so if you start trying to lop off parts of that and just put it out to another organization, that's not gonna be helpful long term. So the secret of our success has been a partnership model, not a sort of, come in, and take over and, I just don't see a long-term benefit in that. And when I look at all the work that, we've done over the years, the stuff I'm the most proud of is where it's got doc, the community ourselves is almost like a facilitator, and a mover and shaker to make that happen. Bringing all those components together. And, and everyone comes away. Feeling really good about it and feeling really satisfied. They've put something back into a place they love.'Cause most of the dock staff I deal with in the regions, they all love these places too. They live in the community, they go and recreate there, they go hunting or take their kids tramping there and it's really important. They've got that sense of ownership there too.

Jonty: 27:55

Do you think the current model of the backcountry trust and perhaps the level of funding it receives is sustainable going forward?

Rob: 28:02

Well I think, definitely funding. Sustainability is a hot topic at the moment. We've got a short breathing space with the current incoming visitor levy funding. And I think it's appropriate that, the incoming visitor levy contributes a little bit to what we are doing, as well as obviously a lot to some of doc's core work. I mean the tourists have discovered our remote HU network, there's no doubt about that. And that'll continue to happen and they'll continue to be growing use there, but the other thing is the user contribution side of things. I mean, sadly it's been tagged as a user pays thing. Well, it's not really, all we're actually asking for is a contribution and if we think that's kept pretty modestly and we can get people to a place where they're comfortable doing self compliance rather than, us having wardens and various people running around the hills trying to make sure people have paid hut fees. But actually people are paying it'cause they can see what they're getting for their money basically. And there's an increasing

Jonty: 29:01

number of huts that are going onto the HU booking system, which there's pros and cons, but one of the pros is they've paid you have to pay to book the hut.

Rob: 29:10

I think, booking systems, you still gotta be careful with it, but I think there's definitely a place for them and I just think you've got to use it wisely. One of the things that we've just built a new hut, up at Brass Monkey and we only put four of the six bunks on the booking. system there. And I think that's just to provide for an opportunity. You might get people walking in who don't feel like they're up to carrying a tent in a heavy load or anything, and they want the security to book and they're happy to do it in advance. And then other people that just wanna the freedom of the hills type thing and to turn up and they're happy to carry a tent. If they turn up in the huts full, they're camping, but if there's a bunk spare, they'll grab it. And that's all good too. So I just think we've gotta look at what's appropriate for the place and be careful about how we do that. I certainly think the idea of Free Huts is coming to an end. We've had 300 of the huts sitting there on that basic free category, and our view of maintaining them is to do the work really well. And we've been holding them all at a level As a preserve and perpetuity type approach. And New Zealanders seem to want that'cause we get a lot of support for it. But there will come a point where there needs to be a user contribution to that. And how do we do that? I don't think it's possibly best for a government department to be asking for that money if they're not doing the work on those huts. So I think, we got some discussions that happen there about, what a formula might look at. The important thing everyone needs to focus on is what outcome do we want? And I think I see quite a lot of general agreement that everyone wants these little places retained and looked after a part of. New Zealand's identity. People get a lot of enjoyment out of them. They're a huge contributor to people living healthy, happy lifestyles in New Zealand. When I look at how New Zealand, so society's changed, when I was growing up, most young guys were out playing rugby on the weekends and rugby isn't even in the top 40 participation sports anymore. and you look at where a lot of those young guys in their early twenties, early thirties are, and they're out hunting and fishing on the weekend and, they're not necessarily doing the team sports anymore. so we've had quite a societal change and that's definitely contributed to the big boom in the outdoors. You just have to look at how big the hunting and fishing shops are in most of the cities around New Zealand to know that it's a huge part of, How people are recreating. Tramping is static on a club membership but there's a lot of people that are getting into tramping in different ways. So many more people taking the young kids tramping, which I think's wonderful and, used to see the odd sort of hardy person doing it 15, 20 years ago. There's been some really good provision for creating opportunities that it's easy to take your kids and that's where things like the booking system work really well. I think'cause having done it with all three of my kids, I can tell you're turning up at a hut, not finding any bunks when you've been the slowest people to the hut.'cause you've got, two young kids there's not much fun. You definitely wanna know that there's a bunk for you there.

Jonty: 32:18

do you have any thoughts on, Tierra and the sustainability and how that's managed and how much load that's putting on the Hut network, the route was taking some hearts, which didn't used to get a lot of visitation and now they're overwhelmed.

Rob: 32:31

Overall I think TRO is a good thing and we certainly have a close working relationship with TRO Trust and will continue to do so. I myself know, quite a few New Zealanders that have walked ra, and it's been a life changing thing for them. I know fathers and daughters that have walked them, or, I've got a good friend who's. Daughter walked, a couple of summers ago and, it was, big life changing thing so anything like that in the outdoors, I tend to view as a really positive, good thing. I think, the TR Royal Trust are only just catching up now, but there was, perhaps quite an influx of people who came in from overseas who just saw as a cheap, easy, long trail to do. I think they've recognized that and they've turned it round. It's taken a while to get the trail pass up and running. It benefits a lot of. Communities that the trail goes through. There's a couple of hotspots where I think there's some issues to sort out. Obviously Blue Lake is one of them going through Nelson Lakes. I think that's probably going to be, a costly problem to, get on top of, in terms of thinking about what alternative accommodation might look like there. I wouldn't like to see. The Old Hut going near the lake. My favorite option there is to still have a range of presents that's mainly based at that hut and that you might have eight bunks that can be booked for people going over Moss Pass. Just for people that can do other trips. And then there's, another site where you could put a bigger hut away from the lake. I think you definitely gotta get camping and people milling about that lake away from it. I don't think you're gonna change the desire to go through that part of the country on the trail. I've looked at some other route there, but I think, such a beautiful area that people are gonna want to go there. It's just how you manage that. I think most of the other ones, I think t rara pretty onto it. And I think where the difficulty's gonna come is that I think the numbers are sort of maxing out now. the ability to grow numbers on the trail I think is, gonna be difficult. I think one of the other changes, we'll see, I can see more huts on the main trail going on the booking system for the simple reason is that. Walkers tend to book that sort of thing a week in advance. So if you're a local club who wants to go and do a walk in, say, Richmond Forest Park and you are planning that out your club schedule, you'll be able to just go and book that three or four months in advance. So I see the booking system as a way that can stop New Zealanders being shut out of those places

Jonty: 35:04

From a publishing perspective, it seems to be a bit of a bright spot I think I've read myself four or five books on the ta. It feels like almost everybody who's done the TA's written a book about it. It's quite a popular Subject for authors. I mean, it tells a good story. And it is interesting the different ways different people have approached telling that story.

Rob: 35:21

yeah. And I must go and read a few more of them. I do have some friends that have read some of the recent ones that have come out and said they're very good, but, everyone's got a similar story. They've had something that's been a very powerful thing in their life and, I think the interesting thing about the outdoors community people who, want everyone to embrace nature is that we all want people to go and enjoy these places and have more nature in their lives. If that's the case, you can't complain when you see a lot of people out there doing it. you've just gotta think, how do we do this? New Zealand's got a lot of wild places. I'm still a big advocate for trying to spread people out a little bit more. I think if I've got one criticism of how we've conducted some of our policy, we tend to measure bed nights and then keep pouring money into. Certain places based on bed nights. And sadly, I think the best way to keep connecting people with nature and catering for the obvious demand, which is significant, is to have a bit more of a balanced investment policy where you're trying to spread the load out and look for some other opportunities. We are certainly trying to do that BCT, when we look at putting anti crow onto the booking system recently, the number of fantastic comments we got coming through from, in particular people with young families who are looking for that sort of experience close to Christchurch and then thinking, yes, we've got things like Woolshed Creek, but that often gets booked out. And then there's this other hut and that often gets booked out. So we're now starting to think we do need to be looking at, Not retrenching the number of opportunities, but actually looking where some of the new opportunities should be.

Jonty: 37:03

The population's growing. The demand will keep increasing for the back country and for the other trends you've talked about. We've either gotta try and keep up with it or you end up in these challenging situations that the TA had or Iceland have where demand exceeds supply and then that's not very good situation for anybody really.

Rob: 37:18

That's right. And I think we can do it and retain what's really special about, the really remote, wild sort of places. I can think of a few places in Fiordland where you could open up some really good overnight tramping opportunities and, it wouldn't change anything at all about flan. There's a lot of wild country out in there.

Jonty: 37:36

Do you have any left on your bucket list or you've seen a fair bit of the country now?

Rob: 37:39

Oh no. Plenty of places I want to go. I was just talking to a friend the other day. I still haven't really done a good long tramp in Richmond Forest Park. I just went to the car workers for the first time the other day and Sean had been trying to get me there for years. And I, I feel really bad. I got there to do a trip with him before he passed away. I totally opened my eyes to seeing why he got into tramping so early and why he was so passionate about it. I loved the car because I really wanna go back and do another couple of trips there. It's a whole lifetime of tramping still to go for sure. Plus places I want to go and visit again. I mean, I've gone and walked the Milford track four times now, and I, last time was with my family, but I'd go and do it again tomorrow if I got the opportunity. I got. mainly known from the harder trips I did when I was doing a lot of tramping. but the reality is for most people is we go through a life cycle of tramping and that the reason we have a range of opportunities is partly to cater for a range of people, but also it partly caters for people during their lifecycle as well. You need your family trips for when you've got a family. You need your easy tramps when you're beginning and getting towards the end of your tramping days.

Jonty: 38:47

That's a really good point to, end our conversation on. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Rob: 38:53

Thanks, John d it's been nice to do a little trip down memory lane I don't often get to do that. I tend to live thinking about what's gonna happen next, so I don't actually think about, what's been in the past too much. So it's a really neat opportunity to have.

Speaker: 39:10

Thank you so much for listening to the Tramping life. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please follow the podcast in whatever app you use. Tell a friend about it and consider leaving a rating or a review. It really helps more people discover the show. you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me an email at the tramping life, one word@gmail.com.