Chris Maclean 0:00

you can undertake quite a challenging experience, which is to put on a wetsuit and, swim for two days on end with a pack on your back, say from Y to YY down to Acky forks

Speaker 0:18

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.

Speaker 5 0:38

My guest today is Chris McClain, historian, writer, photographer, and passionate tramp. His books include Te, the Story of Mountain Range and co-writing Tramping, and using History with Shaun Barnett. I'm delighted to welcome him to the podcast.

Jonty 0:53

I'd like to start with what are your earliest memories of the outdoors?

Chris Maclean 0:57

My first tramping experience was at the age of 12, back in 1964 when I walked the Milford Track with my family, which was pretty cruisy 'cause we were staying in service huts and you didn't have to carry much on your back. And being 12, I was very energetic and keen to be out in front. the only problem was that the. Two fittest people in the party were a young couple on their honeymoon. And of course what they had was the sort of traveling contraceptive constantly in their company. I think for them it was probably an ordeal, but for me it was an eyeopener and we had good weather going up the Clinton and over the wonderful McKinnon pass and rain coming down and of course Rain and Milford sound is exactly what you want. It was a fine start to tramping. But really my apprenticeship in Tramping came with the Tararua book and researching and writing that from the late 1980 through to its publication in 1994. That was a real, in depth experience of tramping over a number of years. Because I was doing the book, I would probably go out into the mountains about once, fortnight, I made a point of taking. Different friends with me, on each trip so that I've got a variety of perspectives on the landscape and the history. We covered just about every track in the towers. I learned a great deal, of course, that informed a book, but I also learned a great deal about tramping itself. By that stage, by the mid nineties, I felt that I could go anywhere and do anything.

Jonty 2:29

It's interesting that the process of writing a book was a motivator for going tramping for most it might be the other way around.

Chris Maclean 2:35

Later on with tramping in New Zealand history, that's exactly what happened. Shaun and I were doing that book, and that was between about 2010 and 2014. And people would say to us when we told them that we were doing this book about tramping, that oh, you must be getting out in the hills often. And in fact, it was quite the reverse. We virtually never got out in the hills together until Shaun was so frustrated that he organized a meeting, at the North Oau hut and the Taras. And that was great. It reminded us both why we were doing it.

Jonty 3:08

Thinking about some of the trips you did, do you have any favorite huts or least favorite huts?

Chris Maclean 3:14

in terms of a favorite hut, I would say Longview and the Southern Ruis is my, current favorite Mainly 'cause it lives up to its name, it's got fantastic views looks out over the Southern Hawkes Bay countryside and the Cash Mary Hills and the headwaters of the Tookie Tookie. To be honest, I don't really care for staying at huts and I totally get what an earlier guest of yours, Rob Brown was saying about, hut life is a great leveler and it's also a great way to, indulge in spontaneous conversation with random individuals but that can cut two ways. Of course. There's some terrible bores and there's also, that sort of constant tension between hunters and trampers and they're very different take on the hills. my preference has always been to camp, if possible.

Jonty 4:04

So have you had any particularly memorable campsites then?

Chris Maclean 4:07

There is a place up on the banks of the Acky River, not that far from Acky forks, actually probably only half an hour's walk and I've been camping there for, 20, 30 years. I would regard it as my sort of spiritual home in the hills.

Jonty 4:22

So you tend to be tramping with friends or the tramping club or solo or mixture?

Chris Maclean 4:28

No, I've never belonged to a club and I'm not a joiner in that sense I really enjoy being in the hills on my own. The thing I quite enjoy doing is nude tramping. And that is, tricky 'cause you can only really do it on the tops. You've gotta be able to see people coming towards you and vice versa. I've tried it in the bush and, it's quite an anxious experience. You're walking along, you've got your shorts and your hand, and it's really difficult if somebody's just coming around a corner, a couple of paces ahead of you to do anything about it. Whereas if you're out on the tops, you've got plenty of time and by the time they catch up to you, you can chat away and you're fully clothed. So that's the ultimate extension of, solo tramping,

Jonty 5:07

I remember in Tramping a history, there was a chapter on nude tramping. I assume you were the proponent of that.

Chris Maclean 5:14

That's what got me into it actually. When I discovered that bill such and more of Williams and these people that, I was writing about there were progressives in the twenties and thirties and it really came from tramping, came from Germany. Orman Wilson was studying there in the 1930s and he brought it back to New Zealand and gave the idea to these other people, but it was always a very limited experience, and it was obviously it can only be done at certain times of year and certain weather conditions. but it's a very enjoyable experience to sort of wind on the skin sensuality rather than sexuality and, a profound sort of immersion in nature. So I'd recommend it. And in fact, Germans are so keen on nude tramping that, they were causing a problem neighboring Switzerland. So what the Germans did was created their own dedicated new tramping park in the mountains. and if you go there and you clothe, you'll feel like an idiot.

Jonty 6:14

What were some of your most challenging tramps, either physically or logistically or mentally?

Chris Maclean 6:20

The common idea about tramping is that it's along the tops or through the bush. And when I was doing the tar, but of course I had to explore the rivers as well, and I came to understand that the rivers of that range you can undertake quite a challenging experience, which is to put on a wetsuit and, swim for two days on end with a pack on your back, say from Y to YY down to Acky forks. And you go through some absolutely magnificent country. But it, there's no doubt about it, you have to be properly organized. You'd need to have. Cascade bags and you need to keep your tent dry and keep yourself warm. And, you have to be able to swim through long pools with a pack on your back, or alternatively you can put it underneath you and rest on top of it. But I came to really enjoy that sort of thing. And it doesn't even have to be an overnighter. the Tara Gorge is a wonderful, one day, river swimming experience. And of course, if you. doing it in a single day, you don't really need to take much at all. You just need a little day pack. And the other one that's near Wellington that's really, popular is the Kai Toki Gorge on the Hut River, which to my mind, at 45 minutes drive from Wellington is the most accessible piece of wilderness that you can come across anywhere near the capital. And, again, that's a day you spent in the water, six, seven hours. And it's not for the fainthearted to be honest. Once you start, there's no turning back. You wanna pick your companions, pick your weather, and, know that you're capable of getting out the other end.

Jonty 7:57

A PLB. Have you ever had to activate one or come close to activating one?

Chris Maclean 8:01

Yes. In 2018, I went up with two friends, Jeff Norman and Shaun Barnett up to the car workers in Northern Hawkes Bay, and we were. Climbing up to Domini biv, which is about halfway up to the summit. We were gonna stay there the night and then go onto the tops the next day. It's a t tram I'd done many times before, but this time almost from the start, I didn't feel well. but I persisted for a bit because you know what it's like, there's a sort of few minutes at the start of a tramp where if you're a little bit rusty, you have to get through a sweat barrier and a little bit of a discomfort barrier, and then you're fine, except that this didn't happen. I just never improved. And by the time we realized there was something seriously wrong with my health, we thought we were about halfway to Domini anyway and we looked around. it was. Early spring, there was a dying southerly. So it was cold, it was windy, and the ridge was steep, and there was only one place we could see where you could pitch a tent in an emergency like this. And we could see that even if you did that, the wind would blow everything away. It'd be a nightmare and it'd be very cold. So we made the logical decision to press onto the hut, which was really very hard. Even once Jeff took my pack I found it very difficult to do more than a few steps at a time. we eventually got to Domini and I said to the guys, look, just gimme a bit of time I'll come. Right. But it was quite clear. Within about half an hour that I wasn't coming. Right. So at that point, we had to decide whether to activate A PLB or see if we could get, cell phone coverage. And fortunately we were able to get the latter which meant that we could have dialogue, which is obviously preferable to PLB, which is simply a signal. And so we were able to tell the emergency people what the situation was and they said they'd get onto it, but we didn't quite know what that meant. When darkness came, we realized that there wasn't gonna be any kind of result that night. So we hunkered down then about half an hour later, Jeff heard a helicopter, in the skies above. We went outside and there sure enough this black beast with a huge light on it landed, and it landed on quite a narrow ridge with steep drop off on one side. Domini on the other side, just a little shelf really on the ridge. But the main thing was that the pilot had gone to great pains to avoid the warta, which marked a track, which of course, I hadn't even given a moment's thought to, but if you're a helicopter pilot in new land on a warta, that's the end of your helicopter. Anyway, they shoved me in my pack inside and even before we took off, they'd had the ECG going on my chest. And off we went. We were in Hastings Hospital about 20 minutes later. They take you off the helicopter and then you just go through some swing doors and you're right in the middle of the ed department. I had a thing called atrial fibrillation and my heart was going crazy and I was going up to 190 beats per minute and all that kind of stuff. And it was the start of quite a long period of prolonged heart difficulty really. So since then, my tramping life has been very different.

Jonty 11:16

I can imagine. Yeah. That's quite a constraint. Just thinking if you've had any memorable wildlife encounters

Chris Maclean 11:23

Not tramping so much as I'm very keen sea kayaker and I go out in the sounds quite a bit and there's always a very good chance that you'll come across a pot of dolphins I remember doing a trip with Jeff and Shaun and kayaks on Wellington, south Coast and this was shortly before Shaun died. Dolphins came around us and he didn't make any effort. He had his camera right there on the front of his cockpit and he made no effort to photograph them. And later when we talked about it, we talked about this thing about how if you're concentrating on taking a photograph, it will actually steal the wonder of the moment from you. You'll be concentrating on the technicalities of capture of image and, you know, better than a tourist in front of a temple

Jonty 12:07

Thinking about your books and publishing history. So I understand you started off with Stained Glass and then War Memorials and then your wife and I book and then your Roo book.

Chris Maclean 12:17

You're absolutely right. I'd done those two earlier books in the, 1980s with my friend Jock Phillips one on Stained Glass and the other one War Memorials. And he really taught me how to think and, analyze history. When I did, Tararua, that was the first book that I did on my own. I also published it, which was probably a good thing 'cause I doubt that anyone would've been interested in publishing a book like that except that John Rundel had done the Tara story, a few years earlier. I went to the woman who published it, she ran a bookshop in Tenco Road, and I rather cheekily asked her, how many copies she'd done and how it went. she said she'd done 2000 and they all sold. at that point I thought, actually I'm not such a fool after all. 'cause you have to remember that then, people just didn't rate the terror Rus, They badmouth them as a matter of, right. and it was wrong, of course. They're a wonderful place, but it was Paco's fault. He had appended this diatribe against them in his 1952 book, land Up Lifted High that it was published, it tainted the terrors for a whole generation. So in a way, the reason I did that book was to address that wrong prejudice. And it was interesting because people would say to me at parties and things, what are you working on now? And I'd say, I'm writing a book about the terrorism. And who's gonna buy it? And all the rest of it. And yet, when I put it out in 1994, the sales were phenomenal I printed three and a half thousand copies, launched it in September or October. And I only just made it past Christmas, and then I put out another edition, and sold six and a half thousand copies of that book, which is still very much sought after. What I didn't understand, of course, was that I was enjoying the golden age of the book, some people could see ahead and see the technological and digital revolution that was coming, but I certainly couldn't. And I was very happy with, writing books long hand, doing field research and the way I did with tramping with friends, and then publishing the book myself and going around and doing the selling myself. I loved all of that package. But if you fast forward 10 years on from there, the business of publishing and selling books was far more complicated and difficult.

Jonty 14:37

So was there a point in time where things seemed to take quite a dramatic change?

Chris Maclean 14:42

Yep. I can date it to about 2005 that was the time when the internet really started to become universal and critically, if people wanted to know something, it's so much easier just to Google it. With a book, you've gotta go to the library, you've gotta look up the index, and then the entry may not even provide the information that you see. You can tailor a question, Google put it in, and of course today it's 10 times faster with AI doing the overview. So the key thing was that up until that sort of 2005 books were the sole. Definitive source of knowledge. And then suddenly they were just one of those sources of knowledge and the number of books that I was selling just plummeted dramatically. in 2005, I put out a book on Wellington, and I had the misfortune to put it out a couple of months after a man had done a very similar, book. he was a much more experienced publisher than I was, and he cleaned up for the first time in my life, I had a real experience of failure. And I go along to the bookshops and they tell me how well his book was doing, and I had to wait while he went through three editions of his book. And once he'd eventually finished with the marketplace, I was able then to, start selling my title, but. Man, it set me back. And it also in conjunction with technological change that was happening, I was discovering what it's like to not succeed. And yeah, that was a ary experience

Jonty 16:16

Tramping a history is quite a seminal text. How did that come about

Chris Maclean 16:20

Shaun and I were tramping around Lake w ti uh, which is that delightful little lake up above Lake w Ri Moana. We were talking about doing a history of tramping. 'cause it was quite obvious there was a gap in the marketplace because the track is quite rough and it's single file, it wasn't really possible to walk. Beside each other, having a conversation. So what I did was I had a tape recorder with me. I'm an old tech guy, and I'd ask Shaun a question, and then I'd give him the tape recorder, a little handheld thing, and I'd wander on ahead, and then he'd answer the question, and then he'd catch up with me and I'd ask another one. Then at night, when we got into the hut, we would play back the tape and listen to it and then further conversation would develop from that. And so we thought we could do it. When we got back to Civilization, I transcribed those tapes and we came up with about a 70 page synopsis of the history of tramping in New Zealand. We started writing it and actually we had quite a lot of trouble. We did three drafts in total, and the first one didn't really address sufficiently the kind of origins of tramping. so when we sent it to our first lot of readers, they said it's fine, but it's too contemporary. We need a bit more history in it. So we went back and we did the history, and we did too much of it. In the second draft, which we sent to different readers, we sent it out to about half a dozen, passionate trampers. And they said you have to read five or six chapters before you get to anything that's identifiable as the New Zealand tramping experience. The trouble about listening to other people and acting on their advice is sometimes, you go too far. the advice is fine, it's absolutely correct, but we were so devoted to, doing what we thought we needed to do, that we went. Too far in the other direction. And eventually Robbie said, look guys, I think just start off with, Charlie Douglas and then, that's what to me is the epitome of the New Zealand tramping history. So we did what Robbie said, and we started with Charlie and then we looped back into some history truncated, and then got on with the tramping experience. and we ended the book with a chapter called the Tramping Experience, which was really about, what it's like to run down a scree slope and use long drop toilet and share a hut with other people and all that kind of stuff. Then we thought, why are we putting this at the end? Why don't we just stick it at the start? And then, these people will get the experience they want. They'll recognize it as soon as they start the book. So we did that and we moved it from one end to the other. and it was, it was tremendous 'cause it really did. Get over that hump. It was a very enjoyable book to write. It was tough at times. And as we talked about earlier, we didn't spend much time in the outdoors. We spent most of the time, in libraries or cafes talking about it and reviewing each other's writing. But when it came out, it was very successful. I think the first print run was 5,000, which went pretty fast. And then we did another two print runs after that. It also meant that, the success of it. We then used that and immediately went off to the Terror Tramping club and said, well, you are having a centenary in five years time, would you like us to do a book for you? They were a very democratic group and we put in a proposal, they did take us on, and, it would've probably taken us the best part of three or four years to research and write it. It's ended up being very similar. In fact, it's a companion volume to New Zealand, the tramping history. They're both exactly the same size. They have matching covers, although different images on them. They're both 2.2. Kilograms. And when a tramping history, when that was released, just about every media interview started was something like, it's not one for the backpack kind of thing. 'cause it was incredible weight and size but anyway, the TTC book leading the way was greeted very well by the club, which is no, mean feat given a lot of them are, quite individualistic and opinionated people.

Jonty 20:24

In terms of the sources of information to do those books, were there any gaps or was there almost a surplus of information to draw upon?

Chris Maclean 20:32

Oh, look, with the tramping club in particular I'd say their archive is the best of any tramping club in New Zealand. Quite outstanding. They had a dedicated archivist for many years. they've got a large room under their Montre Street club rooms in Wellington, which is given over to storing the archives. And we were given free reign of those. One of the reasons why we did even less tramping while we were doing that book was because we spent a lot of the time in the archive. A lot of tramp is quite motivated to write an account of their experience, especially if it's something that's a little bit. Different or unusual. And that indeed has happened throughout the history of that club and I'm sure many others as well. So there was an absolute plethora of written material. And of course there were photographs and maps and trampers in the past did wonderful hand drawn maps. It was a totally different world when in an area like the Tara in the 1930s, you could be still. Tramping new territory where, the maps didn't exist and you could make a contribution by, mapping that area or taking the stuff back to Wg Harding and the Lands and Survey department who put out the first official map of the range in 1936. It was, there was no lack of material and certainly with the tramping history it was just a question of throwing the net wider to catch the same sort of fish. And we consulted a lot of the clubs, but also there's a extensive literature of people writing books and articles about their experience.

Speaker 22:10

Can you tell me about the McLean Trust and some of the work you've been doing in Queen Elizabeth Park?

Chris Maclean 22:15

My parents started a charitable trust in 1970 with a thousand dollars capital, and by the time my father died in 1992, it was worth about, two or $300,000. And by the time my mother died in 2014, I got it up to 660,000. And my sister and I, who were trustees had always struggled to find, suitable causes to give money to. We did it every year, but we did it on a kind of sporadic basis that was really a response to the latest hurricane or the latest disaster or whatever. And to my mind, it was a very unsatisfactory form of philanthropy. So we decided to try and get rid of all of the money. And so my sister took her half and gave it to Nati per for medical purposes up on the East Coast. And I wanted to. Make a, a single one hit environmental investment and company that would really make a difference. The problem with a lot of the stuff that we'd, we are doing was just, giving people 5,000 or $25,000 doesn't really enable 'em to do anything too dramatic. My friend Alan Wahe Peja and I used to spend every Monday cycling somewhere in Ari and often we'd come back on the train and from the train you could see QE two Park. And Alan was saying, oh, wouldn't it be great if we could get in there with a bulldozer and recreate some wetlands out of those pastures and stuff like that. So we put together a proposal, and it was influenced also by the fact that just after the 2016 earthquake which was, the big kaikora one. Three or four of sort of lake lets emerged on the seawood side of QE two park outta nowhere. And so that was just really the, the change in the subterranean layers and how they must have been compacted or something. So the combination of Alan's desire to recreate the original landscape and these emergent lakelands was the basis of our plan. And we went to the regional council and said, look, what we'd like to do is restore this area and then have a cycle path over to this other area where the lake lets were, and restore that area as well, but also make it a recreation thing. Try and bring cyclists off the end of the expressway into the park and then across the park. Show them restoration work as they go. And of course the ranger and the parks manager for a brief period of time, you could see the official mind kicking in and, working out how they could say no. And then you could see the light bulb behind that expression and they thought, wow, we could do this, and this is an interesting idea. So they took us on and it was fantastic. We made a lot of progress. We took 30 hectares of pasture and we turned it into emergent potter cart forest, and I'm still doing that now. My son Sam, is a co-trustee. we did our first planting in 2018. And it's now seven or eight years later, and it's really happening. We've got large areas of flax and toy toy and cabbage trees and moner and stuff like that. But coming through them, we've got and pier and to toki and all sorts of trees. Tora, it's quite exciting to watch it, but it's also a lot of hard work. At the moment I've got a group of volunteers who support me and we go down there several times a week and, cut course and cut blackberry and do it by hand and then paste the stumps with poison. But it is what I had hoped for and it's a singular contribution to the landscape that will make a difference.

Jonty 25:56

Wonderful. That's an amazing initiative to do and then to see the results over time. My last question that may have changed a little bit now is do you have anything left on your bucket list for tramping?

Chris Maclean 26:07

It's an interesting question, jti, because when we were talking earlier about that car worker rescue in 2018 and being, chop it off the mountains at night, that was really the end of my tramping career. Since then, I've had intermittent heart trouble and I've gotta be very careful about overexerting myself. So taking, a full pack, with 15, 20 kg for two or three nights is just not really sustainable. What I'm now doing is I enjoy very much day trips. Recently I've been spending a lot of time in Hawke's Bay and tomato Peak is a very logical sentinel in the local landscape. And it's surprising how many different tracks there are on that manga. The one that really grabs my attention is, In the Munga Haru range, which is about an hour's drive north of Napier. it's called Bell Rock. And it is a big sedimentary ridge that has been uplifted, a bit like the papas down in the south island. You walk along the top of the ridge and there are all these weird and wonderful, rock formations that have been created through erosion over time. Bell Rock is one of those. It's a comfortable one day, trip, really. And the great sadness is, that I had planned to do it with Shaun. We had it organized for my birthday one year, and he was too unwell to do it. and as Hawke's Bay's most famous tramping son, it was sad that he didn't get to do that one before he died.

Peter 27:33

So

Speaker 27:36

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.