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| ISBN-13: | 9781927145234 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Canterbury University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/11/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 324 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
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On My Own Two Feet
The Life of a Mountaineer
By Norman Hardie
Canterbury University Press
Copyright © 2011 Norman HardieAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-927145-23-4
CHAPTER 1
Birth of a Mountaineer
It had not been my intention to write about my childhood in this account of where I have been in a long life. However, so many people have asked me, 'What made you get involved with big mountaineering?' or 'Did your parents support the directions you took?' Therefore I give this summary of my background, as I see it, after the passage of 60 and more years.
My parents had farmed a small property in Otago in the South Island of New Zealand during the early 1900s. Because of their earlier isolation neither had received any secondary education – not unusual in those days. In rather depressed times they, with five small children, moved to Timaru, buying a four-acre property on the outskirts of that town. Usually my father just had part-time work, with a small income supplemented from his beehives and milk from cows on the mini-farm. Much of what we ate was grown on that land.
I was born in Timaru at the end of 1924. The complete family had five girls and three boys. Before the age of two I had double pneumonia and for some days, I've been told, I drifted in and out of consciousness. Several times a day I had hot packs of antiphlogistene placed on my chest inside a tight wrapper. This is apparently a type of heat-retaining muck not now used. It was meant to be able to draw out congestion from the lungs. On one occasion, when the wrappings were removed, large areas of burnt skin also lifted. The resulting extensive scars are still with me, now partly hidden by a thin coating of hair, but in childhood they were a source of great embarrassment and stares from my peers. During my early years I hated taking off my shirt in sight of others.
When I was eight my brother Jim, aged 17, died of rheumatic fever, allegedly brought on by an earlier chilling at a badly organised scout camp. One of the results of the shock to the family was that I became the one to protect. If I coughed or wheezed I was kept away from school. At the beginning of high school my mother encouraged our doctor to certify that I was not strong enough to play rugby or cricket. For years I accepted that I must be a weakling. My older sisters took major parts in my upbringing, until two of them, in their late teens, left to undertake nursing training. I became very close to the three remaining sisters.
My parents were from strict Presbyterian stock, with my mother in particular believing in the literal truth of everything in the Bible. For us, Sunday attendance at church and Bible classes was compulsory and at various stages most of us sang in the church choir. Mother inflicted on us a weekly written biblical quiz, published in the Presbyterian magazine The Outlook. They were known as the OKPs – the 'Outlook Knots and Puzzles'. These were meant to instil an in-depth knowledge of the Bible, and to our mother they took priority over school homework. Liquor was banned from our house, and by the age of 12 most of us had signed The Pledge. I did have some sympathy for my mother. She had a hard struggle bringing up a large family during the Depression.
In spite of my 'weakness' I was milking the cows and assisting my father with the bees by the age of 13. From these unpaid tasks I learned a lot, and I still have one beehive. My father and brother Jack were very good rifle shots and I was frequently away with them, shooting rabbits and sometimes wallabies. Our garage would often have scores of rabbit skins drying for the next skin sale. We saw much of the delightful South Canterbury foothills and I, too, soon became proficient with rifle and skinning knife. My father was also accomplished at fishing with a line and sinker. We spent hundreds of hours in various family combinations, on the furthest wharves and breakwaters of Timaru Harbour. Our efforts were usually highly successful. My father's parents had come from a long line of seafarers in Scotland and he inherited anaffinity for the large oceans. His ability to fix almost anything, with a limited range of tools, always amazed me. I tried hard to follow his example.
During my third year at Timaru Boys' High School I grew several inches taller and found the internal motivation to do homework. I did manage to shake off the dreaded burden of OKPs, assisted by my close association with a neighbour, whose son was brilliant at all aspects of school life. This disappointed my mother, but gradually she accepted my wishes.
As I had been away from school sports for three years I was reluctant to join the established teams and their coaches. Instead I adopted isolated outdoor entertainment, particularly long-distance solo bicycle riding. At the end of my third school year I rode to Otekaieke, Moa Creek via Danseys Pass, near Alexandra, in Central Otago, next lap to Tuapeka, then Dunedin and home to Timaru, some 800 kilometres. The bike had no gears and the only bitumen road was the Dunedin main highway. There were many other big rides, one of the more significant being one to the Hermitage, Mt Cook, and a one-hour walk up one of the tracks. This made a great impression and I was determined to return.
I received a good grounding in classical music. My brother Jack and sister Gladys had singing lessons from a former operatic soprano, Mrs Tait. They sang by the piano in the room where I persevered with homework. From their practising I gained wonderful introductions to Handel oratorios, Schubert songs, Donizetti, Puccini and, most of all, Mozart. I can still quote more of the Bible from oratorios than I ever absorbed from the compulsory OKPs.
I played a cornet in the high-quality school band, but not particularly well, as I seldom practised. The instrument made such a noise that it could be heard by neighbours as well as by my family. Their comments, meant to be friendly, were generally a source of mortification to me. However, two benefits were that I learned sight-reading of music and the feeling of working in a well-disciplined team.
In the late 1930s my parents became involved with the British Israel organisation (BI), which claims that Americans and British (with Jews a close second) are the chosen people of God. With the beginning of the Second World War, BI had a great boost – among the British, anyway. Books and magazines on that subject were always in the house and I was pressed to read them. New interpretations of various parts of the Bible – the Prophets and Revelations – were distorted into the twentieth century. To the believers, the second coming of Christ and Armageddon were just around the corner. During the war at least, my mother thought the world would soon end. To me, this very odd stuff was most disturbing at that impressionable age. However, I must record that 10 and more years later, when we had all spread out and blossomed, she never mentioned the BI organisation and generally rejoiced in the progress each of us had made. But she never understood my love of mountaineering. My youngest sister, Carol, alone in the family nest for five years, did not have to sustain as many religious pressures as were applied to her older siblings. I was very close to Carol.
Very little of this attempted indoctrination from home made a permanent impression on me. The staff at Timaru Boys' High were an excellent straightforward team who were keeping their pupils as far as possible in touch with the developing scientific world. However, the religious background I received has resulted in one of my favourite modern reading topics being the origins of religions in relation to recent archaeological discoveries in the Mediterranean.
Soon after war started my brother Jack applied for aircrew in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. As training facilities and aircraft were scarce, he was told there would be nearly a year of waiting. For a while he worked on a farm and then he spent some six months as a deer culler in South Westland, mainly in the remote Landsborough Valley. He was highly successful at this work and brought back great tales of the country and his experiences. Thus began a fascination with this valley, which drew me to it 10 times, and I still have some contact with projects in that area.
* * *
On 7 December 1941 Japan entered the war. University Entrance examinations began two days later. On the day they concluded I went by bus from Christchurch to the Boyle base camp beside the new Lewis Pass highway, travelling past vast braided riverbeds and steep bush-clad mountain slopes, far beyond signs of habitation. This Lewis link to Westland had been completed in 1937. I had with me my brother's pack, rifle and sleeping bag, heavy new boots and very few other items.
The 'camp', a single-room hut still standing in 2006, was securely locked when I arrived. Soon two short, elderly ruffians and a spaniel bitch emerged from the beech forest, looked me over, grunted and opened the door. Their mail had arrived in a bag that had disgorged with me from the weekly bus. There were two items in the mail. The first was a racing paper with lists of horse performances for the previous month and details of the next month's races. After they filled in betting forms they put them in the mailbag for the bus driver to collect on his return journey next day.
Then they looked at the second item. It was a short note from the Internal Affairs Department advising that a new man would be arriving on the bus – no name, age nor instructions. This was me. Jack McNair was one of the pair. He had shot for the department from 1930 when 'culling' operations began. I later worked out his age – 59 that year. In the 1970s, each time I saw the grizzly BBC Steptoe character I thought of Jack McNair. I soon found that his bandy legs had long since stopped him going any distance uphill. He shot around the river flats on days when the sun shone.
The other man was Vic Keen, who had been shooting for about three years, in mostly fairly easy country. In age, stature and interests he was very like Jack. He was not a brilliant shooter, frequently hitting a deer in the lungs or belly. The reason for his dog soon became apparent. It was an expert at silently following bloody trails at Vic's pace, allowing him the chance to apply a second shot.
They looked over my gear, which was quite good. My brother had shot in harder country than this Boyle block. I had his best wishes and the benefit of his advice. By now he was at the Wigram air base, training to be a pilot. Vic put up a target about a hundred metres away and asked me to fire three shots. I had frequently used a .22 rifle but never a .303. The kick and noise of my first effort put me in the corner of the target, but the next two were reasonably central. There was a grunt and, 'You'll come right.'
Several species of deer had been released in New Zealand between 1851 and 1922. They spread rapidly in this land of good feed and no predators. For much of this time they were protected and the few overseas hunters who pursued them were looking for male trophies only, so the breeding numbers were not reduced. Eventually, after years of reports and discussions, it was decided to remove the restrictions on shooting deer. Some numbers were being reduced adjacent to farms and easy-access roads but in the remote high country the situation was rapidly reaching a crisis situation. Most inland forests, where animals tended to gather during the winter, were losing their young undergrowth. The higher tussock slopes and many of the edible alpine species were being eaten down to the state where they no longer provided erosion protection. Both tahr and chamois had also been introduced to New Zealand as trophy hunting animals. Goats and pigs had escaped from farms. They all added to the erosion problems higher up the mountains.
The government 'cullers' were meant to thin out the big numbers in the immense expanse of forested mountain country. Culling infers selected shooting of perhaps old, injured or even breeding animals, but from the outset there was no type of selection. The policy was to shoot every possible animal, and the payment was the same for any animal killed.
Each man was paid a basic minimal wage and had to provide his own clothing, sleeping bag and rifle. Bonus payments were one shilling for each tail, with 2s 3d for each skin. Tails had to include a one-foot-long strip of skin up the backbone to ruin the skin, preventing shooters claiming two payments for one animal. For each animal killed the shooter would be entitled to three bullets. If he used more than three the cost of the surplus was deducted from bonuses.
The department provided food, which, because of the remote situations, included no fresh vegetables and little meat. There would be occasional tins of corned beef, but generally the men ate venison. Canned peas and beans were the only vegetables, besides occasional potatoes and ageing onions. There was also a very hard biscuit, one type of cheese, plus flour, baking powder, yeast, milk powder and tins of jam. New Zealanders were rationed then for sugar, tea and butter, and we had to conform.
About once a month a packman would arrive with four big horses, bringing food supplies, ammunition and mail. He would count all the tails, record them on pay sheets, and then burn the tails. Skins would likewise be counted, then put into big bundles and strapped to the horses' pack saddles.
I had to learn to skin a deer. I had seen sheep skinned, suspended from a gallows behind a farmer's woolshed, where both the skin and the carcass were to be used. But for the cullers there were no gallows and rarely would the meat be used, apart from one or two choice cuts from a young beast. Jack McNair demonstrated on a stag. The opening knife-cuts dodged all the hard and smelly bits around its belly, and excluded half the neck and most of the legs. Then, with a boot applied firmly to any bare part, he dragged off the rather cut and grossly shortened skin.
The whole operation was accompanied by strings of oaths and almost feverish haste, the way most sheep shearers operate when picking up a blade. They perform flat out as if they always want to beat some sort of record. My bulging eyes must have expressed surprise and criticism for the speed and the waste of a quality skin. It was explained to me that we were paid by the numbers of skins, not by weight or quality. Why fill a pack with five big stinking coats? Do it this way and one can carry out seven skins for the same amount of work. Normally they would not bother to skin a stag unless it was near the path of an incoming field officer. The hinds and yearlings are easier to skin and lighter to carry.
Another stag was on the ground and now it was my turn. I attacked it with vigour but took twice as long as Jack, and I also made a few unnecessary knife-cuts. The naked beasts with great hunks of skin on them looked ghastly on the floor of the bush. I hoped the forces of nature would soon remove them.
'Don't worry about that,' I was told. 'There are a few wild pigs about. They and the blowflies will have it all tidy again next week.'
The St Andrews hut, up the river from the Boyle base where we three were living, was made from corrugated iron rescued from the burnt-out remains of the house allegedly used by a French group during the previous century. They were supposed to have grazed cows and goats on the river flats. Much of the cheese they made was carried through to Kiwi Saddle and the Hurunui for the miners walking to the West Coast. This was what I was told, but there is now some doubt about this 'legend'.
The hut had few windows, no reading material and at night was lit by candles. We were not supplied with insect repellent or flyspray, so we were plagued by hordes of blowflies and sandflies. Skins and tails were dried under a large tent fly just 20 metres from the hut and these attracted clouds of eager bluebottle flies. Food scraps, tins and bones littered the ground and no attempts had been made to bury them. My comments brought the statement that the dog would uncover them if buried, so why bother. As there was no shortage of firewood, a fire was kept going all the time we were in residence, and the smoke helped to keep the sandflies back three or four metres. In the hut there was no plumbing of any variety, but there was a small stream nearby where one could wash the body and from time to time attempt to remove the smoke smells and deer blood from one's long-suffering clothing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from On My Own Two Feet by Norman Hardie. Copyright © 2011 Norman Hardie. Excerpted by permission of Canterbury University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Foreword by Sir Edmund Hillary,
Preface,
1. Birth of a Mountaineer,
2. Higher Education,
3. The La Perouse Rescue,
4. Work by the Mountains,
5. Passage to London,
6. Working in London,
7. Barun Himalayan Expedition,
8. Private Expedition,
9. Preparing for Kangchenjunga,
10. Kangchenjunga,
11. West to the Khumbu,
12. Mapping New Ground,
13. Back in New Zealand,
14. The Silver Hut Expedition,
15. Instructing in Antarctica,
16. The Mt Rolleston Rescue,
17. The Himalayan Trust,
18. Mt Herschel, Antarctica,
19. Back at Home Base,
20. Scott Base Season,
21. Reunions,
Bibliography,
Index,
Plates,
Copyright,