Barry Rosenberg champions community spirit and local efforts to restore the treasured Ōtarawairere Track

Not too many years back I decided to train for what was euphemistically termed the Old Bastards Olympics, a series of track and field events in which competitors need be over 80. Running on a beach or straightaway is one thing, but to really get my aging body in shape needed a serious bit of terrain, and the Otarawairere track, which I had walked virtually daily since moving here in 1985, proved perfect.

Running on such a winding, awkwardly-stepped, semi-hidden-rocked and, I swear, tendrils of various species, all of which possessed malicious intent, suddenly reaching out to grab my passing ankles, required an entirely different set of precautions and observations than the mere strolls I had for years been taking.

I can’t count the times I tripped, fell, smacked my shins and exhausted every molecule of oxygen from my being. Unfortunately, Covid came round just as I hit peak performance, and the event was cancelled.

But what my training provided was a new love for the Ōtawai track, such that even during lockdown I would sneak on with a set of loppers and cut back the wild growth that threatened to take it over.

Now, even before I was offered an assignment to travel to this far-off, pretty much unheard-of place called New Zealand and write a series of travel articles for American magazines, I’d heard stories. A race of stalwart athletes on land, water and mountain, fearless in attitude, pioneers in fortitude and sporting accomplishment.

Amazingly, here I be, a New Zealand citizen of some decades, living on a majestic seven mile beach, surrounded by an area that is replete with environmental opportunities to enjoy and maintain top-level athletic well-being. Which has produced, among other valiant sporting types, a very pretty 5’2” blonde who has won no fewer that nine Olympic gold medals. Oh, and a council comprised of the biggest bunch of officious cowards and desk-jockey wusses the mind can possibly conjure up.

A lot has been written on these opinion pages about council’s prune-faced, nanny-state refusal to allow locals to repair the track. As one rarely reluctant to voice an opinion on any matter that chews on my ear, I have let others state what I consider the obvious. But a letter appeared in Wednesday’s Beacon, so erudite that it places a special significance on the matter.

“…people (in council) driving these decisions are not from our community. They do not have the same connection to this land, this coastline, or this track. They do not carry the same understanding of what this place means to those of us who do. What we are seeing now (of council’s overly dictatorial interference in citizens’ endeavour to privately restore the track) is not management. It is overreach.”

I stand and applaud you, Craig Julian. And if you will permit me, a relative late-comer to this region, I should like to financially assist the efforts of those locals with the industrial skills I never possessed and bodily reserves I sadly now lack, who have offered to restore the wonderful Otarawairere track.

As well as proffer sincere thanks for your determination and efforts in keeping the spirit of the New Zealand that so appealed to me 45 years ago when first I arrived here, and that has served me so well ever since.