Overview Holidays in Te Anau were a regular event for Val from a very young age. As a result, she is one of a handful of people with memories of summers on a section of land just a stone's throw from Lake Te Anau which was bordered by scrub and manuka and indented by makeshift wharves and boatsheds. By the late 1930s, the family had gone upmarket after being allowed to build a 'crib' on the same section. The dwelling, which was extended and upgraded over the years, was soon one of a motley collection of...

Overview The Roberts family connections with Te Anau span almost one hundred years as it was Tom's grandfather, Captain Thomas Roberts, who first laid roots in what was a remote settlement in 1906. As skipper for the government steamer, Tawera, there is already printed documentation about Captain Roberts and his years spent in Te Anau. This interview, therefore only touches lightly on Tom's ancestors. The focus is more on the achievements made by Tom and his brother, Ted Roberts, in the local building...

Overview As Jack explains through the interview, his connection with Manapouri reaches back several generations. His great grandfather, (Old Bob) Robelt Murrell arrived at Bluff in 1863 and settled at Balloon Loop (by the Waiau River) two years later. The Murrell family is one of first explorers, farmers, tour guides and accommodation providers in the Te Anau Basin. In this profile, Jack is historian and raconteur. He also gives a personal account of growing up in an area that has undergone enormous...

Overview One of the New Zealand team members seconded to Colonel Howard for the 1949 expedition was former government deer culler, Jack Luttrell. He had worked a couple of years earlier for the Wildlife Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs culling red deer in the Haast district of the West Coast. He also took part in a reconnaissance survey of Fiordland in 1948 in preparation for the Howard expedition. Now in his 70s, Mr Luttrell, has a clear memory of those earlier years hunting in much of what...

Overview Rex grew up in the 1930s on Stewart Island surrounded by the sea and people whose lives were ruled by the tides and the weather. Despite his mothers’ efforts to prevent him going into an industry that had taken the lives of some of her immediate family, Rex spent nearly 50 years making a living from the seas around his childhood home and along the Fiordland Coast. He remembers a time when crayfish were considered not worth catching. In this profile he gives an account of those early days and...

Overview For about twenty years, Olive was a member of the Board of Directors of Real Journeys (formerly trading as Fiordland Travel Ltd), one of New Zealand's largest tourist operators. Her late husband, Les Hutchins, was instrumental in shaping and developing tourism in Fiordland from small beginnings in 1954 to the multi-million dollar industry it has become in 2005. In this profile, Olive describes the changes she has witnessed from life on a farm in Myross Bush, bringing up a young family on the...

Overview Jack McKenzie is the author of an autobiography titled Mr Wapiti, published in 1992. In it he gives details about his family history and farm, Leithen Downs near Waikaka, where he has lived his eighty-two years. But as the book's title suggests, it is more concerned with his life-long interest in trophy hunting of both red deer and wapiti particularly in the Fiordland National Park. It also includes comment on his years as a member of the Fiordland National Park Board. This profile covers...