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Lawyer and long distance walker Mike Pullar combines just the right skill set for his new role as Te Araroa’s South Island project manager.
With much-appreciated support from a $40,000 Southern Trust grant, Te Araroa’s Otago Regional Trust chairman was appointed to his new role in October, with a goal of getting the South Island trail fully up and running for its November 2010 opening.
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Michael Pullar forges on, midfield in this year's Routeburn Classic
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“God’s gift” to Tramping
It’s terrain Michael already knows well. Since 2002, whenever he could get time away from his work in teaching and management with a legal organisation, he‘s been scoping Te Araroa routes in the back blocks by compass.
In 2001 Michael spent four months walking the 3500km Appalachian Trail in the eastern US and, having done that, he thought he was “God’s gift to tramping,” he jokes.
His first Te Araroa scoping trip, however, brought him “back down to ground with a thump.” He was looking at a route that connected Lake Hawea with the Ahuriri River and was forced to deal with rising rivers and deep snow on the tops. This gave him a sharp reminder “when you get off the track you need a very different skill set.”
His longest scoping trip was a ten day journey from Lake Coleridge to Tekapo. Most of this section is now marked and open and what remains is scheduled for development this summer.
Have GPS Will Travel
While he’s got to enjoy the “vagaries and wishful thinking” of compass navigation - “you almost always end up a few km further back than what you expect, but I enjoy the uncertainty of it“ – he’s capitulated to technology and bought a GPS unit for his new job.
“Primarily my role is a development one of getting the track in better order for the November 2010 opening,” he says. “The key element is finalising areas where there are several options, and formalising a route,” says Michael, who has been an Otago Regional Trust member since June 2004.
He says the sections requiring most attention include regions below the Queen Charlotte Walkway, around Lake Coleridge, some sections in Southland and the finalising of two or three pastoral leases.
Night Out Between Rising Rivers
Growing up in Havelock North in Hawkes Bay, Michael recalls getting caught out between rising rivers on the Holyford Track tramping with his family as a child. “Looking back I wouldn’t like to spend a night out with four young kids like my parents did, but we took it in our stride,” he says.
This summer he plans to do his first overnight tramping trip with son Luke (3) to the Kiwi Burn Hut in the Mavora Lakes area. At 50 minutes off the road it’s a good distance “for me to carry him and the gear if I have to” he says.
In 2005 Michael and his partner Megan took six weeks to walk the 1000km Bibbulum Track in Western Australia.
NZ Scenery ‘The Best’
“Both that track and the Appalachian had fantastic wild life but New Zealand’s scenery leaves them both for dead,” says Michael.
Professionally Michael spent ten years as a lawyer in private practice before going into teaching and management, and he has recently completed a Bachelor of Applied Management with Otago Polytechnic.
As part of his studies he completed an assessment of Te Araroa’s governance and systems which will be presented to the national Trust later this year.
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