I finally got out to my favourite run in Wellington - Belmont Trig via the Korokoro gorge. As soon as you head up the gorge from Petone the bush closes in and you feel miles away from the world. The track is just such a nice track to run on, the first few km's is flat by Wellington standards. Up towards Baked beans bend there are a few river crossings which I just crashed through today. The river was too high to think about staying dry. The hill as ever was a good challenge, 456metres above where I started at sea-level, and then back down along the farm track and slippery tawa groves. At the end to avoid going back to the Korokoro rail crossing I waded down the stream under the motorway, a fun little end to the run.
Near the start of the run, on the western side of the motorway near the Korokoro hill I came across the grave, or at least memorial for, for this man. It was in a lonely corner of a reshaped park. Wi Tako was a Maori leader during the pakeha colonisation of Wellington, who at least partly began the forging of the dominant Love family in the Wellington region, here is the whakapapa from the famous pacifist Te Whiti o Rongomai to contemporary leader Sir Ngatata Love, complete with the odd whaler thrown in.
2 comments:
Jamie, I was moved to tears, tears of the snowfields and glaciers as so many memories came flooding back of all those Sherpas who have died, and many of my friends rest in the Himalaya. I am just reading Bill Denz book at the moment and he rest there with Rob Hall, Gary Ball, and further up in the Karakoram's, many others:
Mountains shape the people, and sadly, people shape the mountains.
Hey Bob,
I grew up in the generation when Hillary was already almost mythological and Hall and Ball were the daring kiwis taking on the world. I found it quite revealing coming across a Hall and Ball advertising poster in a guesthouse in Marpha...history is recorded in interesting ways.
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