Ridgway Lythgoe - The story of a New Zealand Conservationist continued

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 118

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Outward Bound Cutter Marlborough Sounds -summer 1973-4

Ridgway was in Europe and the Middle East from 1968 to 1972 and on his return landed a job at  Outward Bound in Anakiwa in the Marlborough Sounds. This school was established in 1962. It threw its young men, (it is no longer gender discriminatory), into a rigorous programme that provided experience and training in sailing, canoeing and exploring the local bush terrain.

River crossing - Pelorus River 

Crossing the Wall - Outward Bound

In 1976 Ridgway joined the Lands and Survey Department as a National Park Ranger then moved on to the Department of Conservation when that was formed in 1987.

Ridgway - Mt Aspring NP

Ridgway (right) Mt Aspiring NP

Coming down from the tops

He was initially stationed at Makarora  above Wanaka as a ranger at Mt Aspiring National Park; before settling at Ohakune for six years. 

Pipiriki on the Whanganui River 1984 

Then in 1984 he went to Pipiriki on the Whanganui river as Senior Conservation Officer. There were  two permanent staff here and a further two at the other end of the Park in Taumaranui. 

By the early 1990’s he had become Field Centre Manager for the area and was working from Whanganui. Part of Ridgway’s strength in working  here was the strong rapport he developed with community groups. These included running a popular Summer Nature Programme, along with Department volunteer programmes and then sitting on the committees of local organisations including Forest & Bird, Bushy Park Trust, Tramping club, Historic Places and the Friends of the Whanganui River and Shoreline. 

As these photographs indicate Ridgway has an unrivalled experience in exploring the back country of New Zealand. He has done all the great walks including – Milford, Keppler, Routeburn, Rakiura, Heaphy, Able Tasman, Waikaremoana, Tongariro Northern Circuit, Whanganui River, Matemateonga and the   

Tararua’s.

While he might be affable and supportive of those contributing to conservation, he wouldn’t take nonsense from reprobates in the Park. Sometimes the Whanganui River itself, could parlay them into his hands. 

We were jet boating up the River one weekend and found another jet boat marooned on a shingle bank with a flat battery. They’d been there overnight and Ridgway recognised one by description. He had been at the John Coull hut further upriver, abused the warden and left without paying. He was charged, judged then sentenced to a long dressing down and a hefty fine, which had to be paid up before Ridgway agreed to haul out jumper cables to get the boat started downstream.

This tradition of intimate contact between our conservation specialists and the New Zealand Public ended as Ridgway came to the end of his working life in 2004. The Conservation Department was restricted to what conservative government was pleased to call core business. Many local branches were closed and these delicately tendered connections were severed. Years of budget cutting, along with two destructive restructurings - the second designed to reverse the damage caused by the first, has left staff demoralised and conservation in New Zealand lacking  clear leadership.

Ridgway - Summer Nature Programme   Pipiriki

This is beginning to take a political toll as a recent government announcement indicates.  It wants to rid the country of introduced pests by the year 2050. This is a derisible fantasy dreamed up by   government media advisers to counter continued high polling from the Green Party. The reality is that these Government media advisors now probably rival in number, our working conservation staff…    

Susie wants Gordon Lightfoot on today’s post and who I am to say no! -The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searches all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay

If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her

They might have split up or they might have capsized

They may have broke deep and took water

And all that remains is the faces and the names

Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Jill Studd's blog

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Ridgway Lythgoe New Zealand Conservationist - rare Antarctica photographs 1978 continued.

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 117

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Ridgway Lythgoe in Antarctica Summer 77-78 

We are continuing to post photographs from Ridgway’s slide collection taken during his year long stay 1977-1978.

US Icebreaker   McMurdo Sound

These include images from around Scott Base and McMurdo Sound where he was mostly stationed over this time. 

US Base McMurdo Sound

Then shots of his fellow workers. 

Painting Lake Vanda

Frozen surface of Lake Vanda

Then additional images of taken in areas where the DSIR were active including Lake Vanda.   

Burning off oil - McMurdo Sound 1978

Chapel of the Snows McMurdo 

The Chapel of the Snows  has been rebuilt three times. This is the second chapel which was destroyed by fire towards the end of Ridgways tenure on the ice. It is the last photograph taken of it.

Ice fall

We'll be putting up a final suite of images from back in New Zealand on our next post. Track we were listening too while posting this was Johnny Nash's -I can see clearly now. 

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone

All of the bad feelings have disappeared

Here is the rainbow I've been praying' for

It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)

Sun-Shiny day.

Susie chose this and you can see why with the world starting to run so perilously off its rails. Perhaps this will help steady it up a little...

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The Midnight Collective celebrity interview - Ridgway Lythgoe - Veteran New Zealand Conservationist - includes rare photo's from Antarctica

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 116

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Ridgway Lythgoe The Early years

Ridgway and friend (Kaka)...Kapiti Island 2016

Ridgway was born in Wellington NZ in the war years, 1944, then went to school in the Hutt Valley. He has been involved in conservation work throughout his working life; initially with the Dept of Lands and Survey before transferring to the Conservation Department following it’s establishment by Helen Clarke in 1989. 

Much of his spare time has been utilised in traversing the wild areas of New Zealand and he has lived and worked out of Whanganui for many years now. He is a legend in his part of the world, lauded for his volunteer work with a range of organisations including Forest & Bird, Bushy Park, the Tramping Club and Friends of the Whanganui River.  

Early in his career he undertook two stints at Scott Base in Antarctica, the first from October1967- January 1968. He then put in the full year 1977-78, first as deputy leader and then leader over the winter months at the base.

Antarctic ice fall 1978 -foto RL

Cape Hallett,
looking across Edisto Inlet

He was a 23 year old in 1967 when he worked as part of the New Zealand Antarctic research programme. Transported  down in a US Hercules he was involved in providing summer support. He was initially occupied with the construction of buildings at Lake Vanda in the Wright Valley. This NZ base was established at this time. Then he journeyed out to Cape Hallett. 

Weddell Seal

This was a joint NZ US Base (now closed). Here he tagged Weddell seals and undertook a census survey. The workers were transported to the colony in a US icebreaker which ferried them in by helicopter for 5 hours at a time.  The census took a week.

Scott Base vista -foto RL

He then took off on his OE for four years before returning to Lands and Survey. In his second stint, from which this selection of images is drawn, he spent a full year on the ice from October 1977 to October 1978.  Here he was seconded to the DSIR as Deputy to Rob Straight, and then stayed on as leader through those long dark winter months.

Scott Base 1978 -foto RL

There were 65 at the Base, then another 65 in the field and he spent the summer managing the field parties, maintaining the radio schedules and overseeing, transport logistics. It was also his job to keep tabs on health and safety, before there was a healthy and safety; a critical responsibility in such extreme conditions.

Dry Valley Antarctica 1978 - foto RL 

In winter all this activity stopped, and there followed the haul through that long Antarctic night until the sun once more lifted up above the horizon. 

Port - McMurdo Sound 1978 -foto RL

It was short walk to the US McMurdo base however where there was always a welcome and this led to some  memorable nights with the Yanks, especially on reaching Mid-winter, and then through July 4. 

Scott Base - 1978 foto -RL

Ridgway used to give a summer lecture on Antarctica in the DoC Summer Nature Programme, which would pack out early, so you had to reserve your seat. He is a droll speaker and one of his  most memorable anecdotes concerned the decision to allow women on the base for the first time. This was taken by a cautious New Zealand bureaucracy which decided to add one female to a party of eleven males as an experiment to see how things went. She had the pick of the party and soon settled into a top bunk with a beau; causing the usual consternation in the rest of the party.

They never sent a woman down on her own again. 

Guiding the tour - Ridgway at Pipiriki - Whanganui River 2006

To be continued…

Track we were listening to while posting this Eddie Cochranes Summertime Blues because, though its mid winter over here, it still feels like autumn or early spring. Is global warming really starting to show its hand down here?

          I'm gonna take two weeks, gonna have a fine vacation

I'm gonna take my problem to the United Nations

Well I called my congressman and he said quote:

"I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote"

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do

But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues 

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