Later-life reboot
The biggest cohort of baby boomers is reaching retirement age – and many are not planning a quiet dotage.
The biggest cohort of baby boomers is reaching retirement age – and many are not planning on settling into a quiet dotage.
It takes most people four to five days to walk the spectacular Heaphy Track in the South Island’s Kahurangi National Park. But 73-year-old Derry Kingston routinely knocks it out in a day and a half. Over the past 15 years, Kingston has walked the 78.4km track more than 400 times. He’s been dubbed the “Kingston Flyer”, but others simply know him as “the key man”. He was 56 when he set up a business repositioning the cars of trampers walking the track – which runs from the northern West Coast through to Golden Bay – relieving them of the need to take an expensive and weatherdependent light plane or seven-hour bus journey back to their vehicle.
He meets his customers at the Golden Bay end of the track, then drives their car round to the West Coast end, and walks back. He moves at a smart clip – it takes him six hours to hike the 24.2 km from the Kohaihai River mouth to Lewis Hut, and 13-14 hours to complete the remaining 54.2km the following day. He carries a small silver transistor radio, and when the reception is good, he can tune in to RNZ while he walks through the wilderness.
It’s a feat that leaves the supremely fit and wiry septuagenarian “weary”, but in hundreds of journeys, he has never injured himself and his joints are in good condition. His heart, too, is in fine fettle. Not long before he set up the business, he had a heart bypass, an operation that he recovered from by training for and completing the Buller Gorge Marathon.
“I like to set myself challenges,” he says. He’s hoping to run the Buller again when he turns 80.
Further down the South Island, Sharon, 63, is embarking on a new career, running a craft retreat in Central Otago. “I have retirement
After commitments to work, children and ageing parents, they want to be free to mess up without feeling guilty.