Te Araroa’s Trail song
Te Araroa founder Geoff Chapple has composed a song to go with the long-distance walking
Blue Trail – Te Araroa
track.
“I always thought Te Araroa should have a song,” said Geoff, “and the words started to come when I was staying in a sleepout in the Port Hills above Christchurch. I was on the Ursula Bethell scholarship, working on a book of New Zealand geology. The sleepout had a wide view out across the city, Pegasus Bay and the Kaikouras. It was a great New Zealand landscape spread out, and perfect to just sit on the veranda and strum the guitar. Next thing, the song that’d been waiting so long started to take shape.
“I took it down to the Christchurch Folk Club’s open-mike night. The reception there was good, so I took it on to the singer songwriter Don McGlashan. Don had a few tips to improve it, and said he’d get together a chorus of Maori placenames along the route.”
Geoff sings the lead vocal, and Don organised a supporting chorus of Anika Moa, Annie Crummer, and Laughton Kora, and was part of the chorus too. Don produced the song, and it was recorded at Dave Dobbyn’s Red Trolley Studio in Grey Lynn. The song is available for download at www.amplifier.co.nz “John Hore sang a song back in the ‘60s -
- that had 115 place names, says Chapple. “We haven’t got quite that many, but aside from the John Hore song, I think has more place names than any other song I can think of. The names go from north to south, from Cape Reinga, to Rakiura (Stewart Island).”
“There are plenty of tramping songs out there, but composition dried up somewhere
Blue Trail – Te Araroa
in the 1970s, and most of them I know of were basically humorous, about getting soaked, and dank socks.
“Blue Trail – Te Araroa
is different from that tradition. Those who do the track are generally out there alone, and the song tries to describe the wonder of being enveloped in the land for weeks on end. It starts with a quote from the Rex Fairburn poem Wilderness.
I could be happy in blue and fortunate weather
Roaming the country that lies between you and the sun.
“That was the quote I put on the Te Araroa plaque, when we opened the first linking track between Kerikeri and Waitangi, “says Chapple. “So it seemed a good way to start the song.”
To a Friend in the