Speed, fear and death
Jo Morgan has lived in a house bus, seen the world by motorbike, and had a son who invented Trade Me. She’s been a junk dealer, bus driver, and diving teacher. She took up mountaineering when she was 57, and three years ago survived an avalanche that killed her two guides. Mike White talks to her ahead of the release of her autobiography, Dancing With the Machine.
First, death. At 2am on 31 October 2018, Jo Morgan left Empress Hut high in the Southern Alps, with guides Wolfgang Maier and Martin Hess. Following the imprint of their footsteps in crusty snow, and the erratic sweep of their headlamps, Morgan was aiming to climb Mt Hicks, near Aoraki/ Mt Cook, in a slender window before bad weather roared back in.
Just after 5am, as the country’s highest peaks were dusted with the first flush of dawn, Morgan heard Maier cry ‘‘F...’’ before she was hit by a two-metre wave of snow, and barrelled down the slope by a spring avalanche.
When she stopped, her headlamp was still shining, but she was largely pinned beneath the snow’s surface, her cries to her companions unanswered.
Morgan estimates it was an hour before she dug herself out, and by that time, she knew Maier and Hess were dead. Hess, 50, had been buried deeply. Maier, 58, appears to have survived the avalanche, and scratched an air pocket. But when rescuers reached him, he couldn’t be resuscitated.
Morgan had met Maier eight years earlier, and together they had almost completed Morgan’s mission to climb the 24 peaks in the Southern Alps over 3000m. Mt Hicks was the second-to-last on their list.
The night before, waiting in the hut, the trio had discussed death and danger and wills and what-ifs.
And Maier had said, if he died out there, for heaven’s sake don’t say he died doing something he loved.
‘‘What I want to do is sit on my balcony,’’ he told Morgan, ‘‘with my whisky and my cigars, watching my grandchildren play in the pool.’’
In the end, that never happened. Morgan was the one who somehow survived, fortune and physics favouring her in that mad, flailing moment.
She’s wondered how and why. She’s questioned whether she could have done more. She’s worried that she should feel more guilt for being the reason they were all on the mountain that morning.
But it just happened, it was an accident. And there was so much more in her life before then, and so much more in the future. ‘‘I don’t really want to be famous for surviving an avalanche.’’
Jo Morgan’s dad died from a heart attack when she was one. Her mother, Mary, was left with eight children, surviving on a widow’s benefit, part-time work, and others’ generosity. Meals cooked on the coal range, soap made from roast dinner fat, penury a nearby neighbour.
Jo was the youngest, a self-reliant child with a habit of climbing things, and jumping off.
At 15, she got her driver’s licence and immediately bought a 50cc motorbike with savings from after-school jobs around Invercargill. She doesn’t remember ever being taught to ride, but was soon dismantling bikes and becoming an adept mechanic.
For her 20th birthday, Morgan’s mum gave her a socket set.
She went to Massey University to become a vet, but was far too soft for that – she smuggled out a rat she was meant to be dissecting in the lab, and made it her pet.
She squatted in an empty house to save money, got bigger motorbikes, and at 21 got pregnant.
She’d met Gareth Morgan when she shifted into his flat in Palmerston North. They disliked each other immediately. Jo remembers all they had in common were their large, aggressive dogs, who didn’t like each other much, either.
But eventually Jo and Gareth got together, shifted to Wellington where Gareth had a job as an economist at the Reserve Bank, and got married in 1975 after they found out Jo was pregnant.
That was Sam, who later went on to found Trade Me. Jessi, Floyd and Ruby followed.
For several years, the family lived in a gasguzzling Bedford house bus, travelling the country, with Jo doing everything from picking carrots and gutting fish to mustering sheep. As the kids grew up, she drove council buses, taught science, taught diving and waitressed. But trading proved her calling.
From treasures discovered at auctions, to cars, to houses, she dealt for profit and the buzz of it. For a while she had a van emblazoned with Jo’s Junk on it, as she scoured Wellington for bargains.
She still has boxes of stuff from this time in her garage: 1000 swimming goggles, all sorts of motorbike bits. She had a stuffed sheep that supposedly featured in an early Peter Jackson film, but moths got to it.
For a while, the family teetered between bourgeoisie and bankruptcy, but eventually Gareth’s work and companies bore fruit, allowing the family comfort. The passion for motorbikes never waned, and in 2001, Jo and Gareth went to India and rode to Ladakh, starting a love of touring that’s played an enormous part in their lives ever since.
On a lounge wall of Jo and Gareth Morgan’s Wellington home that they’ve lived in for nearly three decades, is a giant National Geographic map of the world.
Traced across it are thin black lines marking where the couple have motorbiked in the past 20 years.
On every continent. Across the Himalayas, Andes and Caucasus. Through North Korea. Along the Silk Road, the Road of Bones, the Bandit Highway, roads that ran out, and roads that went nowhere. More than 110 countries.
Morgan has had spills and sickness, been violently attacked in India, stoned by youths in Ethiopia and Libya, taken custody in Iran, and chased by wolves in Russia.
‘‘There was this huge white one that must have been the leader of the pack – just enormous. And I’m thinking, s..., if I fall off, they’re going to keep hunting me.’’
Tauranga farmer Dave Wallace has been riding with the Morgans for 20 years, and often goes walking with Jo when they arrive in a new town.
‘‘We end up in some silly places. Jo has a skill for meeting people and engaging with them. But there’s a few times I’ve said, ‘Jo, we’re not going down that street, we’re going the other way’.
‘‘She’s probably a bit more keen to go and do something that’s a bit on the edge.’’
Wallace says they’ve become close friends, and he hopes there are more adventures still to come.
‘‘I treat her as my sister. We argue, we fight, we love each other. And she’s got an amazing sense of humour. Sometimes it’s hidden below a couple of layers though, and you’ve got to think about it a bit.’’
Morgan, now 68, looks at the map, sees the lines, and can’t help but think they’ve only scratched the world’s surface, how many unmarked spaces there are to explore.
All of West Africa beckons, Liberia particularly, with its incredible history.
But Covid put a halt on things, and Morgan realises age isn’t doing any of them any favours.
She had a knee replacement eight months ago, and it’s still not come right.
‘‘We’re getting old enough to die.’’
Not that old, though. She still has four motorbikes, from a 1928 Indian Prince with a top speed of 60kmh, to a bright yellow Ducati she’s done 250kmh on. (‘‘The corner comes up really fast...’’)
But Morgan swears she’s not a motorbike nut. They’re just a means to travel, to explore far off places where you can find a seat on a street corner at the end of the day, and watch everything go by. And meet different people.
Morgan was recently out walking with one of her eight grandchildren and paused to chat to a passerby.
Her granddaughter asked if Morgan knew the person. ‘‘You shouldn’t be talking to strangers, Nana.’’
‘‘And I said, ‘Strangers are great fun. You never know what you’ll find. You might find something really special, or somebody you really like.’
‘‘We do lock people out because they’re not fitting into our little boxes.’’
‘‘You wander round Wellington, and you’re just another old lady. You get in the mountains and there’s nobody else up there, and it doesn’t matter what you are or how you’ve dressed or when you last washed anything. You’re sort of one with survival and nature.’’ Jo Morgan
Around the corner from the motorbiking map in Morgan’s house is a much smaller one of the Southern Alps. Pinned to it is a piece of paper with all the 3000m peaks handwritten on it, like a shopping list.
Morgan’s mountain guide, Wolfgang Maier, often used to ask her: ‘‘Why are you here, Jo?’’
‘‘I think he was trying to find out, ‘Why are you risking it all? You’ve got so many choices, you can do anything. This is not safe.’
‘‘I don’t know if there’s a great selfishness in me, that makes me want to climb,’’ says Morgan. ‘‘But ever since I was little, I’ve looked up and wondered – where can you go to?’’
She would climb on roofs, up trees, and did springboard and tower diving.
She was never really afraid of heights, but says maybe her shortsightedness blurred the reality of any fall.
The fact it took until 2010, when she was 57, to do a beginner’s alpine course, was the result of business needs, family commitments and motorbike trips.
‘‘And I don’t think I ever realised what was out there.
‘‘It’s definitely addictive. And whether that’s because of the fear, adrenaline, or whether it was just getting away and getting peace, and suddenly being in the great outside, where you’re nothing.’’
Morgan would return from a trip with Maier, find herself at the family’s bach in Pa¯ pa¯ moa for Christmas, ‘‘and I’d be sending Wolfgang a message saying, ‘When can we go next?’
‘‘I just couldn’t think of anything better than to go back there, get away from the beach, and cut a little groove in the ice and throw your sleeping bag in it.
‘‘He’d take me out, doing multi-day climbs with somebody most guides would probably roll their eyes at and say, ‘You can’t take granny up there.’
‘‘But he appreciated the fact I didn’t talk much, and I didn’t moan.’’
Morgan was always aware of the dangers, just like with motorcycling, but usually shut fear from her mind.
‘‘Whether it’s a rock going past you, or a truck that misses you by two inches – it was two inches, isn’t that great. It missed. So that’s a good day.’’
What happened to Maier and Hess on Mt Hicks that morning, more than three years ago, hasn’t put her off climbing, or soured her love of the mountains. She never doubted she’d return.
Nor has Morgan given up on reaching the summits of Mt Hicks and Torres Peak, the last of the 3000m peaks on her list. (She got to the summit ridge of Torres just before Covid, but weather beat them back.)
But she admits the urgency has subsided. Conditions won’t be right for an attempt until October, at the earliest, and if it doesn’t happen, well, so be it.
Whatever happens, she’s loved the climbing she’s done, even the exhausting, 25-hour days, with her knees and back screaming.
‘‘I think climbing has made me realise, you’re more capable and stronger than we think.
‘‘You wander round Wellington, and you’re just another old lady. You get in the mountains and there’s nobody else up there, and it doesn’t matter what you are or how you’ve dressed or when you last washed anything.
‘‘You’re sort of one with survival and nature. Out there in the mountains you do feel you’re just temporary little blips on the landscape.’’
Life is very different for Morgan now, compared to her straight and straitened upbringing. Successful businesses, a canny early investment in son Sam’s fledgling Trade Me, and an innate vein of frugality have brought ease and options.
‘‘I’m a real tight-arse. I’d far rather reuse and recycle, and I’m not into consumption, generally.’’
She has the occasional splurge, ‘‘but it’s definitely not shoes’’.
The family, which has had a high profile through Gareth’s economic and political careers, and Sam’s business, are involved in considerable philanthropy too, through the Morgan Foundation.
Morgan has also moved away from the Catholic beliefs and schooling of her childhood.
‘‘You’d go to other countries, and they would all have different gods and different beliefs, and ‘you’re wrong, and I’m right’. And you think, how feeble is that?
‘‘And you go to villages and the only fat man is the pastor or the priest, and you think, oh...
‘‘For me, I look in the garden and watch trees grow and watch the intricacy of nature and think, god, that’s amazing.’’
Several monarch butterfly chrysalises dangle delicately inside the frames of Morgan’s kitchen windows.
She maintains a loop of pest traps around her neighbourhood, and native birds repay her by frequently visiting her garden. Despite her love of travel, Morgan says she can go a week without leaving the house.
‘‘Being able to sit here and feed the tu¯ ı¯ and plant a few nikau palms – I’m very content.’’
But Morgan admits she’s also impulsive.
‘‘I hope I am. I’d like to think if the phone rang and somebody said, ‘Would you like to do this?’ I’d say, yes.’’
Like the time in England when she discovered a nearby airfield did wing-walking. Morgan immediately signed up and strapped herself to a biplane for one of the thrills of her life.
‘‘I do hope the book makes people think, ‘oh shivers, I could give something a go,’ or, ‘my kid could do that,’ or, ‘that’s a bit of fun’.’’
A glance at the map on her wall reminds her of all the things she’d still love to do, and the places she’d love to get to, when Covid and dodgy knees allow.
She hopes there are still many more lines to draw on it.
‘‘But travelling rough. Not cities and art galleries. I’m not going anywhere with wheelchair access yet.’’
Dancing with the Machine: Adventures of a rebel, by Jo Morgan, with John McCrystal, (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) is published on February 22.