Te Aroha

So Great Hearts: First Ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook is by author Hazel Phillips, who lives in Taupō.

Uh, nonfiction adventurer and author Hazel has been producing all sorts of interesting books over the years from a biography of Bob Harvey to Solo, a book about her outdoors adventures, and Great Hearts: First Ladies of Aoraki Mount Cook, as the title suggests, is a biography of a series of female climbers who tackled Aoraki when it was not the done thing for the ladies, from Freda Duffour, who, as you probably know, is the first woman to climb our tallest maunga in 1910, and to, um, ending with Doreen Pickens, who was introduced to mountains at a Baptist camp on Te Aroha.

Uh, while the religion didn't float her boat, the climbing did.

It's such a beautiful volume.

I recall talking about it with our West Coast correspondent and of course it's not the easiest, uh, i- in terms of sea conditions and challenge, it's not the easiest route either, is it, up that, uh, that West, West Coast? Okay, speaking of weather, a very windy start to spring and now some will lucky you, it's been windy where I am all year.

[laughs] But a windy start to spring, it's typically the windy season, isn't it, in, in, uh, Te Aroha? But gonna get windier this year.

It is always windy here in spring, and somehow each year it takes me by surprise.

Uh [laughs] but, uh, it's set to be windier than usual, I think it's fair to say this year.

They had a game on the weekend.

It was a battle of the maunga between us and Te Aroha.

Where's Te Aroha? Are they up Levinwe?

No, no. Te Aroha is in Waifu 2.

Oh, right.

Rugby League Club.

Yeah, again.

Wow.

Mania, 10 points at home.

Te Aroha, 82.

So Te Aroha were hurting after we took them out at home and they came back and that put a big score on Mania.

So Mania, it'll be interesting to see what they're going to pull out on their third game.

So they're taking a couple of losses there.