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| Baby Brownie |
There can't be many people left alive who would remember the first Carrington Hut at the foot of Camp Spur in the upper Waimakariri Valley, first completed in 1929, which was washed away in in a flood. But there are many who would remember the second one, placed well above the flood level on a river terrace and in the bush. Here is a photo of the hut taken with my mother's Baby Brownie together with an image of the little camera itself.
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| Carrington Hut 1952 |
I have many memories of that hut; here are two.
One night when Mike White, his sister Liz and I were there we were woken by Liz screaming. Mike and I groped for our lights and there sitting bolt upright was Liz eyeballing an equally terrified possum sitting on the dwang beside her. We chased the possum out and returned to sleep. The next day Mike sidled up to me as we tramped back down-valley. "I was scared I was going to find you in the beam of my light last night." "Thanks, mate" was all I could say. And then there was the occasion when one member of a tramping party discovered a twelve inch length of railway rail in his pack having carried it for four hours up the Waimak - he was a big rugby bugger and the hush in the hut was deafening!
And here is Terry Hassell, sometime in the mid nineteen fifties, having a late breakfast in Carrington Hut on the way out from the Upper Waimak Bivi - note the three tiers of bunks and the 'long' stove that existed in the hut - and the old Primus.
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| Terry Hassell in Carrington Hut |
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