Elisabeth Easther talks to Shane McKay from Pelorus Eco Adventures New Zealand.
Growing up on the West Coast, we didn't go on many family holidays and, as a kid, my favourite pastime was trapping possums. For Christmas we might go to my uncle's in Golden Bay, which is where I learned to ride a horse and a motorbike. I remember being bucked off his horses, and I gave up horses after the third time.
After school, I fled the nest to go logging in Port Underwood, near Picton. It was pretty hard to make a living and we often did just three days a week because of rain.
After about six months, I moved to Canterbury where I met a guy from Rai Valley who was heading north to go pig hunting and raft down the Motu River. He asked if I wanted to come too. So I got in his truck with a load of dogs and we drove up to Whakatane where we met some other blokes and jumped in the raft. And it was the most dangerous thing ever. There were four of us and just two wetsuits and two life jackets, and two of the guys wore all of it and me and the other guy wore nothing. I'm pretty sure there were some Grade 5 rapids, but we didn't walk down any of them. We lost rafts and gear, dogs were ripped up by boars. It wasn't even a proper raft, all our sleeping bags got saturated, our packs were underwater — it was a proper disaster.
But back then I was young, fit and hard and I didn't care.
