Who is Paul? Part I

By Heidi Baker, Mangawhai Trackies

Nestled between The Club pétanque court and the Mangawhai Golf Club driving range car park is an inviting bush trail. At the first bend, you can take a left onto the Last of the Summer Wine path. Beyond this option, and within sight, is the alternative Paul’s Track.

Most visitors to the Mangawhai Community Park trails probably use distance or terrain to decide which path to take. The bigger question for me has always been ‘Who is Paul?’

There is an outstanding book in our local library called Making Tracks: Walking in Mangawhai Northland by Jean Goldschmidt, which covers the history of how the Mangawhai Walking Weekend began. I thought I might discover who Paul was and, for that matter, why the other trail was called Last of the Summer Wine. In reading this book, I discovered so much more. And, as it turns out, the story begins with Jean, not Paul at all.

In her book, Jean describes wanting to create a Walking Weekend in Mangawhai to help keep visitors coming during the ‘off-season’. She brought together a group of like-minded locals to help establish this annual event. However, one of the first obstacles the team faced was a distinct lack of trails.

Not to be dissuaded, around 2007, Jean persuaded a traveller with bush track planning skills, who happened to be passing through the Mangawhai Information Centre, to apply his expertise in the Mangawhai Community Park bush. Trevor Butler kindly marked out the track from behind the Info Centre through to the museum.

Needing labour, Jean asked husband Don and friend Paul, who then recruited a few others, to form a small but dedicated team consisting of Don Goldschmidt, Paul Freeman, Ted Tuffy (and his Auckland-based brother Rod), Rex Kirby and François d’Armand with his dog, Lucky. These men gathered on Friday mornings to carve a new path through thick vegetation. So began the ‘Trackies’.

On February 6, 2008, the first track –The Last of the Summer Wine – was officially opened to a gathering of 200 locals, who were able to walk it for the very first time. This success attracted more volunteers to the Trackies, just in time to start work on the next track: Paul’s Track.

But none of this explained who Paul was, or why he had a trail named after him. So I contacted Jean directly, and she pointed me in the direction of Paul and Dorothy Freeman.

On a rainy morning, we met to reminisce about the early days of the Trackies. I asked Paul why he had volunteered to work on the tracks when hardly anyone else was involved. He explained that his wife Dorothy volunteered with Jean at the Information Centre. As they were already friends, Jean asked if Paul could help. Being fit, healthy, and keen to make a positive contribution to the community, Paul happily agreed, enlisting a few of his buddies to help.

To be continued