When you talk to Kiwis (New Zealanders) about “tramping” or “being a tramper”, they know exactly what you mean. When you talk to visitors or people abroad, quite often you have to explain what you’re talking about.
Definitions
Online references such as Wiktionary define a tramper as recreational hiker, one who hikes, and a hike as being a long walk.
WordNet comes up with a foot traveler; someone who goes on an extended walk (for pleasure).
While the above is pretty close, it’s not exactly what comes to mind when I think of “tramping” or a “tramper” in New Zealand terms.
Tramper in Cobb Valley at Chaffey Stream.
So, what exactly is a tramper?
Ask a dozen Kiwis what a tramper is and you’re bound to hear twelve different explanations. The fact is, it cannot be put in one word, perhaps not even in one sentence.
One of the best definitions I have ever come across is the following:
“What is a tramper? It is a person of stalwart build, with strong limbs and a healthy heart, capable of carrying heavy loads for long distances, who can endure hardship both severe and petty without complaint, who is hospitable, kindly, good humoured, reliable and can take an intelligent interest in all aspects of the mountains, in the rocks, the flowers, the trees, the birds and all that forms part of the mountains, who excels in all the virtues of a good bushman, and pathfinder. Moreover he must tramp for no other reason than that he finds exhilaration in putting himself against an adversity while revelling in the beauty of his surroundings.”
By Tony Nolan, 1956—quoted in a tribute to Arthur Bates in Wanganui Tramping Club’s 50th Jubilee Magazine.
Tramper at Leslie River.
Trampers crossing Awaroa Inlet.
Tramper crossing Gunner River swingbridge.
Trampers arrive at Heaphy Hut.
To view my other photos of trampers please browse my gallery.
What is your definition of a “tramper”?
What comes to your mind when you think of a “tramper”?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
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Tags: trampers
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Someone who enjoys breathing deeply outdoors and is prepared to walk rather long distances to enjoy that exhilaration.
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I love it when I mention my tramping passion to Americans when I visit there – they immediately invision me dressing up as a bum to spend my weekend scouring through rubbish bins – or worse still, hitting the bars offering my body to drunk, loose women!
I see it as a cross between hiking and mountaineering.
PS – Hey Marcus you gotta do something about that pack weight – jeez, looks like you’re carry two kids in there!-
Rob, nope, no kids in there. It’s that stalwart build and strong limbs that carry everything but the kitchen sink
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Kia ora Markus,
As a transplanted American, former hiker now 17 year tramper I definitely have an offering.
A few years back I took a couple of American friends, both experienced hikers, on a crossing of the Ruahines. Once beyond the track to Sunrise hut the rest of the journey is on at best very rough tracks, no tracks, or in the rivers. Just getting them to understand that in the river actually meant IN the river was interesting. On this trip it rained for 72 straight hours, the rivers and creeks were all flooded, and the tops cloudy misty and obscured. Yet we battled our way across. On the third afternoon, after a couple dicey river crossings, a steep climb, battle across tops, the an equally steep drop to another flooded river, I noticed one of my mates had gone quite quiet. Safe in the hut with a the fire going and warm clothes on, I asked him if he was okay. He replied he had never done anything like this before, the places he hiked in California well laid out paths with signs everywhere, and bridges over the rivers. “Im’ a hiker not a tramper!”, he said. I have always remembered that. And after my mate realized the worst was behind him, and what he had done, he became positively ebbulent. 10 years later he still talks about that trip. Not that America does not offer remote rough and rugged places to tramp, but I suspect those who do would appreciate the trem tramper as better describing them than hiker.
So to me, tramping is getting off the relatively beaten paths, and accepting with good cheer the terrain it presents, being able to go slow enough to appeciate the views and the smaller world, and at the end of the trip looking forward to the next one.
Great post Markus,
Cheers,
Robb-
Touche
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Kia ora Robb, great account of events, thank you.
Over the years I’ve learnt that when I do take someone along on a tramping trip, I need to explain the type of tramp and what conditions can be expected. Another good approach is to ask potential companions what sort of trips they’ve done before and what they got out of it.
One line that stood out in your comment is “…being able to go slow enough to appreciate the views and the smaller world, and at the end of the trip looking forward to the next one.” My thoughts entirely!
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Hi Markus.
Hmm, interesting post that opens a can of worms, and I’m not sure I agree with Tony Nolan as you’ve quoted him. His definition sounds idealist and definitely doesn’t fit everyone I’d categorise as a tramper. Many trampers today aren’t into navigation or bush bashing at all, and are content with sticking to well known tracks and walks. Although perhaps any definition here will be idealist one way or another. If I made a definition specific to people I know, neither “stalwart build” or “strong limbs” would be appropriate across the board, and it’d probably include something about pride in practicality and a lack of fashion sense.
Perhaps Tony simply wrote a definition suitable for 1956.I think what you’ve said is correct, in that everyone defines the word to match what they do or what they idolise. The broadest definition I can think of is something like “one who walks through the New Zealand back-country with self-sufficiency and the intent of recreation”. It’s not a very useful definition because a person out to enjoy nature in all its fullness of gale-force winds and remote flooded rivers isn’t out with the same goals as a person who likes to walk up to Powell Hut with a bottle of wine, three friends and a gourmet frying pan on a sunny weekend. The word’s ambiguous enough that if I tell someone I enjoy tramping, it’s more likely that not they’ll visualise something completely different from what I mean. I do think it’s still tied to New Zealand, but perhaps even that’s unfair in this day and age.
Mark Pickering made some historic observations in his Trampers’ Journey book (temporarily wandering from my bookshelf) which traced the word to people who walked through the bush simply because it was the best available way for them to drift between places looking for work.
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Mike, thank you for your observations and thoughts on this.
I totally agree with you that Tony Nolan’s definition of tramping reflects the 1950s (even though I wasn’t around in those days). However, I believe there are aspects in his definition that apply to this day.
It is very obvious from your and other reader’s comments that tramping is a very broad term and conjures up different ideals in all of us. Like you said, when I talk to someone about my tramping trips, I also find myself defining what type of trips they are—off track, mountainous, self-sufficient for ten days, etc.
Thank you for opening a can of worms, as you put it. It makes comment threads like this one interesting
Thank you also for mentioning Mark Pickering’s book and his historic observations—I was always curious about the origin of New Zealand’s use of the word tramping.
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Hi again. The recent comments on this post reminded me, and I’ve finally found Mark Pickering’s book. The reference I remembered is from the Foreward section, and right from the opening paragraph:
“It was a long time ago, when New Zealand was still at the end of the world. A man carried his swag across the dry Mackenzie country, sweating in the late spring heat and dossed down for the night at Haldon Station. Station owners were usually fairly obliging to these itinerant men, often giving them a feed as well as a bed, and on any day of the week, a back-country sheep station like Haldon might get four or five men a night, travelling off the hot plains and peering into the cook-house just on sundown.
“This particular evening was quiet. The owner of Haldon Station at that time was Thomas Teschemaker who kept a diary, and the entry for 12 October 1866 noted curtly, ‘A tramper slept here…’
“This is one of the earliest literary references to the word ‘tramper’. Tramping (a uniquely New Zealand term for hiking or bushwalking) started in New Zealand as a necessity, the end result of a long process of human engagement with the mountains, and the tramping culture that we have inherited is a direct descendant of the difficult geography and travelling privations that the first back-country travellers had to endure. They left behind an infrastructure and an attitude.”
In other words Mark Pickering’s claimed that it’s a uniquely New Zealand word, but I’m not sure that’s completely accurate, even today given that German people seem to relate to it from what I understand.
The current Wikipedia rendition on ‘Tramp’ mostly talks about the American usage for homeless travellers, but the final paragraph also points out that it’s an old Middle English term meaning to ‘walk with heavy footsteps’. There’s at least one American reference to the word ‘Tramp’ on page 161 of Bart Kennedy’s 1900 book called ‘A Man Adrift’ where it’s used as if to mean walking (“I used to listen to the tramp, tramp of my feet, and wonder where I was going, and why I was going.”) I guess it’s all connected, even if it has different connotations geographically.
So I suppose the word got here somehow (maybe German immigrants, some kind of middle-English derivative, or from people arriving from the US perhaps… there would have been many gold prospectors coming from that way) and was somehow applied to people who seemed to match that description in New Zealand’s early days… even if ‘homeless’ didn’t equate to vagrancy in our case. However it came to be used here, it eventually ended up in the Haldon Station owner’s diary.
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Hi Markus. No problem and the thread’s resulting in some interesting comments. For the record, I’m not certain about how authoritative Mark Pickering’s claims are and I don’t remember on what he bases them, but it seems as plausible as anything I can think of at the very least. I think his intent was to claim that the words “tramper” and “tramping” really do originate from the word “tramp” (the noun) as it’s accepted in a much more international sense. ie. It was the drifters and the tramps during the New Zealand gold rushes who were the original people wandering through the back-country in that sense.
Perhaps the Tararua Tramping Club had something to do with its acceptance in a recreational context (just me guessing), but it might have been used to mean the same sort of thing before the formation of the TTC. Actually I just went and looked up Chris MacLean’s “Tararua: The Story of a Mountain Range”, which includes lots of history of the TTC. He’s stated on page 107 (1st edition):
“The change in general attitude towards forest and birds was accompanied by a growing interest in walking in the mountains, not to find gold or to explore but simply for enjoyment. This activity, which was to be come known as tramping (from the Middle English/German ‘trampen — to walk heavily’) began in the mountainous areas of Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. The emergence of a leisured middle class coincided with the development of the European railway network, which made walking in the mountains feasible for the first time for city people and led to the formation of walking clubs, especially in Germany. The European fashion for walking in the forest and alps spread to England, although the relative absence of mountains meant that the fashion there became an enthusiasm for walking in the countryside. Healthy outdoor recreation became popular in Victorian England, with its rapid industrialisation and accompanying urban sprawl. For many people, walking was a means of escape from overcrowded dirty cities into the rural England of country lanes and rustic villages. In the United States there was no shortage of mountains and ‘hiking’, as it was known, soon became popular. The first hiking group, the Sierra Club, was founded in 1892 by John Muir, who lived in the Yosemite Valley for many years and never tired of promoting its remarkable scenery. Interest in walking soon spread to New Zealand, where it was quickly taken up by those who had championed conservation of the forests for aesthetic, as well as practical, reasons. Here, as in Europe, walkers benefited from the development of a national rail network, which for the first time made travel throughout the colony feasible.”
So I suppose it’s not completely clear-cut.
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Keeping up with the tangent, I find it interesting that historically, tramping seems to be specifically associated with the advent of “middle class” people (probably including the 40 hour work week), and with those people having available transport to travel reasonable distances. I guess good transport is an all-important thing for this kind of recreation. Otherwise you’re just walking to the same places all the time.
It wouldn’t have occurred to me without careful thinking that it’s really only been around since the mid-1800’s, as in: Didn’t people explore mountains before that? They probably did, but perhaps not as much for recreation to get away from their lives as for a way of life in itself. I suppose before that time there would be all sorts of other issues too, such as having the time, keeping less-populated roads and regions safe from bandits and brigands, and so on.
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when i was nzfs there was no offence intended but if you didn,t carry a rifle you where a loopy, and i often still hear the term used, when on the heaphy track doing patrol work all non staff where called loopy,s, and yes i carry a camera now so im a LOOPY at last.
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Thanks Bradley, I haven’t heard the term loopy for a while. However, I remember that, quite a few years ago, I met a West Coast DOC worker in Taipo Valley who used the term loopy. His interpretation of loopy was something like “a person from town who goes tramping but doesn’t understand or know anything about the bush”. When I told him I did live in a town he quickly added “present company excepted”.
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I love this post. I’m american. Prior to coming to New Zealand my husband discovered the word and jokingly called my a tramp. (yes, now i know its tramper not tramp, but at the time it was funny)
We spent the month before coming to NZ running around calling each other tramps. =)
I love NZ tramping – it is different from the easy hiking paths I’m accustomed to back home.
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welcome to paradise
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And loopy? I have heard it comes from doing the loop round the S.I. which included the newly opened Haast Pass. Maybe the West Coasters came up with the term.
Have to say I know a lot of trampers who have virtually zero interest in the flora and fauna e.g. they wouldn’t know a snow marguerite if they saw one. It’s just something to stand on, as they race past when you’re trying to take a photo of one.
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