Book Review
“Fire and Ice” by Hazel Phillips, published by Massey University Press. Price $49.99. Reviewed by Tony Orman
At first I struggled to get into this book for the first chapter detailed a climb with some local character called “Henry” who in a climb when he was in an angry mood, went up Mt Ruapehu’s “Little Matterhorn” and smashed a plaque that had been placed in 1922 iin memory of an early Mt Ruapehu surveyor and explorer Hugh Girdlestone. For me, it was an off-putting introduction to the book and I wondered what sort of nutter “Henry” was.
On 28 August 1918, Hugh Girdlestone was killed in World War One in France serving his country. I concluded Hugh Girdlestone was many times the man, quality-wise that “Henry” is. “Henry’s act of disrespectful vandalism was to me, tantamount to grave desecration. Perhaps my annoyance was generated by relating to Hugh Girdlestone because my personal career experience in land surveying and working on Ruapehu and the Tukino eastern side of the mountain.
Therefore a small criticism. That chapter, if it had to be included, would have been better further into the book – or dare I suggest, perhaps not at all.
Thereafter I overcame my annoyance as I turned the pages and began to read. The authors engaging style soon dispelled my initial irritation and I became absorbed.
The author is a self-confessed “Ruapehu addict” and a fine writer who has woven intriguing chapters around Mt Ruapehu’s ghost stories, fires, avalanches, aeroplane wrecks, sly gorging, World War dodgers, missing climbers over the years and other happenings. She doesn’t ignore Ruapehu’s twin volcanoes Tongariro and Ngaurhoe either.
“I’m not a particularly spiritual person but I reckon the mountains of the Central North island have spirits living inside them,” says Hazel Phillips in a written interview.
“The landscape here is alive in a way it simply isn’t in the rest of the country.”
In researching the book by field climbs, she stumbled across things she’d never dreamed of. It took a year to get 95 percent of the material for the book, then another six months to assemble the information.
Diligently researched, excellently presented by the publishers, with a competent index and more than 200 historic and present day photographs and over 25 interesting maps, the book is a fine publication. Consequently it gets a well deserved high recommendation.
