Margaret Jefferies

Margaret has led a peripatetic and adventurous life in association with her ranger-husband Bruce Jefferies, including seven years at Tongariro National Park when their three children were born, just over two years in the remote Khumbu Region of Nepal during the establishment of Sagarmatha National Park, and another eight years at Tongariro. At that time wives were not allowed to have permanent jobs in the same parks as their husbands, but could relieve.

Margaret did 12 and 6-month stints as the Park Administration Officer, provided park interpretation services for the Summer Nature Programmes, was receptionist at both Park HQ Whakapapa and at Iwikau during the ski seasons, and was a ski-field parking ticket salesperson. After another two-year stint in Nepal (Kathmandu this time), the family returned to work in Gisborne, followed by five years in Papua New Guinea, and then five years in Laos, all while Bruce completed significant international park development projects.

In addition to managing the family in very remote locations, Margaret wrote and published two editions of the handbook to Sagarmatha National Park and a guide to Royal Chitwan National Park. Recalling their time in the Khumbu Region – living at an altitude of 3400m in a tiny house with no electricity or running water in a village 10-days walk from the nearest road – Margaret authored in 2016 the memoir Under the Himalayan Sky. While based in Gisborne she wrote Adventuring in New Zealand: The Sierra Club Travel Guide to the Pearl of the Pacific (1993).

She now supports Project Tongariro as a volunteer, mainly baiting trap lines at Lake Rotopounamu.