Barrie Thomas

In Barrie's words

I was born in Christchurch in 1936, and I was fairly interested in the outdoors myself personally although I didn’t come from a family who had an outdoor background. I had been a very keen skier and joined the local Mt Cheeseman ski club and skied there for a number of years and enjoyed it so I had a background in the outdoors to that degree.

I went to school at St Andrews College in Christchurch, I was an agricultural student at the college in the latter years and was interested in farming so I was a person who was pointed to the outdoors, so I think that influenced me later in life to take up my post in the Park system that I did. My first job was the office boy at NZ Loan and Mercantile which was a stock and station agent, and I used to chase stock round the Addington sale yards and finally with them I went to Wellington and became a wool classer for NZ Loan and Merc and then left there and went on to other jobs. I spent some time in their Thorndon store in Wellington and that was interesting. My aim was to become a wool buyer but while I was there, I got a bit of sickness and that made me return to Christchurch unfortunately and I didn’t pursue that career which was a shame. Wool buying was quite a professional thing to be doing and that was my aim, wool classing was only part of that chain.

I was a policeman for 10 years in Christchurch and I went through all the areas of police work, I was in the Criminal Investigation branch and spent two years doing fatal motor accidents for an area between Christchurch and Kaikoura and in the final years of my police career I became a dog handler and took on the care of a 100 lb pure black German shepherd and hence I spent most of my time training out on the hills in Christchurch. My introduction to Parks and Reserves was very interesting.

When I was in the police I actually decided because of my interest in the back country and my connections with Peter Croft, the Chief Ranger of Arthur's Pass National Park, who became a very good friend of mine, that I should do an essay competition for the APNP and the prize would be a trip to the Park for young people. To do this I got in touch with a chap called Walter Olivier who was the Secretary of the APNP Board and Walter encouraged me to do this and then it so happened on one occasion they had a vacancy for Senior Ranger of the Mt Cook NP and seeing Walter knew I had an interest in the outdoors and was doing this essay competition he suggested that I might get on the interview list, just go and talk to Noel Coad the Commissioner and he’ll put you on it. So, I ended up on the interview list, the very last person to be interviewed by this very formidable Park Board with people like Henry Connor. So, I ended up at the interview in the Worcester St office of Land and Survey and I was told a couple of days later that I had the job, I was to become the Senior Ranger at Mt Cook.

Don Bell was the Chief Ranger at the time. But to learn how to and the finer points of rangering I was to go to Arthur's Pass for a month and work under the Right Honourable Peter Croft who was the Chief Ranger there at the time. So, I went up to AP and spent some time with Peter and mostly in and out of the workshop learning all the practical things that rangers did in those days and I was then posted to Mt Cook where I took over from the Senior Ranger there.

Don Bell, the Chief Ranger left after I’d been there 12 months, and I applied for his job and was appointed Chief Ranger. The reason that my promotion was accelerated was that they were looking for an administrator probably but also someone who could look after the Search & Rescue side of it and I had skills in this because I was heavily involved when I was in the police with this.