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Beautiful books by author/photographer and keen outdoorsman Shaun Barnett have become something of a regular feature around this time of year. Having tramped the length and breadth of New Zealand, there were few better qualified than Barnett to write about the country’s history of tramping and its backcountry huts – it’s estimated he visited more than 1000 of them – or advise on short and long walks.
But A Wild Life: Photographs from the Backcountry of Aotearoa is likely to be the last of these. Barnett, a full-time writer and photographer for 30 years, died earlier this year, aged 55, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
Here, his friend and publisher Robbie Burton remembers Barnett and explains why he wanted to do one last book.
The wild life of Shaun Barnett
The first blast of winter rain slammed into the tin wall of the hut just as we finished sweeping it. In the half-light Shaun Barnett, and I exchanged wry grins at the timing, then shouldered our packs and began a damp haul up the ridge toward Mt Starveall. With our friend Peter, we were walking a section of the Alpine Route in the Richmond Ranges behind Nelson in July, 2019.
The next three days, to Slaty Hut, Old Man Hut and Mt Rintoul Hut, passed in a horizon-less world of mist, rain and snow. On the fifth day, the weather finally broke to a vivid, still blueness. We sidled up and around the aptly named Purple Top, relishing the warmth of the sun in our faces and the spreading vistas before dropping into the mountain beech on the far side to follow a curving ridgetop route, swinging around below the top of Bishops Cap and down to Tarn Hut.
I have the clearest memory of that day, both for the spacious views of the mountains of Nelson Lakes revealing themselves to the south, but just as strongly, the long, easy conversation with Shaun as we rambled through his endless bank of fascinating stories from years in the hills. It was wonderful to have the leisurely opportunity to do this, as I was able to put together his life story in far more detail than I had before.
Shaun Barnett was raised in Hawke’s Bay and began tramping in the ranges to the west, the Ruahines, the Kawekas and the Kaimanawas. The appeal was instant, so sufficiently intense and enduring that at an Outdoor Pursuits Centre course in his sixth form year (Year 12), he decided he wanted a life centred around the outdoors.
After a zoology degree at Massey University in Palmerston North, he completed a postgraduate degree in parks, recreation and tourism at Lincoln University, and after a number of short-term contracts, eventually ended up with a permanent job for the Department of Conservation in Hamilton, working in pest control.
During this time, a few formative things happened. He met his partner Tania and realised that not only was there a limit to the satisfaction to be had from killing possums, but he did not want a job that required him to spend large chunks of time in the field, away from his partner as well as the cultural and social benefits of living in a city.
He also started to sell some articles and photographs to magazines. It was at this point that it occurred to him maybe there was a career to be had in writing about and photographing the outdoors. After an extended trip overseas, he returned to set up a life in Wellington, and with Tania’s backing, took the plunge into the freelance work.
The ambition that underpins this decision (which he always downplayed as naïvety) was easily overlooked in his company. Shaun was one of nature’s gentlemen: generous, full of integrity and unfailingly modest.
But this absence of any obvious type A traits was deceptive, for he focused an impressive degree of drive, discipline and tenacity into forging his unlikely career as an outdoor writer, editor and photographer, one of a tiny number of people who have managed to do anything like this in our country. As a consequence, he established himself as the pre-eminent New Zealand tramping author of his generation and a foremost authority on the subject.
It was through this career that Shaun became one of my most valued colleagues, as well as a good friend. I published nearly all the books he wrote during a 25-year period. This legacy included such titles as Classic Tramping in New Zealand, Tramping in New Zealand, Day Walks in New Zealand, as well as other books he co-authored, such as Shelter from the Storm: The Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts, and Tramping: A New Zealand History.
In a devastating blow for him, his family, friends and the wider outdoor community, Shaun was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer late in 2023. Out of the helplessness that descended came one bright spot that we both simultaneously realised – there was one final project we could achieve: a photographic tribute to his outdoor life.
And so it was that A Wild Life came into being, a collection of photographs of the places that New Zealanders love to explore, including a particularly strong focus on the axial ranges of the North Island, often neglected in books on tramping. Additionally, there are many photographs of his beloved backcountry huts, as well as images of people in these environments.
Shaun did not survive to see the finished book, but I did have the privilege, in his final weeks, of being able to take him a finished proof. This man, as much as anyone I have known, deserved to be honoured with this beautiful book.
