Three local legends have been honoured in the 2020 New Year’s Honours, among a list of New Zealand luminaries which includes newly minted Dame Professor Marilyn Waring, DNZM, and former All Black coach Sir Steve Hansen, KNZM.

Internationally acclaimed mountaineer Lydia Bradey, of Lake Hawea, has been appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to mountaineering. Wanaka’s Gary Dickson has been appointed a Companion of the Queen’s Service Order (QSO) for services to search and rescue, and John Taylor of Lake Hawea has been awarded the Queen’s Service Medal (QSM) for services to the community.

Lydia Bradey PHOTO: Guy Hamling

Lydia told the Wanaka App she was “pretty stoked” to receive an award that often goes to national team sports athletes rather than mountaineers.

The ONZM feels like “Hey, thanks for being a woman in that [mountaineering] world”, Lydia said. 

Lydia has been a trailblazer for women climbers during the past 35 years. In 1988 she was the first woman to climb Mt Everest without supplementary oxygen, and she remains the only New Zealander to have achieved this feat. 

She is the only woman to have successfully guided Mt Everest expeditions five times. She summited Aoraki/Mt Cook and Mt Aspiring as a 17-year-old, and climbed the ten ‘Big Walls’ (climbs of three to nine days long) in Yosemite Valley, California, in the 1980s - seven of which were the first female ascents. She also holds the first ascents of mountains in Pakistan and Antarctica.

Lydia has scaled Mt Everest six times, most recently in May 2019. She is a qualified New Zealand Mountain Guides Association guide and is sought-after for guiding both nationally and internationally. She has completed more than 25 expeditions to over 6,000 metres. She was appointed a Life Member of the New Zealand Alpine Club in 2011. Lydia’s achievements inspired the play ‘Taking the High Ground’ written by Jan Bolwell in 2017. Her autobiography (written with Laurence Fearnley), Going Up Is Easy, was published in 2015 and has just been translated into French.

Lydia said she sees the honour as an expectation she will give back a little more to society.

As someone whose “soul is in the mountains”, she said: “I’d like to be involved in advocacy for preserving our natural environment. It doesn’t mean protecting them from people; it means teaching people to love big nature.”

She also feels strongly that young people should be given the opportunity to get out into nature and learn how to make decisions - and mistakes, and so learn self-responsibility.

Whichever path she follows in the future it will involve mountains, she said. “I’ll be zimmering along that trail.”

Gary Dickson PHOTO: Wanaka App

Gary Dickson has contributed more than 35 years of voluntary service to Search and Rescue (SAR) organisations in the South Island. He has served as the communications advisor for Wanaka SAR for the past 18 years and has served as the Alpine Rescue Leader for nine years.

Gary is credited with developing Wanaka SAR from a group of casual volunteers to one of the most professional volunteer alpine cliff rescue teams in New Zealand. He has personally been involved in more than 200 rescue operations during his time volunteering at Aoraki/Mt Cook and in the Wanaka and Fox/Franz Josef Glacier regions.

Gary was surprised to be honoured, he told the Wanaka App, because: “There’s a whole lot of people like me who will jump out of bed in the middle of the night to search for a stranger.”

He is motivated, he said, because “that could be me, or it could be a mate, or someone else’s mate”.

Gary said his ‘day job’ as a mountain guide involves managing a range of issues, and SAR offers similar challenges, some of them arising from three organisations working together on an operation.

“I find it interesting. I don’t always find it enjoyable. I’m still here because we’ve made some progress,” he said.

Gary has been an advisor to LandSAR New Zealand and president of the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association. He represented New Zealand at the International Commission for Alpine Rescue (ICAR) and the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA). He facilitated LandSAR New Zealand’s membership into the ICAR. He has also developed qualification standards for the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association, which was vitally important for New Zealand’s mountain climbing tourism industry. 

Gary hopes to use the appointment to help improve the SAR service during the next 20 years.

“We’re a busy team and it costs everyone quite a bit. My vision would be to someday see Wanaka SAR become a professional service,” he said.

“If you do get rescued, remember it’s not government funded. Give them a donation, or a box of beers, or a nice text or tweet,” he said.

John Taylor PHOTO: Wanaka App

John Taylor, who was born and bred in Hawea Flat, has been involved with the Hawea Community Association (HCA) since 1991. He has been chairman of the Hawea District ANZAC Committee for five years, helping to establish a war memorial for the district and organise ANZAC commemorations. He is an active member of the Lake Hawea Foreshore Working Group, helping to maintain the reserve land along the southern foreshore of the lake, and oversees health and safety aspects of the work done by community volunteers. 

He has held roles with the Guardians of Lake Hawea for 37 years, including three periods as chair between 1995 and 2005. He was one of the group of members instrumental in establishing toilet facilities on the western foreshore, and one of the Guardians and HCA members involved in developing a swimming embayment near the boat ramp, allowing swimmers access when the lake levels are low. 

John has been a member of Wanaka Search and Rescue since 1982 and was made a Life Member in 2017. He is a current member of the Hawea Dip Trust and on the committee of the Upper Clutha Tramping Club. He has previously been involved with the Hawea Flat School Committee and the Lake Hawea Community Centre Trustees committee. John was a founding member of the Lake Hawea Volunteer Fire Brigade, serving in a variety of positions between 1972 and 2008. He was made a Life Member in 2008.

John not only has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Hawea area, but also a passion for the community which explains all his community involvement. He told the Wanaka App he could only do the work he’s done with the “amazing support” of his wife, Diana Manson, and children Jasmin, Rhys, and Sophie.

It is telling that John insisted on paying tribute to his mentors, all of them people of “intelligence, wisdom, and common sense”. They are Dick Cotter, Errol and Colleen Carr, Barbara Chinn, Rachel Brown, April McKenzie and John Langley, Aaron Nicholson, Alan Gillespie, Phill Melchior, and D.J. Graham. John also paid tribute to his late mentors: Ian Kane, Fiona Rowley, Robin Crimp, Gus Nisbet, and John Turnbull.