THE BEGINNING
In 1968, the East Coast Bays Lions Club gazed around the North Shore and decided the teenagers needed to be introduced to a sport or hobby that would be inexpensive (today's gear-freak shops obviously didn't exist then) and give them plenty to do instead of always hanging around those street corners.
After much thinking, they came up with the idea of a tramping club as being an ideal solution for the problem. They inserted a series of advertisements in the North Shore Advertiser asking for all who were interested in forming a hiking and tramping club to come along to a scout hall in Takapuna at eight pm on a cold night in June.
About four Lions Club members arrived that evening and, as they told us later, wondered if they would be the only ones to turn up. They were immensely surprised when seventy-eight people appeared, and the club was off!
A steering committee was appointed (almost all to later become members of the club's first committee). Our inaugural president, Graham Macgregor, was at that time vice-president of the Auckland Tramping Club. His vast tramping knowledge and know-how on tramping-club procedures was our salvation, as the rest of us didn't know too much.
In 1970 a general meeting was held, and members unanimously inaugurated a debenture scheme to allow us to purchase larger club assets, the first one being a club bus, costing at that stage about $9,000.
In 1971 we were offered the Catholic Tramping Club (CTC ) bus for $2,800. We were very pleased to purchase this, feeling the CTC would be quite correct when they said it would allow us to run cheap trips, allow us weekend trips, and engender a strong club spirit.
The CTC were of great help to us at this stage, and it was largely their persuasion and help that got our debenture scheme going.
By the way, when the bus arrived we looked it over with various misgivings about how uncomfortable it would be for long trips. In fact, could you believe it, we went away on our first weekend trip with it set up as for day trips and changed it at Te Aroha for the night. All because we thought it would be too uncomfortable to travel in as a sleeper!
50th Anniversary
The club celebrated its first 50 years in 2018.