“You can try and understand it, predict it, know what it’s going to do next.”īy nature, glaciers go through phases of advance and retreat. “I fell in love with the glacier a long time ago – I think just because it’s moving, it’s living, it’s changing,” he says. On the computer in his office, Goodwin has collected thousands of photos of the glacier, dating back to the late 19th century and its early days as a tourist destination. What drew Goodwin in was the local history – stories of the glacier’s storming advances, sometimes so fast that snow would swallow shoes left at its base within a day and the subsequent periods of retreat, revealing gear and paths from the past. Now he and his wife Tash run their own company, taking nature walking tours through the glacier valley. Soon afterwards, Goodwin got a job as a glacier guide – and one season turned into many. “I did what most young boys did: jumped over the barriers, went and walked on the ice, and had a great old time,” he says. The sight of snow was almost startling, so close to the ocean – the glacier terminates only 20km from the Tasman Sea – and so close up.īut Goodwin was not content just to look. But soon after arriving in Franz Josef – on the West Coast of the South Island, at the foot of the Southern Alps – he went to see the town’s biggest draw for himself.Ī short drive into the valley, Goodwin was confronted by the bright white face of the glacier: a thick seam of ice churning its way down from the mountains and into the stony riverbed below. Goodwin had been intending to top up his bank account, then go. “I worked until I had $1,000, then I travelled until I had $100,” he says. It was 2001, and Goodwin had been travelling down the length of New Zealand from his hometown Taranaki, doing odd jobs: fruit picking, housekeeping. W hen Cliff Goodwin first came to Franz Josef he didn’t know what a glacier was. Elle Hunt, Nick Evershed, Dave Fanner and Andy Ball
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