Duncan Darroch, a Mt. Cook Personality

Forest and Bird, Issue 156, 1 May 1965, Page 11

Duncan Darroch, a Mt. Cook Personality

Duncan Darroch, well known bird lover and artist, has been a familiar figure at Mt. Cook for over 40 years. No-one thinks of him as Duncan or Mr. Darroch, but he is always referred to by his full name.

He joined the staff of the Hermitage in the 1920’s to assist with the horses that were used on the Ball Hut trip.

At that time the Hermitage and the surrounding Aorangi Domain and the Tasman Park were run by private enterprise under lease from the Tourist Department. Later they were run by the Tourist Department itself until the administrative responsibilities were divided a decade ago between the Tourist Hotel Corporation and the Mount Cook National Park, the Aorangi ■ Domain and the Tasman Park forming a substantial part of the present national park.

Duncan Darroch lived with these changes and his work developed into taking parties out on nature walks and picnics. He had a good knowledge of botany, and his powers of observation with his established reputation for painting stood him in good stead and made him an ideal guide and companion. A passing generation will remember his sparse figure clad in kilts tramping the Tasman Glacier and the various tracks or his painting one of his justly famous pictures. Three Great Loves Duncan Darroch has three great loves — a love of the mountains, a love of the sea, and a love of all birds and animals, flowers, and plants. But he is best known for his paintings. Practically a self-taught artist, he has expressed himself forcibly in his paintings of ships, of the sea, and of mountains. He has developed a strong and rugged style, and from his paintings one can get an insight into his character, rugged but with a great depth of feeling, a lover of colour, form, and nature. To know him is to know that he is open and honest, extremely tenderhearted, and always kindly.

He lives in a little chalet in the Hermitage grounds that is tucked away at the back of the Hermitage in. a natural surrounding of bush and mountain and from which he gets his favourite view of the Hooker Valley and Mt. Cook. The chalet was built in Timaru

to his own design and is small enough to put him right among the bush and birds so dear to him. It affords him the opportunity to feed the birds and to live with nature.

This kindly man has his hates too, intense hates. He has a deep-rooted hatred of fire, because it destroys the natural habitat of birds and it causes erosion and despoilment; he has a deep-rooted hatred of cats, weasels, stoats, and ferrets, which take toll of the birds; and he has a deep-rooted hatred of noxious and domestic animals which graze and otherwise destroy the native flora. He is intensely loyal to his friends and his loves.

Duncan Darroch is an honorary ranger of the Mount Cook National Park, having been appointed in 1954. He is probably the most active and conscientious honorary ranger there and has always had the best interest of the park at heart.

Today he is still very much a personality at Mt. Cook. He sells his paintings, but has never commercialised his art. He champions the mountains with his brush and the forest and birds with his pen. His name and his art are indelibly written into the history of the Hermitage and the Mount Cook National Park.