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Liz Salt: Festival of Lights organiser and backpacker owner

June 30th, 2010
By David Armstrong

Liz Salt with friends at a Festival event

Liz was feeling just a little weary before our chat this week, and for good reason: she'd spent the past few weeks as the go-to person for the Festival of Lights, organising sudden changes of plan, checking on event organisers, and supportively attending every event in person.

As chairperson of the Festival committee she'd been working on the celebration for months beforehand, and now it's over - for the rest of us anyhow - she had the finances and post mortems to tackle.

Nevertheless, she is thrilled at how the Festival drew large hunks of Motueka together to share the individual talents of people that make up a strong community. The debate, the musical performances, the knitting organisers, the car show .... ordinary people doing their own special thing to make the place just that bit better.

An hour into our interview, Liz is no longer looking jaded. She talks passionately about there being so many people in Motueka who are contributing every day without seeking the limelight, but with their own extraordinary stories to tell. And she sees a role for herself and events like the Festival of Lights in making links between Motuekans.

Liz's own history has not taken a simple straight line. Raised in Christchurch, after a year as a junior office worker she decided that was not the life for her and instead went to university, where she gained an honours degree in science, focusing on the biological fields. Her honours theses was on spider predatory behaviour.

But the timing was not great; she graduated into the financially troubled times of the early 1980s and jobs in her specialty area were scarce. She started working in volunteer projects run by the Wildlife Service (the predecessor of DOC) initially in Te Anau, with free lodgings and living off donations left in the visitor boxes.

She moved around the country on such projects, never with enough experience behind her to land a "proper" paid job, until an office role opened up for the Wildlife Service in Wellington. There she decided to ditch her plans for outdoor work with animals and conservation and look for new opportunities.

First up was a job selling commercial furniture to architects. "That's all there was going, and I didn't want to be on the dole, but I hated it." But working in a few selling-type jobs led to a position that opened with the Trade Development Board, answering questions for government ministers submitted by citizens and politicians.

She moved through the ranks there to become the personal assistant role for the chief executive, which led to her first proper overseas trip as manager of the Diplomatic and Economic Mission to Central Europe for three weeks in 1989. "When I came back, my job was made redundant." But by now she had married Wellington police officer Chris Salt.

After a stint in a policy role with Workbridge, which provides jobs and training for people with disabilities, she made a big decision to become a teacher. This involved a two-year full-time Diploma of Teaching, followed by seven years working in a primary teaching school.

Fast forward to around 2002, and it was time for a change. A big change! Chris wanted to finish up with the police and they decided on an extended holiday in the UK. In Birmingham, Liz did supply teaching (filling in for teacher absences) and Chris did voluntary work for a Christian training organisation.

"We loved walking in the hills ... and had some great holidays in many places, Germany, France, Marakesh," she says.

When they finally returned to Wellington in 2005, they didn't want to get back into the "same old same old" - no office work, no teaching, no commuting.

"We wanted to live somewhere with a nicer lifestyle, a nicer environment and climate, and we liked being with young people, so we decided to get into backpacking." They bought the lease to Hattrick Lodge in Wallace Street opposite i-Site and ran it for two seasons.

"We liked the industry. It was a steep, steep learning curve. Then we decided to carry on but with our own place on our own land." In 2008 they bought their current property in Lodder Lane, Riwaka and designed and built their home/backpacker combo called Edens Edge Backpacker Lodge. It takes up to 24 backpackers, and with its first full season behind it, has produced an operating profit.

"With its long hours in summer, it's an unusual lifestyle, and we could never have imagined doing it. I'm patently unsuited to a high-flier business environment, and it's a relief to know that I don't need to do that. I mean, look at where we live," she says, indicating the sweeping panorama of hills from their living room.

"The thing about life is to keep learning, and to be open to people. You can have your own strong and clear values which tell you which pathways to take in life, but the trouble comes when you start thinking you've got all the answers. Other people have been through the school of hard knocks too. You need to keep your eyes open and you mouth shut a bit.

While at Hattrick Lodge she became involved in the governance of i-Site, then Our Town Motueka (of which she is now secretary) and the Festival of Lights - on the committee initially but this year as chair.

"The Festival is huge, massive, but absolutely wonderful because you get this opportunity and privilege of seeing all these small groups coming out of the woodwork, and they're passionate about it. You may think that their little contribution may not rock the world or solve world peace problems, but then you think that actually they're making their corner of the world better, and what's wrong with that?

"There are so many people I could name who contribute, but you won't see them as a chair because they loathe public speaking or hate the limelight with a passion," she says.

Liz has strong values which she "caught, not taught" from her parents - by example, not by telling. Her reading, her observations of life and her work teaching have told her that "when you have a strong community and strong homes, people are more secure and have a better start in life and better life in general".

And she's increasingly wary of nanny states. "We're not teaching kids about the hard knocks of life. We're too protective, to the detriment of our young people. Young people are naturally risk-takers, and we can harness that and direct them into healthy risk taking. Get them into sports, hobbies, territorials. Unless they learn risks early on and what happens if they stuff it up or do unwise stuff, they're going to learn it behind the wheel of a car with three tinnies down their throat."

 
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