Bob McKerrow

Bob McKerrow
Born	Robert James McKerrow March 21, 1948 (1948-03-21) Dunedin, New Zealand
Nationality	New Zealand
Occupation	Humanitarian, mountaineer, polar traveller
Years active	1967 – present
Employer	International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Website
bobmckerrow.blogspot.com

Robert James "Bob" McKerrow (born 21 March 1948), a native of New Zealand, is a humanitarian, mountaineer, polar traveler, writer and poet. He currently works as Head of Delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Indonesia. Since the Indian Ocean Tsunami struck on 26 December 2004, McKerrow has worked in India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia, coordinating Red Cross programmes for people affected by the Tsunami.

He was Editor of the New Zealand Adventure Magazine in 1989 and 1990, and continues to write and contribute photographs to various magazines, websites, and blogs. He has published a number of his poems in the New Zealand Alpine Journal and North and South Magazine.

Early life

McKerrow was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 21 March 1948 and is registered as "Robert James McKerrow" in the Deaths, Births and Marriages office in Dunedin.

McKerrow was a leading middle-distance runner from the age of 13, and broke the Otago provincial record for Under 17, and later Under 19, 880 yards (800 m) with a time of one minute, 57.8 seconds. He won a number of athletic titles at the Otago and Southland Inter-Secondary school championships, and ran his first marathon at 17, recording a time of three hours, 10 seconds. He represented Otago province at junior level athletics and rugby before turning his attention to venturing into the hills and mountains, where he established himself as a mountaineer and skier.

Mountaineering and polar travel

At the age of 19, McKerrow was selected to be a member of a New Zealand mountaineering expedition to Peru, to the remote Cordillera Vilcabamba. The expedition spent four months climbing and exploring. McKerrow climbed 12 peaks and did eight first ascents. The most notable climb was the first ascent of the north face of Mellizos.

In 1969/70, he spent 13 months in Antarctica as a member of New Zealand's Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Antarctic Expedition. He went first to Scott Base in early October 1969, and in January 1970 moved to Vanda Station in the Wright Valley, and was part of a four-man team that wintered over in Antarctica, becoming an acknowledged authority. At that time, the four-person party was the smallest ever expedition to winter over in Antarctica. In an era of self-regulation, the team did many winter trips with temperatures frequently between -40 and -50 °C (-40 and -58 °F), including trips into the Asgaard Range and an attempt on Mt. Newall with Gary Lewis.

McKerrow has climbed and trekked extensively in New Zealand, Europe, Peru, Antarctica, Borneo, East Africa, Nepal, India, Central Asia, and has also taken expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic.

In 1985, polar explorer and arctic conservationist Will Steger invited McKerrow to join him on a training expedition in preparation for an unsupported trip with dogs to the North Pole the following year. McKerrow, Steger, Paul Schurke, Bob Mantell, and Richard Weber departed the settlement of Arctic Red River (now Tsiigehtchic) on the Mackenzie River and travelled downriver to the Arctic Ocean, and then along the coast of Canada to Demarcation Point. They crossed into Alaska, and continued to Point Barrow, a trip of 1,500 kilometres (930 mi). McKerrow took part in the unsupported 1986 expedition, but had to be airlifted out early with broken ribs.

Sea kayaking is another of McKerrow's passions; he has done a double crossing of Cook Strait, and a 10-hour solo crossing from Raumati to Cape Jackson, New Zealand.In 1988 he joined world famous sea kayaker Paul Caffyn in an attempt to do the first kayak crossing of the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand. They were arrested by the Maritime Police for not having a large radar reflector. http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/bob-mckerrow/

Humanitarian work

McKerrow first worked in Asia in 1971 as a member of the New Zealand Red Cross refugee welfare team to Vietnam, working on livelihood programmes. During a break from his work in 71 he went to Sabah and did a solo ascent of Mt. Kinabalu.

Recognised as a world leader in disaster recovery, he was invited by The Insurance Brokers of New Zealand (IBANZ) to their annual conference in Auckland on July 14, 2011 as keynote speaker. Bob Mckerrow has been involved in 15 earthquake relief-to-recovery operations including Tonga, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and most recently heading the tsunami recovery in Indonesia and Sri Lanka

McKerrow has worked for the Red Cross in New Zealand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Geneva, Afghanistan (four years), Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tonga, Western Samoa, and the Cook Islands. He has also been head of the regional delegations of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies for Central Asia and South Asia.

From 1983, he was Director of the New Zealand Outward Bound School at Anakiwa, and wrote a number of publications of outdoor education and experiential learning

McKerrow has lived in Asia intermittently since 1971.

Indian Ocean tsunami

The Indian Ocean Tsunami struck on 26 December 2004, and three months later a huge earthquake struck the island of Nias. For the next four years, McKerrow worked on numerous disaster-relief operations throughout Indonesia, including the significant earthquakes of Benkulu, West Java and West Sumatra in late September 2009. McKerrow—along with Wayne Ulrich, a disaster-relief expert—experimented with an innovative approach to helicopter aerial-grid mapping based on inaccessibility, altitude, and destitution. Through this technique, using New Zealander helicopter pilot Colin Tuck, they paved the way for critical supply routes to be opened and provide urgent food and shelter materials.

In April 2009, together with Jerry Talbot Special Representative to the SG of IFRC, was invited to New York with Kuntoro Mangkasubroto, Minister for Tsunami, Government of Indonesia, to present the Tsunami Legacy report to Bill Clinton, Ban ki Moon SG of UN and Helen Clarke, Director UNDP. McKerrow was involved with the compilation of the Tsunami Legacy report and the Tsunami documentary that was shown on Discovery TV to mark Five Years of Tsunami. Almost seven years after the Tsunami struck, he is still working on drawing the operation in Sri Lanka to a close.

In July 2010 he took up appointment as head of delegation for IFRC in Sri Lanka with key tasks of drawing tsunami operations to a close, working with Sri Lanka Red Cross Society to implement a large programme in the north and east of the country, providing houses, livelihoods, water and sanitation plus community based first aid and risk reduction projects to people internally displaced by a war that lasted over 25 years.

Bibliography

• McKerrow, Bob (2006). Ebenezer Teichelmann: Cutting across continents. Introduction by Sir Edmund Hillary. New Delhi: Tara-India Research Press. ISBN 9788187943877. 
• McKerrow, Bob; Hamed, Abdul Samay (2003). Afghanistan: Mountains of our minds. New Delhi: Tara Press. ISBN 9788188353170. 
• McKerrow, Bob; Woods, John (1994). Coast to Coast: The Great New Zealand Race. Christchurch, New Zealand: Shoal Bay Press. ISBN 9780908704224. 
• Erasmuson, Martin; Lauder, Glen A., eds. (1997). Wild Food for the Soul: a collection of new West Coast writing. Hokitika, New Zealand: Hokitika Live Poets Society. ISBN 9780473044282.  (Contains poems by McKerrow.)