Walking 144 kilometres in impeccable vintage
Bay of Islands artist Jacqui Madelin is raising money for pest eradication and putting on the style while she does it.
Artist Jacqui Madelin is walking 12km a day to raise money for Project Island Song, a pest-free wildlife sanctuary spanning seven islands in the eastern Bay of Islands.
But there’s a twist, Madelin is completing each day's walk, for the first 12 days in December, dressed head-to-toe in pieces from her extensive vintage wardrobe.
One outfit is an Edwardian swimming suit, she says.
Jacqui Madelin has been walking 12 kilometres every day to fundraise for Project Island Song, a charity working on pest eradication in the Bay of Islands.
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“It's a navy blue, all-in-one with a sailor collar that goes down to the elbow, goes down to the knees and has a skirt to button over it.
“So you unbutton the skirt and dash into the sea before anyone sees your legs and then you come back out again and quickly button the skirt around your middle,” she told RNZ Nights.
While to top is vintage, she went for more practical options on her feet.
“I don't normally walk that far so I figured it would be crazy to wear fancy shoes. My feet would expire on day one, so I have some hiking boots that are pretty elderly.
“They're leather and I bought them on Trade Me for not very much but they're very, very comfortable.
“So, from mid-calf upwards I'm extremely fancy and from mid-calf downwards it's all practical.”
Another outfit getting an airing in her charity walk is a navy and pink suit from the 1940s that she had to do considerable remedial work on, she says.
“It was being sold with pieces of the skirt apparently and possibly for use only as a pattern so I thought, well, it didn't cost much so I bought it and it had over 200 moth holes in it
“But other than that it was in really good condition so I just spent evening after evening after evening darning hole after hole after hole and when I finally finished I went into the fabric upcycle and I got the expert darning lady in there to see if she could spot all my darns and she spotted some from the first couple of days and after that I'd got better.”
Her cause is Project Island Song, a group of 267 volunteers working to clear seven offshore islands of pests
“They’ve cleared all of the introduced animal pests from seven of our offshore islands and are now working on the introduced plant pests and slowly they're reintroducing species that are endangered elsewhere and some of them haven't been seen in the Bay of Islands for over 100 years.”
Once a month volunteers visit the islands with pest detection dogs to make sure that no, rats or stoats have swum across, she says.
“I think it's amazing, absolutely amazing what largely volunteer labour can do on the smell of an oily rag.”
Donations can be made on Project Island Song's 12ks of Christmas on Givealittle page.
