Raised in the wilderness to global adventurer

Chris Long grew up in one of New Zealand's remotest families, living more than 42km from the nearest road.

In his book, The Boy from Gorge River, Chris, now 30, writes about how the solitude of his extraordinary childhood in the southern wilderness of Gorge River has shaped his life.

Chris says his upbringing equipped him for a life of adventure and diverse work from the Arctic circle to Antarctica. He has visited 60 countries and currently lives in Wanaka, working at a rock-climbing gym.

It used to take four days to reach the nearest town when Chris was a little boy, and as he and his sister got older, they could do it in two days.

"About every six months or so we would make the big long hike which would take us four to five days when we were three-and-a-half years old, out to the Cascade Rd and we would go off into the towns of Haast, Wanaka and Queenstown.

“[We would even go] across to Brisbane to see family so we did know what else was out there, but the life that we were living was very much normal to us.

"It was just the most beautiful and raw and rugged environment … and I would go off hiking up the river or up and over the hills and through the jungle of southwestern, which is some of the rougher jungle that's out there in the world."

Their isolation meant they had to be resourceful with what was on hand at their house.

"Life's a lot different when you don't have a shop just down the road and we were so far from a shop that there was really no point even thinking about going and buying something if something broke or if we needed something."

One of Chris' earliest memories is seeing his dad combining a windscreen wiper motor, a saw blade and solar power to cut jade to create more solar panels.

"As a kid, I followed Dad around pretty much 24/7 as he lived his life of being resourceful and fixing things and building things and then as time went on and into my teenage years, then I was fully living that same life as well."

• Related: Author Robert Long speaks to Kathryn Ryan about his book and life

Having been mostly home-schooled along with his sister, Robin, and then doing distance learning, Long craved more social interaction as a teenager and decided to try going to high school in Wanaka.

"It was a very, very hard decision to make, to like get up and leave home 'cause I knew that it was going to be devastating for mum, dad and Robin who would be left behind there without me ... it was the hardest decision that I've ever made in my life so far,” he says.

"It was a huge shock. I knew what I was in for and I knew it was going to be the greatest adventure ever but still like walking to school the first day and you've got 600 other students all kind of looking at you, it was really, really strange.

"Those first probably three years socially was really difficult because I had to learn how to be social around other people my age. I was quite good at interacting with adults 'cause I had interacted with adults a lot at Gorge River over time, but it was just [about] being in a group of people your own age and knowing what to talk about and laugh about and the fun things to do."

The kids became genuinely interested in his life at Gorge River, he says, and because there were dozens of other new students in his year, he felt welcomed rather than singled out.

"I know mum and dad got a lot of hard time from people about raising their kids out there without technology and TV and computers and all that sort of thing. Then suddenly that year that I was in Wanaka, people started to be really curious about it in a really positive way.

"The mindset changed so much, and it was amazing to see people kind of accepting me for who I was and not just singling me out because I was different and strange."

After taking the first big step outside of home, Long says he felt more confident about embarking on yet another epic chapter of his life.

“I wanted to see the world, I'd read about the world in all the books that mum and dad got me from the libraries as a kid, I'd read about it … and I had nothing holding me back.

“And so, I started to travel quite freely through a lot of different countries over in Europe and North America and Asia.

“Then at the same time I was going off and doing some pretty cool adventure jobs using those skills that I had learned as well, that took me to Antarctica a couple of times, expedition guiding and then I went down and worked at Scott Base and then up into the Arctic, working with Husky dogs.”

His lifestyle and environment enabled him to be a free spirit in his choices and aspirations, he says.

"I spent 17 years of my life looking at the modern world and it's very easy to see kind of the ways that people do get trapped into different things.

"For example, I've talked to people who really, really want to live the same life that I've got, but they have a cell phone plan and that's what has actually stopped me from living that life and I could never let something like that stop me from going on an adventure somewhere.

"The same with money as well. Like a lot of people don't travel because they don't have the money for it and there are ways of travelling very cheaply if you want to and you'd still get those epic experiences ... A lot of it is in our mind, the mindset in the modern world."

For a change, Long is now enjoying a stable life settled back in New Zealand after the Covid-19 pandemic complicated his adventures overseas.

"I was reasonably settled in Norway. I spent about 20 months up there, so I did enjoy staying in one place and making a few more friends and connections in that one place and so now I'm enjoying doing that back here now I'm living in Wanaka, which is obviously a place that's quite close to my heart and also quite close to home, which is convenient.

"I can get back to Gorge River in about 12 hours, that's four hours of driving and then eight hours of very quick walking down the coast back to mum and dad's house."

You can watch more of Chris Long's adventures at home and overseas on his YouTube channel.