While other British settler societies – Australia, Canada, the US and South Africa – have states or provinces, New Zealand is a unitary state. Yet New Zealanders today hold firm provincial identities, dating from the time when the young colony was divided into provinces: 1853 to 1876. Why were the provinces created? How did settlers shape and change their institutions? And why, just over 20 years later, did New Zealand abolish its provincial governments? Acknowledge No Frontier, by André Brett, is a lively and insightful investigation into a crucial and formative part of New Zealand’s history. It examines the flaws within the system and how these allowed the central government to use public works – especially railways – to gain popular support for abolition of the provinces. The provincial period has an enduring legacy. This is the surprising and counterintuitive story of how vociferous parochialism and self-interest brought New Zealanders together.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 346

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 13-06-2016

He kiwi ihupuku, he kiwi rangirua hoki a Kuwi. Kua whanau mai tana hua hou hei tiaki mana, i tana kotahi. Kaore ano ia kia tiaki hua... He paki ngahau he paki whakaaroha tenei ma te kohungahunga, Kuwi is a young and confused kiwi who has found herself alone with her newly laid egg. She has never had an egg before... A funny and heart-warming story for the early learner.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 36

Dimensions: 240 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2016

A narrative history of the Burgess Gang and their greatest crime In the winter of 1866 New Zealand’s most notoriousbushranger, Richard Burgess, knelt at a small desk in his Nelson prison cell, took up his quill pen and began to write. His life, he knew, was beyond salvation but words were the last weapon at his disposal to consign his mortal enemy, gang turncoat Joseph Sullivan, to the gallows. The blood-soaked confession that followed was described by Mark Twain as ‘without its peer in the literature of murder’. Five bodies had been recovered from Maungatapu Mountain in the upper South Island, and another from the West Coast. But who had done the killing,and how many other victims were there? What had brought the ruthless Burgess Gang to this point? Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, including little-known original accounts by Sullivan, ‘Murder on the Maungatapu’ tells the fascinating full story of a dark episode in this country’s history. This is a superbly written tale of blood and gold, ofbetrayal and vengeance, and it draws some startlingconclusions about New Zealand’s crime of thenineteenth century.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 150 x 225 mm

Publication Date: 24-06-2016

Rod and Rosamunde Read's journey is a story of love and devotion. It is also a story of strong emotions - anger, frustration, distress, joy, acceptance and learning. As well as being a very personal story, it is an important and valuable guide for care givers - doctors, nurses, rest home workers - who have the challenging and critical task of helping patients through their journey with Alzheimers and other forms of dementia. Forget Me Not gives wonderful insights into the many aspects of the progressive decline from good health to a very different world and the inevitable consequences for those who care and love the patient.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 157

‘Pay Dirt: ‘The Westland Goldfields’, from the diary of William Smart’ is the fascinating story of how payable gold was discovered in West Canterbury, and of claims to the government’s rich gold reward. It tells how English settler, William Smart, left Christchurch in 1862 to prospect for gold in the uncharted wilderness of the West Coast. Then, in 1887, long after the Canterbury government granted another prospector the reward, which Smart regarded as rightfully his, he was provoked to write his own ‘history’ of the early gold discoveries. ‘The Westland Goldfields’ was his attempt to set the record straight; but, incidentally, he produced a unique eye-witness account of early Pākehā on the Coast, prospecting alongside Māori, braving the hazardous environment, isolation and ever-present risk of starvation – before the region was overwhelmed by the gold rushes of the 1860s. Smart’s account, together with his drawings, is published here for the first time. Hilary Low has done a superb job of presenting Smart’s manuscript, and complementing it with a lively commentary on Canterbury’s quest for its own goldfield, and the extraordinary saga of its gold reward – a tale of hope and persistence, lies and fraud.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 17-10-2016

European explorers of the Pacific in the 18th and early 19th centuries faced a problem – how to describe the people they met and report what they had seen and found. From Cook onwards, a serious expedition included artists and scientists in its ship's company. An ambitious journey of the 19th century was the third voyage of the French explorer Dumont d'Urville, from 1837 to 1840. It was just before the invention of photography, when phrenology, the study of people's skulls, was the latest thing. D'Urville chose to take on the voyage an eminent phrenologist, Pierre-Marie Dumoutier, to preserve likenesses of people by making life casts. When the expedition returned to France, the casts were displayed, and later stored in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, to be joined eventually by other casts from Dumoutier's collection, including those of the d'Urville and Dumoutier families. All were overtaken by photography and history. Fiona Pardington first learnt of the life casts in 2007, when a chance conversation initiated a four-year project. It took her from Auckland to the Musée de l'Homme, as she researched and photographed some of more than fifty casts of Maori, Pacific and European heads, including casts of her Ngai Tahu ancestors. This book publishes these photographs and coincides with the opening of a major travelling exhibition. The photographs are extraordinarily beautiful, evocative and spiritually powerful images. They recover likenesses and revive the life force of Dumoutier's subjects, eliciting our empathy and fascination with a world we can never really know. This is a rich and engaging book. With essays by leading scholars in Pacific history, art and photography, on subjects as diverse as phrenology and cast-making, the voyage, and the identity of the Maori casts, it will appeal to anyone interested in nineteenth-century encounters between voyagers and the peoples of the Pacific, or contemporary art and photography.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 245 x 330 mm

Publication Date: 31-12-2011

Reprint 2023 Charlie Douglas ranks as one of the great early European explorers of New Zealand. From 1867 to 1916 the Scottish-born Douglas lived on the west coast of the South Island, spending most of his time exploring, surveying and mapping the coast, the bush and the mountainous inland regions, in hazardous conditions, often for little or no pay. Many years later the noted mountaineer and writer John Pascoe rediscovered and preserved many of Douglas’s writings and sketches. The original book he wrote out of these has long been out of print, but Charlie Douglas’s accounts of discovery and recording difficult country continue to fascinate. Douglas recorded much of the geography and topography of South Westland, its ecology and conservation, at a time when this was scarcely known. He also demonstrated the determined qualities of Pakeha pioneering in New Zealand. As with the original edition, about a third of this book is devoted to an account of the life of Charlie Douglas, and about two thirds to his writings, which have been only lightly edited. Errors have been corrected, new information added, new illustrations added (including many in colour), people identified and the text re-edited for modern readership. Graham Langton’s revised edition of Pascoe’s 1957 book was first published in 2000 and reprinted with minor corrections in 2004, and with further corrections and a new cover design in 2016. It will continue to appeal to all with an interest in the New Zealand outdoors, nature and conservation.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 348

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 20-05-2016

A very few pioneer New Zealand families have lived and farmed their land for six, even seven generations. These New Zealanders and their stories, shaped by the land itself, are an important part of the history of Aotearoa. This is the story of one such family whose forebears, Charles and Elizabeth Matthews, arrived in 1842 on the sailing ship London. They settled first in Wellington but, drawn by the pull of the land, moved to Wairarapa and purchased the first acres their descendants still farm today. Seven generations have lived on Waiorongomai. Diaries written by Alfred Matthews, the memoirs of his grandson, Jack, and tape recorded conversations with more recent members of the family, all play a part in this history. It is the story of a family devoted to its farming, the development of one of the country's leading Romney sheep studs and the passing on of a love of the land from one generation to the next. It is also dedicated to all the men and families who have worked on Waiorongomai over the last 160 years.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 382

Safe Haven traces the life of Featherston Military Camp and, through letters, diaries and reminiscences, the men who lived there. The camp left a legacy in buildings, photographs and the site itself, now quiet land alongside State Highway Two, east of Featherston. The building of Featherston Military Camp in late 1915 transformed a stony paddock east of Featherston township in south Wairarapa into a ready-made barrack town which could house up to 8,000 raw soldiers at a time. Volunteers and conscripts from all parts of the country came to Featherston, spending two to four months in training, our largest military base their temporary home before they left the safety of New Zealand to endure the heaviest wartime casualties this country has suffered. They lived in barracks and tents, enduring the good and bad of camp life and Featherston's lively climate. The infantry then marched over the Rimutaka Range to Trentham Camp before taking ship for the Western Front. In total about 55,000 men trained at the Featherston Military Camp between 1916-19.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 175