There is perhaps no issue in New Zealand today more contentious than water rights. The Crown claims that no one owns water, but its use, irrigation and treatment are controlled by local governments empowered by the Crown. Since the 1990s resource consents for the taking of water, in Canterbury and Southland especially, have increased dramatically and the environmental situation is reaching a breaking point. After years of discussion some kind of system regarding the ownership of water is inevitable. In Water Rights for Ngāi Tahu, Te Maire Tau considers the historical and political framework that has contributed to the current state of water rights in the Ngāi Tahu takiwā. He explores the customary, legal and Treaty frameworks that feed into the debate regarding the ownership of water. From 1844 to 1864 the Crown purchased more than 34.5 million acres of land from Ngāi Tahu, but in most purchase deeds water is not mentioned. How does this play into claims to water? Should the Treaty be relied upon? How far can kaitiakitanga take us if the goal is mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga? In this short book Te Maire Tau lays out the historical background and context to water rights, and opens a discussion about where to proceed next in determining a Ngāi Tahu position on water.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 74

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 17-11-2017

“Shall I shoot?”… “No don’t shoot”… I’m going to shoot”… “Don’t shoot!”. Rapid fire yelling within the confines of a vehicle stuck in the middle of stalled traffic, facing an unknown person wearing a full burqa peering into the car. Inches away from the driver’s face, a large hand pressed against the window. “We didn’t know if they were male or female or what was about to happen, but we were absolutely sure that if we shot this person, the crowd, including the armed policemen nearby, would turn on us and there’d be no escape.” In 2004, Lieutenant Colonel William Blaikie shipped out to Afghanistan, to head up a team dedicated to rebuilding the country after the war. As part of the New Zealand Defence Force, his skills lay in intelligence and communications – his mission was to form a team, develop and implement plans to work with USA and Coalition partners to help get Afghanistan back on its feet. Bill experienced situations that were beyond tense, often facing life and death situations and decision making that required deep and quick thinking, based on not always having enough information at hand. On his return home to New Zealand, his journey through coping with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder began, and the nightmares were not limited to sleep time. Everything has remained at life and death levels for Bill, and this book details how he and his wife Nancy have worked through suicide attempts, getting help, and finding answers to what is an epidemic level challenge for military personnel everywhere. “No amount of training can prepare you for what happens in your head after the uniforms are off and the guns are packed away.”

Bind: paperback

Pages: 164

Publication Date: 11-11-2017

FEATURED ARTISTS James Robinson, Jenna Packer, Andrew McLeod AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results of the Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry 2017 and judge’s report by Bill Manhire, results of the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and judge’s report by Riemke Ensing, results and winning essays from Landfall Essay Competition 2017, and judge’s report by David Eggleton WRITERS Alie Benge, Marianne Bevan, Tony Beyer, Owen Bullock, Kate Camp, Medb Charleton, H.E. Crampton, John Dennison, Doc Drumheller, Breton Dukes, Lynley Edmeades, Ben Egerton, Riemke Ensing, Sisilia Eteuati, Laurence Fearnley, Rachel J. Fenton, Rhian Gallagher, René Harrison, Ingrid Horrocks, Mark Anthony Houlahan, Stephanie Johnson, Judith Lofley, Owen Marshall, Samantha Montgomerie, Claire Orchard, Bob Orr, Kiri Piahana-Wong, Brian Potiki, Joanna Preston, Vaughan Rapatahana, Rebecca Reader, Sue Reidy, James Robinson, Ali Shakir, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Sarah Shirley, Carin Smeaton, Ruby Solly, Michael Steven, Mua Strickson-Pua, Tayi Tibble, Albert Wendt, Sue Wootton, Phoebe Wright REVIEWS Landfall Review Online: books recently reviewed Martin Edmond on Charles Brasch: Journals 1945–1957 ed. Peter Simpson Iain Sharp on Selected Poems by Ian Wedde Jenny Powell on Die Bibel and Collected Poems 1981–2016 by Michael O’Leary Johanna Emeney on The Arrow that Missed by Ted Jenner and The Ones Who Keep Quiet by David Howard Denis Harold on The New Animals by Pip Adams Charlotte Graham on The Suicide Club by Sarah Quigley Katie Pickles on The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000 by Vincent O’Malley Edmund Bohan on The World, the Flesh and the Devil: The life and opinions of Samuel Marsden in England and the Antipodes 1765–1838 by Andrew Sharp

Bind: paperback

Pages: 208

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

Publication Date: 15-11-2017

‘New China Eyewitness’ is the fascinating account of the 1956 visit to the People’s Republic of China by a group of prominent New Zealanders – including Roger Duff, James Bertram, Evelyn Page, Angus Ross and Ormond Wilson – and of how Canterbury Museum came to acquire the largest collection of Chinese art in New Zealand. At the centre of the book is the eloquent diary kept by Canterbury Museum director Dr Roger Duff, detailing his efforts to bring to Christchurch the collection of antiquities gifted to the museum by long-time China resident, New Zealander Rewi Alley. Through Alley’s contacts with premier Zhou Enlai and Duff’s diplomatic skills they obtained the sanction of the Chinese government to circumvent its own export ban on antiquities and permit the gifting of seven crates of treasures to Christchurch. These objects were the basis for the museum’s Hall of Oriental Arts and their arrival led to a collections policy dedicated to Chinese art. Beautifully written and illustrated, ‘New China Eyewitness’ offers a rare glimpse of foreigners’ views of China during a period of rapid social, political and cultural change, and at a time of unusual political and cultural tolerance.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 176

Dimensions: 173 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 07-12-2017

"I believe we need to quit the approach in which we quietly come in through the frilly pink curtains and talk about suicide carefully so as not to cause upset or offend anyone. I'm saying we should fire up the bulldozer, smash it through the wall and start yelling: "Let's talk about suicide and how much it suck"". This book is the story of the tragic death by suicide of Paul Lynch's brother Brett and the devastating effect it had on his family. It is also a powerful plea for us to face up to suicide as an issue and acknowledge that the way we're dealing with it at the moment isn't working. "If my story can prevent a person, or people, from leaving their family and friends to deal with the aftermath of their suicide and all that goes with it," says Paul Lynch, "then I will consider that to be a success".

Bind: paperback

Pages: 146

Dimensions: 130 x 200 mm

An out-of-the-way corner of the South Island, the Catlins is a beautiful and relatively unspoilt area with many natural attractions, including that rare thing on the east coast, native forest. Neville Peat introduces the region – its flora, wildlife, bush walks, caves and waterfalls – before tracing the journey along the stunning Southern Scenic Route linking Otago, Southland and Fiordland.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 72

Dimensions: 170 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 11-12-2017

Walking to Jutland Street is the impressive first book-length collection by up-and-coming Auckland-based poet Michael Steven. The title refers to Dunedin’s industrial wharf precinct where some of the poet’s friends shared a flat in 2010. A poem about friendship in the face of the other, ‘Walking to Jutland Street’ vividly recreates their evening ‘constitutional’ from the flat via the bridge over train tracks to the city and back, with its inebriated, surreal, sometimes nightmarish inhabitants. Other poems deliver snapshots of the human condition through bizarre personalities such as the subject of ‘Dropped Pin: Jollie Street’, ‘a man who proclaimed to function / best in a state close to coma’. Still others are tender love poems, travel poems (in 2016 the poet slept in the last bedroom of explorer Vasco da Gama), poems about family or childhood memory. A poet of gritty, day-to-day urban New Zealand reality (whether depicting teenage drug dealing, alcoholics or the night shelter), Steven is equally a writer steeped in literary tradition, Buddhist mysticism and world-historical narrative. His is a voice that aspires to capture quotidian experience or personality as a phenomenon implicitly of all times and places. In this pursuit, his literary cousins are Olds, Orr, Mitchell, Dickson, Johnson and Baxter.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 80

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 20-03-2018

New Zealanders started hearing things in new ways when new audio technologies arrived from overseas in the late 19th century. From the first public demonstration of a phonograph in a Blenheim hall in 1879, people were exposed to a succession of machines that captured, stored and transmitted sounds – through radio, cinema and recordings. In The World’s Din, Peter Hoar documents the arrival of the first such ‘talking machines’, and their growing place in New Zealanders’ public and private lives, through the years of radio to the dawn of television. In so doing, he chronicles a ‘sonic revolution’ in how New Zealanders heard the world. The change was radical, signifying a defining break from the past. Human experience of the world changed forever during the late 19th and early 20 centuries because we learned to capture, store, and transmit sounds and moving images. ‘Audio’ since then has been a continued refinement of the original innovation, even in the contemporary era of digital sound, with iPods, streaming audio and Spotify. The World’s Din is a beautifully written account that will delight music-lovers and technophiles everywhere. Without further ado, it is time to crank the gramophone, or tune the wireless, or open the Jaffa box as the cinema lights dim, and hearken to the richness and variety of listening in New Zealand’s past soundscapes.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 288

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 15-03-2018

Hudson & Halls: The food of love is more than just a love story, though a love story it certainly is. It is a tale of two television chefs who helped change the bedrock bad attitudes of a nation in the 1970s and 80s to that unspoken thing – homosexuality. Peter Hudson and David Halls became reluctant role models for a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ generation of gay men and women who lived by omission. They were also captains of a culinary revolution that saw the overthrow of Aunty Daisy and Betty Crocker and the beginnings of Pacific-rich, Asian-styled international cuisine. Their drinking, bitching and bickering on screen, their spontaneous unchoreographed movements across the stage that left cameras and startled production staff exposed broke taboos and melted formalities. They captivated an unlikely bunch of viewers, from middle-aged matrons to bush-shirted blokes. Hudson and Halls were pioneers of celebrity television as we know it today: the naughty, not-quite-normal boys next door who rocketed to stardom on untrained talent and a dream. When Peter Hudson became seriously ill with prostate cancer, David Halls was inconsolable. What remained unchanged through it all was their abiding love for each other. In this riveting, fast-paced and meticulously researched book, New York Times bestselling author Joanne Drayton celebrates the legacy of the unforgettable Hudson and Halls.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 304

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 19-10-2018

From the classrooms and playgrounds of early 1900s New Zealand to the battlefields of Gallipoli, the tragedy of the Marquette, and the trenches of France, this is the story of Private Leslie McAlpine. Many families in New Zealand have an Anzac who served in the First World War. Leslie is the Anzac in our family. He is a fit, healthy young man who never completely loses hope that he will get back home. His story shows how decisions made in the wider world affect our lives and our opportunities. Leslie leaves New Zealand as one of the 2235 men in the 4th Reinforcements and the story follows their lives and deaths. In 1914, as New Zealand goes to war, Leslie is in the navy, on the Torch, and loving it. But he wants to see a bit more action. He reads the accounts in the papers describing what the New Zealand and Australian soldiers are doing as they travel across the world in convoy and he wants to be part of that. So in January 1915 he enlists in the army in the 4th Reinforcements. He is just 18. With an adventure before him that everyone in New Zealand approves of and celebrates, what can possibly go wrong? The Allied forces and politicians plan strategies and make decisions. Leslie and the 4th Reinforcements follow orders and do their very best. Surviving Gallipoli and the Marquette disaster, Leslie is killed in action on the Western Front. He is just 19.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 242

Dimensions: 170 x 239 mm

Publication Date: 30-03-2018