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Price: $54.99
Format: 185x245mm, 432pp, colour images, index ISBN: 978-1-927242-21-6 Steele Roberts Publishers |
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Two airmen of Maori descent lie buried together on a hilltop in Dorset, England. They are the
grandson and great-grandson of a whaling captain who entered New Zealand waters in 1835,
and who became one of the leading pioneers of European settlement in Wellington. The story’smain thread covers the four generations involved, and touches on early whaling off
New Zealand and in the Pacific, European trading along the East Coast, the settlement and
expansion of Wellington, the Thames gold rush and the first sheep stations in the Inland Patea.
In 1883 the whaler’s natural daughter, her mother a local Maori, inherited her father’s wealth
and moved with her husband to England, living in some of the country’s grand houses.
Her eldest son became one of the world’s first aviators, winning a posthumous Victoria Cross
over France in 1915. His son, also a decorated pilot, was killed at the height of the Battle of
Britain.
Here is a family that lived on frontiers — of colonial exploration and commerce; of cross-culturalencounter; of speed and danger on land and in the air — both in peace and war. Theirs is an
extraordinary story.
About the author
Simon Best lists his main life occupations, in chronological order, as follows: Two years National Service in the RAF (as an erk), a year contract fencing in the Wairarapa and another in
Northland, two years as a New Zealand Forest Service hunter, one year as a New Zealand
Broadcasting Corporation copywriter, four years as a crocodile shooter in North Australia, and 35-odd (very odd) years as an archaeologist in New Zealand and the Pacific.
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