Down South: In Search of the Great Southern Land

Description

In Down South, writer Bruce Ansley goes on a journey back to his beloved South Island. From Curio Bay to Golden Bay, in Down South writer Bruce Ansley sets off on a vast expedition across the South Island, Te Waipounamu, visiting the places and people who hold clues to the south's famous character. Not so very long ago, the South Island had most of New Zealand's people and just about all of the money. Gold miners found fortunes in the hills and rivers, sheep barons straddled mountains, valleys and plains. Wealthy southerners ruled the government. Where now lies the South Island's golden fleece? And what is its future?

Bruce Ansley has spent much of his life in the South Island. He was raised in New Brighton, Christchurch, and has lived in Dunedin, Christchurch, the Marlborough Sounds and Golden Bay. He has grown up with the south's people, its cities, towns, rivers, mountains, bush and plains. He has picked tobacco in Motueka, been a commercial fisherman in Fiordland and a deer farmer on Banks Peninsula. He has worked in radio, television and newspapers in the south too. For almost a quarter of a century he was the Christchurch-based writer for the New Zealand Listener magazine, until he became a full-time author. As a writer, tramper and traveller, and being professionally nosey, he has poked into many corners of the island, although nowhere near all of them: he finds the south and its people endlessly fascinating. He now lives on Waiheke Island to be close to his family, but his heart remains in the south. Down South is his eleventh book.