Outsiders

Description

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Gerard Hindmarsh argues that New Zealand is lucky to have had, and still have, its fair share of people who choose to live out on the fringes of society. He believes these ‘outsiders’, in their love of a free and unhindered life, offer an important counterbalance to the highpressured, commercialised and urban world that most of us inhabit.

It is these outsiders who are the subject of this book, a wonderfully diverse group of people who, both historically and in the present day, found room beyond the cities and towns to live their lives in their own individual way. The characters who fill these pages range from a hermit who spent 47 years on his own island in the Marlborough Sounds; a farmer from probably the most remote farm in New Zealand on the west coast of Stewart Island; an eccentric mountain dweller waiting for the world to end in Kahurangi National Park; the now well-known Robert Long, or ‘Beansprout’, from Gorge River in South Westland; a fisherman who jumped ship in Fiordland National Park; and many more.

Gerard Hindmarsh has a great eye for a story, and in Outsiders he presents a highly readable and colourful social history, which speaks strongly about a rich vein of New Zealand identity.