Just a bit more about Station life in New Zealand, by Lady Barker. Mary Ann Barker was one of those intrepid Victorian women who managed to make a life of adventure while still staying perfectly proper. She and her husband, Frederick Broome, bought a large farm (station) in the Malvern Hills of Canterbury during the first era of European settlement here. "Station life" was published much later, when they had returned to England, but was based on Lady Barker's letters to her sister Jessie. It was an instant success, and has rarely been out of print since, one of the classics of NZ pioneer literature. It's attractiveness lies in great part in Lady Barker's own personality. She was a great optimist with an engaging manner, who saw fun in just about everything. (Except perhaps for sea-sickness "I find that sea-sickness develops the worst part of one's character with startling rapidity"). Her adventures on the 'station' are well worth reading, even if by modern standards they seem blithely naïve; her delight in setting fire to acres of native grassland to provide new pasture for the sheep would make a modern conservationist weep. You can read about her varied life here:
http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/
and the full text is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6104/6104-h/6104-h.htm and as a Gutenberg Project free e-book
(Those of my readers in Melbourne may be interested to read her thoughts on mid-19thc Melbourne).
Thank you. It sounds like just the sort of book I love and would read time and time again. I will have to track it down.
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