Catherine Stewart and Robert Long live in the country. Sure, so do many families. They are self-sufficient and not connected to the power grid. Okay, that narrows it down a bit. They live at least two days’ walk from the nearest road. Whoa! That gives ‘in the middle of nowhere’ a new meaning!
A Wife on Gorge River: Raising New Zealand’s Remotest Family is Catherine’s story of growing up in Australia, meeting Robert and moving to Gorge River, a remote location on the southern West Coast of the South Island. She writes about family life and bringing up their two children in the context of a lifestyle where they may not see anyone outside the family for weeks at a time.
Robert has written a book called ‘A Life on Gorge River’, to which this is a sequel, though a standalone book in its own right.
I’m liking
Most of us would never consider living that far from civilisation, let alone bringing up children there. It was interesting to read the accounts of daily life, as this is so different from the experiences of anyone I know. How to feed and clothe the children….. how to keep warm (this is southern Westland we’re talking about!) ….. catching and skinning possums ….. etc etc.
Things that made me go hmmmm
My husband and I both found the book quite hard to follow and with a lot of tangents / unnecessary diversions from the story. I found this a lot better in the second half of the book (my husband hasn’t made it that far yet).
There’s a lot of autobiographical information of her growing up in Australia in the first few chapters, which didn’t interest me nearly as much as the stories about life on Gorge River. And for the romantics among us, there is disappointingly little detail on how she met Robert, why she liked him, and why she thought it would be a good idea to move to the wopwops with him!
The conclusion
An interesting read for anyone keen on the outdoors, the ‘simple life’, being self-sufficient, ‘going bush’, or just in need of a reality check about how easy we have it these days bringing up a family in an urban environment!
