Non-fiction

Seafood and coal were the resources that first brought people to the northwest shores of Golden Bay. From the north bank of the Aorere River to the tip of Farewell Spit, the warm shallow waters and low-lying coastal sand dunes were home to shellfish, snapper, flounder and seabirds. Pakawau, the home of the shag, was a staging post on the greenstone trail to the West Coast and many Maori passed from Puponga to West Wanganui and beyond. From the 1850's the rich coal deposits in the Wakamarama range attracted new settlers and invest... read more

Routes over the Takaka Hill have varied since surveyor Charles Heaphy and his party first recorded the crossing in 1843, and this book outlines the changes from the first rough walking tracks to the sealed state highway today's travellers are familiar with. The geology, flora and fauna of the hill, the history of its mail coaches and service cars and the engineering challenges of the last few decades are all in this illustrated history.The real focus of the story is on the people on the Hill, the roadmen, the drivers, the farmers, ... read more

DoP March 2008 192pp Between the Ports is the fifth Golden Bay photo history published by River Press and the third local history produced for the Bainham Reunion Committee. This 192 page book of black and white photos features goldmining, farming, transport, family life and the Onekaka Ironworks, and includes an extensive index.

The discovery of the ancient Moa-hunter burial sites at Wairau Bar in 1939 provided a new benchmark for archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists seeking to understand whose were the first footprints on New Zealand shores. This is the autobiography of the man who found those burial sites as a 13 year old boy and spent the rest of his life exploring and discovering what lies under the soil. Descended from Tory Channel whaler Jimmy Jackson, Jim Eyles was brought up at Wairau Bar. He worked for the Canterbury Museum and w... read more

180 pages Puponga, at the base of Farewell Spit in northwest Nelson, is now a quiet holiday settlement where seabirds wheel and call. But in 1919 the silence was regularly broken by the clanking of machinery, the laughter of school children and the whistle of the steam train as it pushed another rake of wagons out along the wharf to the waiting scow. Three coal mines were worked in the area, totalling 76 years of industrial activity from the late 1890's to 1974. In its heyday the village had a hall, school, general store, bakery, ... read more

This is the story of Nelson's dairy factories, of the skilled workers and administrators who ran them and the producer boards who managed and directed them.

In 1969 a group of Nelson fishermen towed the first mussel raft into the Marlborough Sounds and anchored it in the Kenepuru. Today nearly 80,000 tonnes of Greenshell (TM) mussels are harvested in New Zealand. This is the story of the pioneers, and the 40 year growth of the industry.

Bainham, in the southwest corner of Golden Bay, is the gateway to the Heaphy Track and the Kahurangi National Park. Settled by goldminers, the isolated community grew as the sawmills came and the land was cleared for farming. This book is about the goldminers, sawmillers and farmers, the settlers who packed supplies into the hills and the families who had the tenacity and foresight to develop the profitable dairy farms of today.

Nelson's "Mosquito Fleet" of little sailing vessels played an important role in the first century of European settlement, not only in Blind Bay but around the whole top half of the South Island and across Cook Strait. From the Deal boats that came from England with the First New Zealand Company ships to the Tasmanian ketches and the Auckland built scows that carried timber, coal and other cargoes in and out of the bays, these vessels were the lifelines of a rugged and isolated region and their story is told in the context of the pi... read more

Marlborough Sounds family history from early whaling days. Jimmy Jackson came to Tory Channel with Jack Guard in the 1830s and settled there. He married Eliza Roil from Nelson and their children became pioneer farmers, fishermen and whalers. This book includes family trees and early history of Nelson, Golden Bay, the Marlborough Sounds, Cloudy Bay and Port Underwood.