Between 1967 and 1972, Colin Wheeler visited 60 of New Zealand's historic sheep stations across the North and South Islands. Travelling thousands of kilometres with his wife, Phyllis, the pair went to places rarely seen by the outside world. It was a time when sheep farming was the most important agricultural industry in New Zealand, yet these stations remained some of the most isolated communities in the country.
Colin spent month after month drawing, painting and writing about what he saw and the people he met: the interiors of old cottages, blacksmith's shops, rabbiting huts, sod-walled school houses, grand homesteads, bailing hooks, sack needles, hand shears, wool wagons, shepherds, musterers and cooks. The Wheelers forded swift and treacherous rivers, hard against the main divide; stood for days in deep snow; sat in heavy frost; encountered sea-mist, heavy dews and fierce nor'westers.
Fifty years since the publication of Historic Sheep Stations of the South Island, this new edition features all three of Colin Wheeler's original books. It is a remarkable survey of our heartland and a unique record of New Zealand's back-country life.
