Description

William Harold Marsh, farmer, father, early Albertlander and adventurous photographer captured a time of enchantment, when life was lived at a slower pace and governed by a different set of values, priorities and ambitions. One of the first generation of those immigrants who sailed around the world to settle in Albertland, 70,000 coastal acres on the Kaipara Harbour in Northland, New Zealand, he has left a legacy of those times, a window into the past for those yet to come. This beautifully presented book contains a priceless record of early New Zealand life amongst the Albertlanders, a movement founded to transpose a civilized rural community, with all the trappings of a big market town, from England to the sprawling bush clad hills of their new land. In the event the dream changed shape as a new nation found its feet and rail and road saw a shift in centres of population, but that original community stood strong and the diaspora of those 3,000-plus settlers now circles the globe. The pictures are rare illustrations of a pioneering life, a gentler time, and also a time of trial. They are a record of a people, their discoveries and how they made their lives to fit a new and developing land. Author Paul Campbell's narrative retells the stories of those who were there, often in their own words taken from diaries and letters, sometimes in the tales retold by their descendents.

Table of contents

Migration -- William Harold Marsh -- Harbour Highways -- Life from the Land -- Journey to Pouto -- The Way Ahead -- Mining the Ancient Past -- At Home -- Special Occasions.