Hauraki Gulf

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 17

Hauraki Gulf

Gulf. By Barry Mitcalfe. Coromandel Press, 1981. 110 pp. $9.95.

This largely historical survey of the sea, coastline and hinterland bound by Cape Rodney and Cape Colville, and reaching out to Great Barrier Island, has the same quality as the photographs which make up the greater part of it. An old photograph can give a fragmentary, incomplete and sometimes misleading impression of what the past was like. But adequately explained and set in context, an old photo can provide convincing demonstration of the old adage about what a picture is worth.

This book seems at first glance to consist of fragments thrown haphazardly together. In fact, when the photographs are related to each other and to the interspersed text, a remarkably coherent and complete “snap’’ of the area is given.

The book conveys admirably and economically the essence of an area the character of which is set by a complicated intermarriage of sea and land in a way that is not familiar to many Cantabrians. They will find in this book many suggestive reasons why Auckland always has been a very different place from Christchurch. To do so much with so little text and so little apparent effort is a remarkable achievement. Th& story thus told is one of sometimes destructive exploitation — of kauri, gold and fish — of the hard work of the poor and indolent leisure of the rich. But the author wisely reserves his moralising (which is sometimes excessive) for today’s ills besetting the region and their perpetrators. The past, recreated so lovingly in this book, is presented unvarnished, the bad forgiven as the good is celebrated. — John Wilson.