Personal reflections

Press, 21 July 1984, Page 20

Personal reflections

Kathleen’s Story. By Kathleen S. Doyle. Published by the author, 11 Fielding Street, Chch 2. 1984. 159 pp. Illustrations. $8.95. Kathleen Doyle, aged more than 80, has written a simple narrative of her life, dealing especially with her youth in South Canterbury. She was born in Orari, lived and worked in Temuka, the high country, and Timaru, and moved to Christchurch with her family shortly before the Second World War. Although intended as a straightforward family record, the book also captures the flavour of Canterbury country life in less complicated and perhaps happier times. To Akaroa and Back. By T. E. Green. Published by the author, Awaken, R.D. 2, Whakatane. 1984. 65 pp. Illustrations. $l2. William Green, the author’s great-great-grandfather, born in England in 1799, arrived at Akaroa with his wife and child on November 10,1839, in charge of cattle for Mr W. B. Rhodes. Green’s Point in Akaroa is named after him; he built Akaroa’s first hotel (the Victoria Inn) some years before Christchurch was more than a dream. For this account of Green and his descendants the author has drawn extensively on official records as well as on family recollections. It makes a useful contribution to accounts of life in one of New Zealand’s first settlements.

Evergreen Journey. By Temple Sutherland. Hodder and Stoughton, 1983. 336 pp. Illustrations. $19.95. Temple Sutherland, a familiar New Zealand author, has turned to writing an account of his life from his birth in Scotland in 1906. He came to New Zealand in 1925, finding work on back country farms for "15 bob a week and tucker.” Since 1929, much of his life has been spent in and around Nelson. This is a cheerful, discursive book, that displays well the author’s enthusiasm for his adopted country and his sheer delight in most of what life has offered him. Of Toffs and Toilers. By Geoffrey . I Buckley. Benton Ross, 1983. 209 pp. Illustrations. $19.50. Buckley’s book grew out of an attempt to write a family history. His father’s ■family came from Lancashire; his mother’s family from Cornwall. “Toffs and Toilers” considers some of New Zealand’s first Cornish settlers. who arrived at Auckland on the barque Westminster in 1843. The book looks at the Cornwall the settlers left behind, part of Britain’s Celtic fringe, and at the activities of the settlers in New Zealand when the Methodist Church played an important part in the lives of most of them.