In love with the Sounds

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 22

In love with the Sounds

A Labyrinth of Waterways. By Frank Ponder. Wenlock House. 1986. 168 pp. $38.95. (Reviewed by Philip Worthington) The sub-title of Ponder’s labour of love, "the forgotten story of New Zealand’s Marlborough Sounds” is. more revealing than the title. The author has tried to gather and get down as much material as he could on the history of the Sounds — particularly the lesser visited Pelorus and Kenepuru — before it disappears. The result is a fascinating history that, if not actually forgotten, has been

common knowledge to only a few until now. In parts the detail might be hazy, or dates and other facts might be missing, but an extensive bibliography promises to reward the more serious student. Much of the history Ponder has chronicled is anecdotal, gleaned from his family connections and other oldtime Sounds residents, so real people and their memories are woven into the historical narrative. Ponder has adopted an episodic style, a journey from Wellington through the Sounds to the farming home of his relations in the “Deep Pelorus,” as he calls it, forming the skeleton on which Ponder hangs the flesh of his research. The whole is easy to read, almost chatty, and a perfect introduction to the Sounds for a stranger, as well as providing a lot of interest for those familiar with them, but willing to learn more of their past. A wide range of photographs supports the text, many of them by early photographers, and a clutch of interesting appendices supplement the book. A comprehensive index completes the work. The enthusiasm of the author for his topic is obvious and his love of the Marlborough Sounds, easily understood by the thousands who share it with him, has helped to give the work an immediacy and warmth not usual in a history. (Available from the author: 9 Wyndrum Avenue, Lower Hutt.)