Life along the rivers

Press, 21 February 1987, Page 23

Life along the rivers

Faces of the River. By David Young and Bruce Foster. TVNZ Publishing, 1986. 224 pp. $59.95. (Reviewed by Kay Forrester)

“If you venture to walk the river of your choice, you will walk your past, understand your present, and following a natural line you may even find a pathway to a better future.”

These are the feelings of Eddie Durie, chief judge of the Maori Land Court, towards New Zealand’s rivers and it is a philosophy that "Faces of the River” carries from Durie’s foreword through its text. David Young, a journalist on the “Listener,” writes of the past, present, and future of a dozen of this country’s rivers. A Christchurch photographer Bruce Foster photographs their present. The past tells of the early days and early people of the rivers, both Maori and European. The stories wind with the water from canoes to jetboats, from the past to the present. David Young talks to the people who today work and watch the same

waters. Appendices to the book look at access rights to rivers and who owns a river bed.

The author looks beyond the present also, touching on the risks and threats facing the rivers.

The book is not a coffee-table offering of glossy photographs, although Foster’s photographs are stunning. He uses a Hockney-like technique of several overlapping images to create a sense of the whole panorama. With these large vistas he mixes single shots of some of New Zealand’s most remarkable countryside. The book is an interesting volume to dip into and has useful history on the rivers and their people. The appendices contain technical information about river ■ flows and location maps. At almost $6O it is perhaps a little expensive — other than for the devoted river enthusiast — to buy just for interest and it is not really a textbook as such. One wonders just what audience the authors were aiming at.