environmental history

Bringing history alive – talk on 16th October

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Crossing the Manawatu River by punt, Ashhurst
Crossing the Manawatu River by punt, Ashhurst, 1884. Photograph by G W Shailer. Palmerston North City Library.

I will be presenting a lunchtime talk on Friday 16th October at the Palmerston North City Library called Bringing history alive. I will be talking of my experience blogging about New Zealand’s environmental history – how I came to do it (this is quite an interesting story, and has to do with a certain expressway), and what I have gained from it. Continue reading →

“Sadness seeping up from the ground” – A personal experience of a book and a landscape

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Pohangina River
A boy and his dog at the Pohangina River – a place of “bliss and wonder”. C. Knight

A few days ago I received the following email from Mark Gibson, who had recently finished reading Ravaged Beauty, and wanted to share with me how it had affected him personally. It was such an eloquent email that I thought it would be worth sharing with envirohistory NZ readers:

“My parents (in their late eighties) gave me the book for my birthday late last year. They live in Palmerston North.  So does my brother who farms on the Tararua foothills behind Tokomaru. Continue reading →