A River Rules My Life
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- Floating my review because I have changed edition - having been gifted a signed first edition of this book today. I note in my review below I commented about the quality of the photos - I was surprised to find the photos in the first edition far superior - so much clearer. Not what I woudl have expected! *
Written in 1962, this is an autobiographical depiction of high-country station life in the wilderness that this part of New Zealand was in the 1940s and 50s.
Mona Anderson is a well known author, having written several follow up books to this, her first. A River Rules My Life is an accurate summary - the Wilberforce River, which separates the 23,000 hectare Mount Algidus Station from the road, is a dangerous, snow fed river, which controls access - mostly during the winter and the spring, but at all times.
Mona Anderson was not brought up in the high-country, but married into it - so she had a lot to learn, and in a relativity short time. Her husband Ron, who was perhaps not easily described as patient, threw her in the deep end, and expected her to swim, and for the most part she did.
The twenty years that the book covers saw many changes to the way of life on Mount Algidus Station, including the transition from horse and dray to motor vehicles, the introduction of the radio telephone, and eventually even electricity!
This book has a bit of everything from the high-country - animal husbandry, working dogs, man management, station life. The only (minor) quibbles with the book, are 1/. that she jumps around in the time sequence a bit at times - which means suddenly a story deviates from a time with the trucks, back to a story with the horses and dray; and suddenly Old Jim is back on the station, despite leaving a few chapters earlier - but it is still a very manageable narrative; and 2/. The photographs - there are lots of photos in the book, but (of course) due to the photographic technology of the time they are of terrible quality, and really hard to make out, which is a real shame as they would have been fascinating.
4 stars, probably more for content and appeal that actual writing.