Winner New Zealand Post Book Awards – Illustrated Non Fiction category 2014

A magnificent celebration of New Zealand's long, complex, varied coastline, written by one of the country's finest writers, and with photographs by one of its most distinguished photographers. Several times in 2012 and 2013, acclaimed New Zealand writer Bruce Ansley and eminent photographer Jane Ussher climbed into a car for another stage of an epic road trip around New Zealand's coast. They travelled north and south, east and west, meeting remarkable, sometimes eccentric but always passionate New Zealanders on the way. From surf lifeguards to cray-fishermen, farmers to artists, conservationists to scientists, and everyone in between, in this landmark book Ansley and Ussher document their encounters with affecting words and gripping images. And then there is the coast itself: by turns uplifted, battered, encircling, dangerous, beguiling, sustaining, energising…it challenged and fascinated and moved them. This magnificent book pays homage to the narrow margin between the ever restless Pacific and Tasman and the fragile hinterland we New Zealanders call home.

Author Biography

Bruce Ansley is one of New Zealand's most experienced and respected writers. He has worked in Great Britain and New Zealand, on such papers as the Christchurch Star and the London Sun. For many years he was a staff writer at The New Zealand Listener. Since then he has freelanced and written a number of bestselling books, including A Long Slow Affair of the Heart and God, an account of a canal boat trip through France which develops into a journey within a journey as the internal shifts within a marriage threaten to destroy it, and Gods and Little Fishes, the acclaimed memoir of a childhood in New Brighton. His writing has covered such diverse topics as undercover detective work, a history of Christchurch suburb New Brighton, a tribute to the heritage buildings destroyed in the Christchurch earthquakes, and the tale of legendary high-country station Mesopotamia (of Samuel Butler fame). He has won fellowships to Oxford University and Cambridge University, and a number of journalism awards. He has written for radio and television, including writing for A Week of It and McPhail and Gadsby. A keen sailor, he lives on Waiheke Island with his wife, Sally. The bestselling A Fabled Land: The Story of Canterbury's Famous Mesopotamia Station cemented Ansley's reputation as one of New Zealand's finest writers about ‘place’. The Otago Daily Times wrote: ‘Ansley conveys the flinty edge that generations of farmers and their families needed to make a go of it in harsh and unforgiving surroundings.’ Jane Ussher is well known and respected for her documentary work as a photographer, and is regarded as one of New Zealand's foremost portrait photographers. For 29 years she was the chief photographer at The New Zealand Listener, after which she took up a career as a freelance photographer, in particular working for Oxfam NZ, documenting its relief work in the Pacific Islands, and for several leading New Zealand magazines. Her work has featured in many books, including collections of her own photographs. In 2008 she visited Antarctica at the invitation of then Prime Minister Helen Clark to document the historic huts of Scott and Shackleton, out of which grew her landmark book Still Life, which was a finalist in the NZ Post Book Awards, and a multi-media exhibition. In 2009 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to photography, and was also indicted into the Massey University Hall of Fame. Jane lives in Auckland with her husband, Grant, and son, Nick.