Hugh Riminton

Beautiful artwork and a lovely dreamy story. The little girl’s name is Lily, but for pre-reading age children, just drop in the name of your daughter on the final page, and watch her eyes open in wonder. A favourite through two generations now of my girls.

This book helps explain one of the key mysteries of early life in Australia and New Zealand. Why did British settlers arriving in New Zealand almost immediately begin work on fashioning a treaty with the indigenous inhabitants, whereas their brethren in Australia did not. Critical to the difference was the existence of "Pakeha Maori". These were white men, usually deserters, escaped convicts, runaway whalers and sealers, who fetched up on the shores of Aotearoa/New Zealand in the first quarter of the 19th Century. Some, like Jacky Marmon, became so invested in Maori life they engaged in cannibal feasts, underwent tribal tattooing and fought and died in Maori battles. They also learned enough fluency in the Maori language to become vital go-betweens in trade and - ultimately - in the negotiation of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Bentley's semi-academic style in this book produces some repetition but he organises with clarity and authority the different roles white people paid in post-contact Maori life. He brings an unsentimental eye to a vivid story. He also makes plain that by the time British administrators arrived in New Zealand they encountered a Maori society that was well-armed with British muskets and even cannons. Unlikely in Sydney Cove, the Maori people entered those early negotiations from a position of knowledge and military advantage. It would make a lasting difference to the history of the two brother colonies.