This week we're heading to Kaikoura for the launch of our latest book project: Life on Muzzle. I'm really stoked to be a part of the telling of this story of three generations working and living on one of New Zealand's most remote high-country stations. The final book, which hit the shelves yesterday, captures life on the station since Fiona Redfern's parents, Colin and Tina Nimmo, bought the hinterland of the original Bluff Station, back in 1980.
Fiona, who is better known as O, was home-schooled in the homestead and now she home-schools her own children in the very same room. It's a 3-4 hour drive over a rough, variable track across the Seaward Kaikoura Range, but first you have to be able to cross the Clarence River, which is often impassable. Then the range track is frequently littered with rockfall and slips making it an impossible passage at times.
To live in a place like this you have to be a particular type of person and made of something special. O, her husband Guy, and all the characters who keep the Muzzle Station wheels turning are what made this poject such a rewarding one for me. I spent more than two years going back and forward to the station and it wasn't the quest for fame or fortune that drove me, but a fascination and admiration for the people I got to spend my time with out there.
Like the many who have had the good fortune to spend some time on Muzzle Station, it casts its own mesmerising spell on all of us. I would say that magic is hard to define, but O's words capture it beautifully. And I'm honoured to be a part of that.
See you at the beach (Meatworks for me in a few days) ... Derek
PS If you're near Kaikoura this Thursday we'd love to see you at the launch. Details here. Or you can order your own copy right here.
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