Now on sale everywhere in cyberspace!

Good news everyone!

For those of you with ebook readers, you can now purchase the ebook version of Twenty Months in Southland at the fantastic mebooks.co.nz site.
For those that still prefer to have the physical book in your hands, there are now listings on trademe.co.nz and sella.co.nz. Plus the Dornie Publishing website site will be up and running soon!

Ahh what a great age we live in...


And now for another installment from Twenty Months. We pick up our traveler as he meets one of the local characters, Biddy McCoy, just outside Riverton:

  Four accommodation houses occur between the Otautau and Riverton. Walkers' above named, Wilds at Mount Pleasant, and Hopcroft's at Gummie's bush, are three good ones. At Groper's bush, between Mount Pleasant and Gummie's, one is now kept by Mrs. Biddy McCoy, a person of some renown in these parts, being what is termed a "character." Into Mrs. Biddy's antecedents it were, perhaps, best not to enquire too closely. 

Now, she is well to do, and owns land, cattle, and other worldly goods. But Biddy scorns to waste her substance on personal decoration; her usual attire consists of a ragged petticoat, perhaps not so short as those condemed of late by Her Majesty's Lord Chamberlain[1], but exhibiting more of powerful understandings than is the wont of matrons of her years. A tattered old pea jacket does duty as a bodice, tied round her with string. A dubious something, half night-cap, half hood, covers her head, and a long clay pipe generally adorns her mouth. 

Biddy expects all travellers to call at her house as customers, and wee to that unlucky wight who shall fail in this observance, if ever he pass that way again! Biddy invariably pounces upon the delinquent, and in language more forcible than classic, gives him a large piece of her mind on the subject. Not desiring that her eloquence should be exercised upon me, I always paid her a visit in passing, and found some woollen socks which she sold me, of her own knitting, a very comfortable investment.

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[1] Orlando George Charles Bridgeman, 3rd Earl of Bradford.

Twenty Months in Southland Excerpt

A little excerpt from Twenty Months in Southland. We pick up the story mid-voyage from Melbourne to Bluff in 1867:

  Of my voyage thither from Melbourne little need be said; and that is fortunate, for right little could I say. Prostrated in body and mind by the most horrible and least commiserated of temporary maladies[1], all, save suffering, was a blank for some days. As a follow sufferer on another voyage pithily put it :-"First I was afraid I was going to die, and then I was afraid I wasn’t."

  The earliest symptom of returning animation I well remember. I was aroused to a puzzled feeling of envious admiration of the stewardess's skill in legerdemain[2] - if that be the correct term. The ship was rolling, pitching, and otherwise demeaning herself in most uneasy fashion, and landsmen infirm of footing, were holding on with desperate grip, to any friendly projection in their neighbourhood, when I beheld the stewardess aforesaid, ascend the companion, steady, serene, and smiling, bearing in one hand a plate heaped up with bread and butter, and in the other five cups of coffee, piled into a column, the second saucer covering the first cup, and so on to the summit. With charmed gaze I watched her tripping lightly to and fro, without a flaw in her course, setting down her plate, and handing off a brimming cup from the pile, till all were distributed; and I dreamily thought that some day I would try to do the like on shore, but never have. I think that stewardess would excel the Japanese themselves, if she liked to devote her remarkable talent to top-spinning, or bamboo-walking.

Miners on the railway pier, Melbourne

Men in Melbourne, Victoria, prepare to leave for the gold rushes in Otago in 1862. Many were young men (although there were some women), who had not been able to enter the capital-intensive Victorian gold industry. Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

The image above comes from Te Ara by way of the National Library. The Te Ara entry contains an excellent history of immigration to NZ, well worth a read!! 

[1] Sea-sickness

[2] Sleight of hand

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Dornie Publishing

Welcome to Dornie Publishing.

We are a small family run publishing company that specialise in the unique heritage of Southland, New Zealand. At present we're producing a series of booklets of historical accounts of early southrn travellers:

 "Twenty Months in Southland 1867-69" (Nov 2010)

This is a fantastic account of a young Tasmanian undertaking an O.E. in Southland. The book begins with a rocky voyage from Melbourne to Bluff, a quick stopover in Invercargill, before travelling around the fledgling province of Southland (Mataura, Tapanui, Lumsden, Otautau and Riverton). Our narrator finds employment on a Southland farm for a period, then tries his luck on the goldfields.  Throughout the account the narrator provides astute (and often witty) observations of Southland's characters, towns and environment.

A must read for visitors and locals alike. Available from the Southland Museum & Art Gallery and trademe.co.nz.


Dornie Publishing is based in Invercargill, Southland, New Zealand.