OTHER BOOKS I AM INVOLVED WITH

At present I live on Kawau Island,

a small island of 5,000 acres just off the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Resident population is about 60 of us scattered along the coastline. There are no roads to speak of and therefore we have to walk or travel by boat to visit with each other. We have no shops but we do have an all-year restaurant attached to The Beach House Hotel. In the summer season we do have the facilities of a boating club and also a café in the grounds of an historic house for the many hundreds of visiting tourists and boating people.

I am also a member of the Kawau Island Bookworms group and for the past five years have been involved with, and along with the other members have contributed to, four book publications, with the fourth one due for release in late November 2016. Each book has a theme and is centred around our experiences of living semi-isolated on an Island.

AN ISLAND SUMMER. Our first book was a progressive mystery novel – where one person wrote a chapter and then passed it along to another person to add their chapter. The only condition to being a contributor was keeping quiet about what had been written previously. That was a lot of fun, the ending a total surprise and the book sold so amazingly well, we decided to write another.

ISLAND VOICES. For the next book we were to contribute a story, poem or photograph with an Island theme. Quite a few wrote of their often unusual experiences of how they actually ending up living on this island. A lot of them arrived here to this unusual way of living “just by chance.”

ISLAND FLAVOURS. This is our third book and centred around providing food whether for family or entertaining, when all our food, other than fish or something grown in our own garden, has to be pre-ordered and brought in by boat.  There is a great variety of recipes supplied along with the stories and photographs. Again it sold extremely well, with two reprints having to be done - and to date there are only 8 spare copies available at $NZ$20 plus postage. Email enquiries to Lin Pardey at lpardey@xtra.co.nz

From, ISLAND FLAVOURS page 46

Parore

There are natural-born hoarders.

Their scavenging eyes can see

the possibilities in the worn-out,

the cast-off, the inherent wealth

that takes some time to retrieve.

An abandoned dinghy or bath,

the drifts of pine-cones or needles

a twist of wire left on the road,

old timber from a demolition,

bark peeling off a fallen tree,

fruit left to rot on the ground.

She admits to being one of these,

there’s a charm in the abandoned

and overlooked – last week she

carried home a prize of seaweed;

yesterday made a bright red jelly

from an overladen guava tree.

Today she’s out on the wharf

with a line in her hand;

she casts again and again

until she lands a Parore – ignored

as a “shit-fish,” but she knows

to immediately fillet it whole

and not damage the gut.

It’ll be as sweet as gurnard.

Place skinned fillets in a Pyrex dish.

Salt, a light touch of minced garlic,

rings of tomato, then pile on buttered

breadcrumbs and quickly bake

until the juices bubble and run.

Onto a warm plate, a squeeze of lemon
and tonight she'll dine like a queen.

copyright lois. e hunter

lois.e.hunter@gmail.com

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