A Ride Through New Zealand

Robin Hanbury-tenison.

Hardback, dust cover, photos in colour and black and white.

Robin Hanbury-Tenison was born in 1936 and grew up in Ireland. In 1958 he made the first crossing of South America at its widest point and since then has explored extensively, particularly in South America and Indonesia. He has been a Vice-President and Gold Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society and is President of Survival International. He has written many articles and books, including The Rough and the Smooth, A Question of Survival, A Pattern of Peoples, Mulu: The Rain Forest, Aborigines of the Amazon Rain Forest: The Yanomami, Worlds Apart, White Horses Over France and A Ride Along the Great Wall. He and his wife Louella live with their family on a large hill farm near Bodmin, Cornwall.

Robin and Lovella Hanbury-Tenison rode across France on their white Camargue horses in 1964 and along the Great Wall of China two years later. Now they have decided to explore New Zealand on horsehack, riding alone together through what they describe as some of the most dramatic and exciting country we have ever seen, and using the expedition to raise money for the charity, Riding for the Disabled. For two or three days at a time, Robin and Louella would map read their way by compass across some of the largest farms in the world, at one moment crossing snowy passes of over 6,000 feet, at the next baking in the dry summer heat of the valley floors. At night they would shelter from the rain and wind in primitive shepherds' huts, brewing up soup and tea to keep themselves warm.

But while they found scenery so spectacular it more than justified the description of New Zealand as the most beautiful country in the world, they found, too, a country in crisis. New Zealanders are striving in the face of new, often restrictive, world markets to lessen their sense of economic isolation and vulnerability and to cut their country's large overseas debt. And serious environmental problems have, like those of the economy, hit the country's major industry agriculture-hardest. As President of Survival International, Robin Hanbury-Tenison was struck, too, by the fear and hostility shown to the Maoris by many of their countrymen, though encouraged by his constructive meetings with their leaders.

But above all, as Robin and Louella entered the magic worlds of the remaining beech forests of the South and the even older kauri forest of the North, as they met and stayed with kind and energetic farmers who loved their land and worked hard on it, they came to feel a real affection for the country and its people. Fragile Eden combines with rare sympathy the romance of the adventure story with the stark realities of twentieth-century life.