To the Back and Beyond – A Karamea Story

Jim, an only child, has 21 grandchildren today. Bravo! But Jim and his parents’ were made of stern stuff. They came in disgust, from Lancashire’s cotton mills to New Zealand, to a government grant of thick rainforest at the back of beyond, Karamea, West Coast, to endure without complaint, without any shadow of whinging. The trying art of bushwacking, the life in a tent for over five years, the cruel isolation, the fall of the price of butter fat to next to nothing, the soaring price of fencing wire to astronomical heights, flood, earthquake and fire – everything fate could sling against them. They stuck this out and more, did our heroic newcomers from Lancashire.