Three Rivers: The jottings of a rural woman, 18841968

(Paperback)

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My Three Rivers is a vivid account of the challenges and satisfactions of rural life in the first part of twentieth century New Zealand on land defined by unpredictable rivers, few reliable roads and no bridges. With a sharp and often humorous eye, Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe captures the community at Thames, beside the mouth of the Waihou, where the Bagnall family owned a sawmill, and at an isolated farm on the East Coast beside the Kpuapounamu River, where she farmed with her husband until they retired by the great Waikato. Shirley wrote with a fountain pen in Warwick Jotters and her grandson Andrew Wright has transcribed her words for publication, adding photographs from family and museum archives.

Author Bio

Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe (18841968) was born on 10 February 1884, at Trua, near Thames, in the Waikato. Her father was Richard Wellington Bagnall and her mother Lydia Chadwick Lamb. She had three siblings, Ella, Edith and Stanley. She lived at Trua until her marriage in 1913 to Wallace Fletcher Metcalfe, a descendant of Fletcher Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty. They moved to their farm, Kiritahi, which was near Te Araroa on the East Coast of the North Island. They had three children: Richard (Dick), Muriel (Wendy) and Beverly (Bev). In her retirement, Shirley wrote the story of her life in three Warwick Jotters. Shirley died in 1968 and is buried, with Wallace, in the Alexander Redoubt Cemetery, near Tuakau.