Introduction

People and Place:The West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in History and Literature

“…The lure of instant riches allowed the West Coast to squeeze, as May puts it, the 'normal process of colonization' into just 'three hectic years'. 1 May's thick description of this accelerated history emphasises the distinctiveness of the West Coast experience and an awareness of the common ingredients that bound together the nineteenth-century gold rushes of the Pacific borderlands. His sympathies are with the 'digger' confronting what must surely have been the most threatening landscape encountered by those whose gold trail stretched from California to Ballarat and Bendigo before grappling with the incessant rain and impenetrable bush that was the West Coast.…”

“…His sympathies are with the 'digger' confronting what must surely have been the most threatening landscape encountered by those whose gold trail stretched from California to Ballarat and Bendigo before grappling with the incessant rain and impenetrable bush that was the West Coast. Nowhere is this more evident than in his evocation of their spirit in his final paragraph: 1 Philip Ross May, The West Coast Gold Rushes, Christchurch, Pegasus, 1962, p. 13; O'Farrell, 'Review: P.R. May,The West Coast Gold Rushes',p.…”

“…In the foreword to The West Coast Gold Rushes Phil May ponders 'whether one can acknowledge a debt to a place' and admits that 'it is not easy to get the Coast out of one's bones'. 1 The creeks and gullies that surrounded the Ross township in which he grew up carried the names and associations of the rush of 'sixty-five' and conjured up images of an event that brought people and place together with a suddenness that was as bewildering and unpredictable as it was chaotic and colourful. As historian, May sought to find meaning in the apparent randomness and, by taking his stand as it were alongside the diggers, presented a 'scrap of New Zealand history in its own terms'.…”

“…Within the historical profession the standard bearer of the new mood was Keith Sinclair's A History of New Zealand (1959), a nationalist account that emphasised the radical and innovatory and stressed New Zealand's Pacific environment. 1 It became the defining, if not uncontested, perspective for a generation of historians. Indeed, within a year, Bill Oliver produced an elegant counterpoint, The Story of New Zealand (1960).…”

“…It does so as a by-product of an ephemeral event whose consequences were judged of relatively little significance to the nationalist, radical theme. The region 1. INTRODUCTION makes a reappearance as the home of militant industrial labour in the early twentieth century.…”