Epic: Adventures across Aotearoa (Ray Salisbury, Exisle)

Covering 10 iconic journeys around and across Aotearoa New Zealand, Ray Salisbury retells each adventurer’s inspiring and often harrowing trek, working from first-hand accounts in blogs and books to bring a brief catalogue together in one collection. He follows up with an adventure of his own, trekking across the North Island from East Cape to Cape Egmont. Acknowledging that European colonists ‘were not the first’ to explore this region and mentioning the historic 1975 month-long walk to protest against the loss of Māori land, the author says that, in stark contrast to that walk by some 5000 people, ‘the adventure-seekers in this book admit to harbouring an array of wildly different motives’. Epic: Adventures across Aotearoa is best for its attention to practical detail, stepping out distances travelled each day and in how many hours, exactly where rest stops were taken, and weather reports. These accounts are punctuated by photos taken at different points of these expeditions by members of the travelling parties. The images give us an insider perspective that Salisbury’s second-hand reporting otherwise wouldn’t provide, and some stunning views of Aotearoa New Zealand. Epic is one for the eager adventurer interested in the particulars, perhaps planning their own intrepid journey. Salisbury does touch on details such as how the adventurers feel when pushing their bodies and minds to the limits or, on a couple of occasions, difficulties in their personal lives and relationships, but he never dwells on them. The focus is always on the next stretch of the coast or the next mountain to climb. This is a fast-paced, dramatic account of authentic experiences of survival and endurance, collected in one place for convenience of reading.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Ash Davida Jane is a writer and editor from Wellington, New Zealand. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Friday Unlocked reviews Reviews