“Route 52 A Big Lump of Country Unknown” by Simon Burt was launched in the Wairarapa last month to great fanfare and capacity audiences.
Simon wrote nearly every word from his small retro caravan featured on the cover, either parked up at home or on the route itself. So, in the spirit of ‘on the road,’ I held off reading the book until I was on the road in our motorhome on a long-awaited break with the promise of uninterrupted reading.
It was a good decision as I was able to devote myself entirely to the fascinating stories and descriptions of rural peoples, their lives and the landscape up and down the east coast between Masterton and Waipukurau. It is a book that effortlessly earns the description ‘quintessentially Kiwi’ about a lump of country I have travelled by motorbike, car and motorhome over the past 20 years and barely scratched the surface of knowing. Reading the book is a cross between a fully immersive Country Calendar experience and a light touch of The Book of Exodus with its extensive family trees and connections between families documented for all time. As Simon asks the reader – “are you keeping up?”
It made me laugh out loud and at times I caught an unexpected and pleasantly surprising whiff of my own childhood that vanished as quickly as it came. Possibly my favourite one liner is Simon’s description of a fish and chip dinner in Pahiatua– “…the warm packet of questionable nutrition…”. I thoroughly recommend this book to all readers. The myriad stories wind around bends, turning back on themselves, climbing hills and dipping down into gullies much as the road itself does. It veers into wartime history, politics, architecture, changing landscapes and the very nature of farming in New Zealand. Get a copy, you’ll thank me.
Available at your local bookshop.
