Journal notes

Several years ago, I toured the Nelson region and heard about the first encounter of Maori and Europeans in Murderers Bay (now called Golden Bay). I thought then this is a powerful story young New Zealanders need to hear. I discovered that no one had written a creative non-fiction picture book about Abel Tasman’s journey to New Zealand and wanted to rectify that. The books I used to research the tale of Abel Tasman’s exploration of the Southern Lands came from the perspective of the European explorers ‘discovering’ Tasmania, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and my first drafts reflected that. However, I wanted the story to be empathetic to the indigenous peoples Abel Tasman encountered and realised it was too Eurocentric. How can you ‘discover’ a land already settled by indigenous peoples and early settlers? To make sure it was a more accurate account of the encounters I asked experts from the three cultures (Aboriginal, Maori and Tongan) to check the text. With the help of the wonderful Scholastic team – Lynette Evans, Penny Scown and their very talented designer Luke Kelly, not to mention the gifted illustrator Marco Ivancic we’ve produced a book that we can be very proud of.

The Embassy of Netherland Ambassador, Rob Zaagman, kindly offered to sponsor the promotion of the book ‘Abel Tasman: Mapping the Southern Lands’ so that we could promote it throughout New Zealand when it’s released in November 2017.