My Three Rivers : The jottings of a rural woman, 1884–1968

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 Kopuapounamu 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.