This is an ecological history of the natural geographical changes during the new Zealand immigration period, and it is also a literary masterpiece that records the difficult pioneering and human growth.
With a love of local natural history, the author spent half his life documenting the ecological changes of a sheep farm on the shores of Lake Tutilla, New Zealand, both from soil erosion beneath the surface of the countryside, the ancient way of life of the Maori people, to the fate of pioneers of human and animal migration, the naturalization of exotic flora and fauna, and the disappearance of land-grabbers and the rise of self-farming farmers. Even more striking is the author's knowledge that the life he depicts – human, flora and fauna, topographic – is forever lost and obliterated, and is the final celebration of the "autonomous" nature that preceded the modernization of the Tutilla region of New Zealand.
