Ghost South Road

by Scott Hamilton

The Great South Road was built in 1862 to carry a British army into the Waikato Kingdom. When the British invaded the Waikato in 1863, soldiers shared the road with Māori refugees from Auckland. Today the eroding earthen walls of forts and pā and military cemeteries remember the road’s history. They sit beside the car dealerships and kava bars and pawn shops of South Auckland, the most culturally diverse part of the world’s most culturally diverse city.

On their journeys up and down the Great South Road, Hamilton, Janman, and Powell have learned how the route’s tragic past affects its present, and discovered the ways in which the road connects as well as divides the communities that live alongside it.

Ghost South Road features obscure as well as famous figures from New Zealand history and illustrates the epic walk that the author and photographers made along the two hundred kilometre length of the Great South Road.

Genres: History

335 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2018

About the author

Scott Hamilton has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Auckland and has published books and essays about British socialism, Tongan art, kava drinking, and New Zealand history. He won the inaugural Auckland Mayoral Literary Grant in 2015 for his study of the city's Great South Road and wrote The Stolen Island with the help of a D'Arcy Literary Residency. He contributes regularly to the online arts journal Eyecontact and blogs at readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz

Reviews

[Jeremy Greenbrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://twitter.com/JGreenbrookHeld/s...

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I meant to give this book a more complete review because it touched me deeply. It gives so much depth to some of Aotearoa's history, in ways that are nothing like most history texts; it tells the personal stories of people who were there, and through them conveys the impacts of colonisation and change. It's the first history text I would recommend anyone.