Tales of gold, rabbits, sheep and outstanding landscapes, as told by early New Zealand poet David McKee Wright, have been recreated in a new book.
Born in Ireland in 1869, Wright emigrated to New Zealand, via Australia, and took up work on Otago back-country stations.
While working as a rabbiter and rouseabout on Puketoi Station, near Patearoa, he wrote many poems about the area and submitted them to various newspapers include the Otago Witness.
"What he wrote locally is recorded to be the equivalent of what Banjo Paterson [an Australian bush poet writing about the same time as Wright] did for Australia," Mr Gibson said.
Because many of Wright's poems referenced miners and the gold rush days and because Central Otago was celebrating 150 years since the discovery of gold, the ratepayers association thought it was a good time to reprint some of his works, he said.
