Detours A Journey through small-town New Zealand (a generation on)

Summer, 1981. A young Neville Peat set out from Cape Reinga on his new 10-speed bike 'Blue, aiming to cycle through small-town New Zealand from north to south, all the way to Stewart Island. The week before Easter, he reached his destination. He wrote a book about it, Detours: A journey through small-town New Zealand, which sold lots of copies and was broadcast on radio. Many times in the intervening years, usually on anniversaries of the journey -- ten years, fifteen years, twenty years -- he wished to try a repeat journey, but life held other challenges. Now, as a leading author and in the age of the personal computer and cell phone, a very different world, he has revisited many of the towns and regions, not on a bicycle, but by car. In Detours -- A generation on, he reflects once again on how small-town New Zealand is doing.

Neville Peat is a leading natural history writer, whose prize-winning works include four regional natural history books (co-authored with Brian Patrick) and most recently Kiwi: The People’s Bird. He is the latest recipient of the prestigious Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship.