Amending the map

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  • Published 20140204
  • ISBN: 9781922182241
  • Extent: 300 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

WE ALMOST FORGOT. The manicured gardens, the orderly course of the Avon River, the neat grid of streets – the very structure of this Church of England settlement built on the founding principles of faith and learning encouraged a form of environmental amnesia. Despite earlier experiences of flooding and tectonic movement, the city, we thought, was solid. Solid as a rock.

But Christchurch, the Garden City, the city on the Plains, an Antipodean outpost, some still say, of nineteenth century England, is a place of wetlands, of flax and fern, grassland and swamp forest, bulrush and bird life; a watery terrain of springs and waterways draining into the Ōtākaro (Avon) and Ōpawaho (Heathcote) rivers.

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About the author

Sally Blundell

Sally Blundell is a freelance journalist and writer in Christchurch.In 2009 she completed her PhD, 'The Language of Silence: Speechlessness as a Response to...

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