Drive up the Waitaki Valley in North Otago and you could mistake it for a scene from The Lord of the Rings.
Snow-capped peaks rise in the distance, sheep graze on rolling hills and tucked into this cinematic landscape is BellamoreStation – home to Ben and Emma Nowell, their three boys and a life where farming and creativity intertwine.
Bellamore has been in Ben’s family since the 1980s.
Now, the Nowell family are farming 2000 ewes, 120 cattle and a few hundred velvet stags for trophy hunting.
When Emma renovated it, she discovered a stash of vintage bottles beneath the floorboards – relics of shearers long gone.
She’s transformed the small building into her art studio, a creative refuge where she paints, illustrates and writes.
It’s here she brought Punter the Hunter to life – a children’s book inspired by the couple’s first hunting dog.
Illustrated with scenes from around the farm, the story captures the spirit of their high country life.
For Emma, the project also carried a purpose: one dollar from every book sold goes to Dunedin Hospital’s Children’s Ward, in gratitude for the care her son Harry once received.
Her creativity doesn’t stop with children’s books.
Image 1 of 5: Bellamore Station is at the end of a gravel road. Photo / RNZ, Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
She’s designed a card game called Go Muster – a farmyard twist on Go Fish – and is drafting a new older children’s chapter book inspired by real farm adventures.
“Harry once told me he couldn’t find books he wanted to read,” she told RNZ’s Country Life.
“So I thought – why not make one?”
When they’re not farming or coming up with stories, the Nowells host visitors at Sparrowhawk Hut, their off-grid mountain retreat with a bath on the deck and skies blazing with stars.
